The Presidio Principles
Foundational Values for the Decentralized Future
Governance is a tricky thing. Millennia of human history have shown us that the systems we create, especially our systems of politics, are inherently fragile and often extremely flawed. As we look upon the world today, we cannot help but notice that so many of our problems stem from failures in governance.
Failures in personal governance.
Failures in corporate governance.
Failures in national governance.
For many of us working on new forms of technology that aim to disintermediate and decentralize governance structures, it’s often difficult to tell whether we are actually improving the state of governance, or simply repeating the same patterns that have plagued us since the dawn of organized societies.
Personally, I believe that Bitcoin holds tremendous promise. The attention, money, and talent pouring into building new cryptographic primitives as a result of Bitcoin’s success has accelerated the pace of development of new systems and tools that help users exercise more control over their privacy. While some of it is severely misguided, in my view, the result has been a boon to those who share the ethos so eloquently laid out in “The Cypherpunk Manifesto.”
As I’ve stated before, arguably, the emergence of governance oriented protocols was a direct response to the perceived tyranny of bitcoin. But as these protocols are implemented and their governance mechanisms activated, we see them, in turn, plagued by their own unique forms of dysfunction.
On the governance front, I’ve been skeptical of what I’ve seen implemented thus far in the“blockchain” space (see below — nothing is decentralized). At the same time, I’m also optimistic that the seeds of new models for governance are emerging, and will grow and flourish over time and through the painful, awkward, and informative lessons that experience and practice bring. I do believe many people building these systems share a desire to improve the state of our society and advance personal freedom.
How Do You Govern That Which Cannot be Governed?
Last year, the World Economic Forum created a blockchain council to bring together individuals and organizations working on various facets of this emerging technology — entrepreneurs, developers, corporate executives, academics, policymakers — to aggregate, curate, and organize information about this new technology and share it. There are many great organizations doing this type of work, and WEF is by no means unique in this regard. The Human Rights Foundation, the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, the Wharton School, the Nakamoto Institute, and CoinCenter are just a few examples of other organizations working on education and advocacy oriented towards policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs, institutions, and individuals.
One of the themes that has emerged over and over again is governance — how do we create a basic framework to help people understand they key differences in how different protocols and networks are governed, and what that means for users? The familiar mechanisms of governance include laws; cultural and social norms; language. In this emerging ecosystem, these mechanisms exist in silos but are not yet formalized into a globally recognized set of principles. We asked ourselves — if they were, what would it look like?
The outcome was this document — the Presidio Principles. The principles are a loose outline of the foundational rights we believe must be preserved when building new protocols, networks, and applications with this technology.
The key categories covered include a user’s rights to:
- Transparency & Accessibility — The right to information about the system. For example, knowing system’s governance, rules, and consequences of rule violation, and understanding who ultimately controls a system.
- Privacy & Security — The right to data protection. For example, ensuring a user’s data is not accessed, manipulated, or destroyed without their permission, and limiting data collection to that which is necessary and data use to the purpose for which it was provided.
- Agency & Interoperability — The right for individuals to own & manage their data. For example, ensuring a user can create, manage, and keep private cryptographic keys, and revoke consent for future data collection.
- Accountability & Governance — The right for system users to understand available recourse. For example, enabling a user to rectify demonstrably false, inaccurate, or incomplete data when necessary.
We Need Your Help
The principles have been drafted and reviewed by a number of different individuals and organizations, but we need your feedback. We want this to be representative of a broad cross-section of individuals and organizations working on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, more commercial endeavors like enterprise blockchain networks, and other systems and applications being built by governments and institutions that serve our society.
We are requesting feedback from those on the front lines of building decentralized systems. Our goal for this comment period is to collaboratively develop a version of the Principles which the GitHub community finds most impactful and useful. At the end of the comment period, the GitHub community draft will be shared back with the broader WEF Blockchain Council, to be combined with input from other concurrent comment periods canvassing other communities.
There are two ways to contribute:
- Submit a pull request suggesting specific language be added, removed, or changed.
- Open an issue with a general suggestion or feedback.
We are specifically looking for input on the following questions:
- Are there any glaring omissions from your perspective?
- Is there anything that needs clarifying? Are the words used accurate, specific, and actionable?
- Do you have additional ideas for how the document could be put into practice?
While this document will be one of many of this nature, we hope it will serve as a useful guide to those building new systems and tools.
I’ll end by referencing Polybius, the Greek historian who made many observations about governance during the rise of the Roman empire that still hold relevant today. If all citizens are aware of law, history, and constitution, they will endeavor to maintain “good” governance.
As we explore the potential to build new systems, we must actively acknowledge the potential failures and dangers of these designs. If nothing else, perhaps these principles will make us more likely to succeed at our stated intent.
