COMMUNICATIONS

European Crypto-Initiative (EUCI) Workshop

The European Crypto Initiative (EUCI) was born to impact current EU draft regulations such as the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MICA) to ensure a positive approach on decentralized use cases, open blockchains and permissionless innovation. This workshop included groups on DeFi sandbox, DAO definition and regulation, & DeFi and digital Euro integration

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Cryptogovernance Workshop

This workshop examined how blockchain governance has developed in the wild. Leveraging a unique dataset based on a standard questionnaire instrument, we found that blockchain governance is evolving toward greater sophistication based on 3 factors: market developments, regulation, & application of political theory

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Legitimacy in the Metaverse: The Case of Decentraland

Stakeholders of blockchain protocols and blockchain communities may be interested in the legitimacy of how a protocol operates or how a community is governed as it is a key determinant of whether they continue to stay on a protocol or in a community–or exit instead. Decentraland is one such community as there is an opportunity for community members to ‘fork’ the platform and thereby exit an existing system they dislike, while potentially, they can also remain within the original project and raise their ‘voice’ on issues such as plutocratic behavior and spam proposals.

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Blockchain & Legitimacy

The question of legitimacy is increasingly relevant for understanding blockchain governance, and the purpose of this group will be to better understand the practical and empirical conceptions of legitimacy within blockchain communities. The task force will convene for bi-monthly discussions, eventually resulting in a collectively written report synthesizing insights from the discussions.

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Blockchain, Trust, and Confidence

This reading group explored ways in which blockchain technology could contribute to bringing more trust and confidence in existing social and institutional arrangement. Readings covered notions of trust and confidence, investigating the extent to which blockchain technology can either strengthen or weaken these concepts. The goal was, ultimately, to have a better understanding of how to design blockchain-based systems that promote trust and confidence

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Extitutional Theory

This working group studied and advanced the research on Extitutional Theory, a new field of scholarship that presents itself as a complement to Institutional Theory.

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Extitutional Theory and Practice

During this 5-day workshop, we explored a novel theoretical framework to analyse the interplay between formalized social structures that are commonly described as “institutions” and the underlying social dynamics that animate these institutions, also known as “extitutions”. Using a series of case studies to explore the dialectic between these two components of social organisations (the institutional and the extitutional components), we investigated the extent to which they are both necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability of social systems

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Legitimacy & NFTs

This COALA Workshop, organized in collaboration with the Blockchain Perspectives Joint Research Initiative (BPJRI), and the BlockchainGov project of the European Research Council—was a satellite event to the EthCC conference taking place on 21-22 of July, 2021 in Paris, France.

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