Research done at MIT CISR in the early 2000s, as well as more-recent research on decision-making processes, indicate that the single most important leading indicator for the success of a governance arrangement is the ability of participants to clearly articulate how it works. Governance mechanisms that are well-understood by participants tend to succeed regardless of the structure of input and decision rights and processes involved; mechanisms that are poorly understood tend to fail. Therefore, it was with some concern that I read these words from this post:

“…the Ethereum governance process are not very well documented, and it’s hard to understand them without actively participating in them. They evolved over time, and are not an institutionalization of a formal model, and therefore have no inherent reason to be easy to identify or communicate.

“No one has full information about the structure of the processes involved. Partly because documenting reality is hard work, and so is communication and education. Partly because the processes are still evolving. And also partly because people only inevitably learn about the processes that they participate in themselves. Most observers don’t participate, and can’t be expected to understand the process, at least until clear documentation is available.”

To put it bluntly, this sounds very much like a governance process that is designed to fail. Given the explanation above, I wonder whether any two participants in this governance process would offer the same description of how it works. It is also a process that is highly prone to manipulation by motivated actors, because (according to this description) very few people understand how it’s supposed to work in the first place, and therefore would have little basis to question changes (or even notice changes) in how it works.

In other words, the absence of documentation for the Ethereum governance process is cause for extreme concern, not something to be lightly dismissed. The excuses offered in this piece for the absence of such documentation — it’s hard (really? for whom in particular?), the processes are still evolving (from what to what?), and people only really learn about the processes they participate in themselves (no, people learn about the stuff they want to learn about, whether or not they’re participants) — are utterly unacceptable for a system that handles large amounts of money.

There seems to be another assumption here: that Ethereum governance works and will continue to work because everyone involved in it (or almost everyone) is essentially well-intentioned, reasonable, honest, etc. If the evolution of the Internet from a playground for academics to a high-speed transmission belt for disinformation and malicious code didn’t disabuse everyone of such notions, I don’t know what will. What happens when some person with ill intent makes a concerted effort to hijack Ethereum? How will an undocumented governance process that is poorly understood by all but a few help to refute such an attack?

If answers to these questions are available, I’d like to hear them.