Episode 6: Crypto Cartels
Because power is fun once you’ve got it
In this episode, we cover the nebulous and thorny topic of crypto governance mechanisms and the merging of politics and finance in the form of on-chain governance via token voting and staking.
We draw from the history of politics, going all the way back to the Romans, and fast forward to the drama and intrigue of the bitcoin block size wars, the Ethereum hard fork, and the results of these early governance experiments.
We end with some thoughts on how staking as a service and speculative participation in governance could thwart the goals of good governance, and what this might mean for the $4B of network value dependent on on-chain governance today.
Listen to Episode 6 here
Referenced in the Show
Meltem Demirors on Politics, Power, and Protocols
Aracon 2019 — The conference hosted by Aragon, which was an inspiration for the podcast this week
Paul Graham on The Other Road Ahead
Kevin Garcia on Towards a (Better) Practice of Stakeholder Mapping in Crypto Networks
Dan Larimer on The Limits of Crypto-Economic Governance
Peter Todd on The Ethereum DAO Bailout Needs a Coin Vote
Digital Currency Group on the Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017
