BlockchainGov

Argentina Onchain @ Edge City Patagonia
2025-11-01 08:00 - 2025-11-14 17:00 UTC | San Martin de Los Andes
Argentina Onchain is a 2-week residency at Edge City Patagonia dedicated to exploring practical onchain solutions for real-world problems in Argentina’s private, public, and third sectors.
​From Nov 1–14 in San Martín de los Andes, we’ll bring together leading researchers, builders, and local collaborators to examine systemic challenges and initiate novel, context-aware approaches.

​Week 1 offers an intensive curriculum that introduces the real-world use cases participants will address in Week 2. It covers existing onchain solutions, mechanism design practices, and key considerations for impactful onchain solutions, including ethics and economics, politics and culture, and legal interfacing.

​Week 2 moves into collaborative design sprints, with participants selecting a real-world use case and developing a proposal informed by the insights from Week 1. These proposals will be submitted to the corresponding Argentine institution.

​This residency blends high-level analysis with grounded, locally relevant experimentation. If you’re ready to participate and help shape the future of onchain innovation in Argentina, register today!
​Co-organized by Ethereum Foundation, Crecimiento, SEED Latam, Polkadot Academy, BlockchainGov, Syndicate, Mechanism Institute, and Deep Work.

BlockchainGov Paris Symposium September 2025
2025-09-25 - 2025-09-26 | Panthéon Assas – Université Paris II
📅 BlockchainGov Symposium (Paris, 25–26 September 2025)
The BlockchainGov Symposium: Present & Future of Blockchain Governance marked the culmination of five years of research. Over two days at Panthéon-Assas University, our distinctive intellectual community of scholars, practitioners & experts came together to reflect on the state of decentralized governance and to map our way forward. The quality of discourse and collaboration in Paris really showed how exceptional this group of thinkers is that we’ve built together over the past five years. Thank you again to all who joined us.

The first day focused on Community Governance & Design, opening with a keynote by Judith Donath on trust, underlining it as a problematic, but permanent substrate for humanity.
9:30-11:00
Trust, Confidence, Legitimacy
Keynote: Judith Donath
Discussant: Malcolm Campbell Verdyun
Moderator: Primavera De Filippi

11:00-12:30
Blockchain Governance Design
Panel
Michael Zargham
Javier Arroyo
Paul Dylan-Ennis
Moderator: Sofía Cossar

Following this – Sofía Cossar moderated a panel on Blockchain Governance Design. Taking us through findings from the Blockchain Governance Cookbook & our Report on Blockchain Governance Dynamics. The panelists discussed the dynamics of polycentric governance, the exogenous & endogenous legitimacy and the multidimensionality of Blockchain Governance, how code, law, social norms, and market forces make it a “techno-social beast”
Slide from Sofia’s panel presentation.

13:30 – 14:30
Markets & Democracy
Fireside Chat
Eric Alston & Puja Ohlaver
Moderator: Sofía Cossar
The program continued with a fireside chat with Puja Ohlaver and Eric Alston, during which the audience engaged with them for the entire hour. Sofia sparked the conversation based on Puja’s latest paper “Community Currencies: The Price Of Attention And Cost Of Influence In A Networked Age”, contrasting it with Eric Alston’s two papers on Market Maturity and Regulatory Risk Propagation. While Puja’s paper can be seen as prescriptive, Eric’s can be seen as descriptive.

14:30- 15:30
Blockchain & Accountability
Keynote: Joshua Fairfield
Discussant: Primavera De Filippi
Joshua Fairfield delivered a keynote on “Smarter Contracts”, recalling the early legal debates around smart contracts – when lawyers often remarked that they were “neither smart, nor contracts.” This was followed by a jam with Primavera De Filippi, exploring accountability structures for AI and analogies that could guide future legal research.

16:00- 17:30
Progressive Decentralization & Exit 2 Community
Panel
Jacqueline Radebaugh
Nathan Schneider
Federico Ast
Moderator: Tara Merk
The final panel of Day 1 was E2C. Tara, who just finished her PhD on this topic, outlined the key challenges currently facing E2C projects:

Unclear and disputed purpose
Fragmented deliberation spaces
Incomplete governance design and lack of legitimate leadership

For a recap on this panel, read this thread on X, where Theo Beutel captures Nathan Schneider’s memorable tangent that “DAOs are bananas”.

That marks the end of day 1 of our conference. BlockchainGov hosted a reception where we stayed until we got kicked out. Onwards to day 2:
Day 2 focused on Institutions & Global Structures, and started with:
9:30-11:00
Rule of Code vs. Rule of Law
Keynote: Larry Catá Backer
Discussant: Marina Markezic
Moderator: Primavera De Filippi
The first session of the day was a keynote by Larry Catá Backer, questioning blockchain technology’s role in reinforcing cognitive cages. You can find a write-up of the talk here: https://www.backerinlaw.com/Site/podcasts/speeches-and-remarks/ .
Marina Markezic followed and spoke about the regulatory reality and evolution in Europe. Read more about her work here: https://eu.ci/

11:00-11:45
Interactive research seminar
In a fishbowl format, Xavier Lavayssiere, Theo Beutel, and Ellie Rennie helped facilitate an impromptu seminar exploring how academic research can be adapted to analyze decentralized and evolving socio-technical systems. Some of the topics touched on were:

Risks and benefits of collaboration between blockchain researchers and practitioners?
How can scholars maintain analytical distance while accessing insider knowledge?
Can “participatory” research become advocacy? where should the line be drawn?
What makes digital ethnography of blockchain communities distinct from other online ethnographies?

11:45-12:30
Alegality
Panel
Aaron Lane
Joachim Schwerin
Layer 0
Moderator: Jamilya Kamalova & Esen Esener
We then turned to the Alegality panel, led by two of BlockchainGov’s PhD researchers. The conversation moved between EU regulatory frameworks and protocol design, asking how governance can keep pace with innovations that constantly push the limits of legality.
Joachim Schwerin said: “If shutting down Bitcoin were possible, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Primavera De Filippi & Morshed Mannan have written about alegality here.
And Esen Esener here.

13:30 – 14:30
Blockchain Governance and Power Dynamics
Panel
Pierre Noro
Laura Lotti
Ellie Rennie
Moderator: Tara Merk
The panel on Blockchain Governance Dynamics offered a collection of thought-provoking takes. Pierre Noro introduced the idea of “blockchain blasphemy,” Laura Lotti discussed crypto’s “three-body problem” and the normative vacuums created by censorship resistance, and Ellie Rennie presented the notion of “hyperaxis order” as a resilience ingredient that can enable institutions to expand meaningfully across space and time.

14:30- 15:30
Network Sovereignties
Panel
Clara Gromanches
Virginia Zangs
Judd Smith
Rithikha Rajamohan
Johan Michalove
Moderator: Sofía Cossar
Our final two panels treated the topic of Network Sovereignties & Network Nations. One of the main topics that BlockchainGov will focus our research on in the final year of our project. The first panel brought together a collection of reflections on territoriality from last year’s SOAM residents. They discussed how identity, coordination, and empowerment structures are being redesigned in relation to new definitions of territoriality. Examples stretched from physical spaces, digital platforms and imaginary realms. It is a well-curated collection of ideas and proposals, all of which will be published here in the coming weeks.

16:00-17:00
Network Nations
Panel
Liav Orgad
Andrea Leiter
Helena Rong
Moderator: Primavera De Filippi
Our grand Finale was the Network Nations panel hosted by Primavera De Filippi where Liav Orgad, Andrea Leiter & Helena Rong participated. We discussed the concept of Network Nations, a contrasting approach to Balaji’s “network state”.
However Network Nations differ in distinctive ways, a core distinction is that they don’t have a need for territorial claims, physical infrastructure and other needs that emerge from building territory based ecosystems. The Network Nations are aterritorial, allowing for sovereign communities to organize and self-govern as a nation building endeavor one abstraction layer above territorial jurisdictions. They have operational autonomy and in extention also enjoys functional sovereignty. BlockchainGov will develop this research further in the next year. In the meantime, read more about the framework here: https://networknations.network/

That concluded our Final BlockchainGov Symposium. Thank you to all who joined us in Paris. It was a true pleasure to test and try our favorite topics with you all, and we are looking forward to next year’s exploration.

Cooking Up Better Governance | BlockchainGov & Project Liberty Workshop
2024-07-08 13:30 - 17:30 UTC
Following the successful launch of the ‘The Blockchain Governance Toolkit – A Cookbook for a Resilient and Robust Ecosystem‘, BlockchainGov decided to start putting its recommendations to work by integrating them in the development of concrete governance improvements or interventions in blockchain communities.
In the context of EthCC 7 in Brussels, BlockchainGov hosted the Cooking Up Better Governance Workshop on 8tb July, in collaboration with Project Liberty.
The invite-only workshop convened:

Members of 3 select blockchain communities: MakerDAO, DSNP, and Kleros.
Governance tooling experts and providers
General governance researchers and academics

Drawing on insights from the Cookbook, the goal of the workshop was to rapidly prototype real governance artifacts that could later be implemented or proposed in the respective communities to solve an ongoing challenge or provide a significant improvement to the governance system. The governance artifact could have been anything from a forum proposal, to a new systems spec, to wireframes for a new voting dashboard. It was intended to be a hands-on work session with concrete and valuable outcomes for each participant group:

Blockchain communities created a concrete artifact to bring back to their community
Tooling providers learned more about ongoing challenges their products may begin solving more broadly
Researchers found valuable insights on governance

In the afternoon, we expanded the conversation to a broader perspective with fruitful dialogues between Web3 practitioners and policymakers from the EU Commission. These discussions tackled critical issues and opportunities in decentralized governance.
The day was a significant step forward in realizing BlockchainGov’s mission: using research to actively participate in the design and modeling phases of decentralized networks, giving life to new and exciting areas of experimentation.

Blockchain Constitutionalism: the Role of Legitimacy in Polycentric Systems
2023-06-05 - 2023-06-07 | Florence, Florence, Italy
Blockchain networks and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have seen a surge in adoption in recent years. However, to fulfill their promise of widespread structural innovation and change meaningfully, they require governance that maintains legitimacy for internal and external stakeholders. In this conference, we will discuss the requirements for this type of governance from both a practitioner and academic perspective, drawing on three core concepts: legitimacy, polycentricity, and constitutionalism. The first day is dedicated to exploring these concepts academically and applying core tenets to blockchain networks. The remaining two days are structured as a set of conversations between researchers and practitioners to examine the role of constitutionalism and polycentric governance in building and maintaining the legitimacy of both blockchain networks and the DAOs that operate on them.
The European University Institute Conference will take place in Florence from the 5th to the 7th of June, 2023.
The first day is dedicated to an Internal Workshop. During this time, working groups will work on several topics, such as Blockchain & Constitution, Blockchain & Endogenous Legitimacy, Blockchain & Exogenous Legitimacy, and Blockchain and Polycentricity.
Then, during the 6th and 7th of June, talks will be given by academics, researchers, and professionals from all around the world. Team members from Ethereum, Avalanche or Optimism, and DAO Opeator discuss topics such as Law & Regulation or Governance. Each speaker will give a quick presentation and answer the question of the audience.

International Conference On DAO Regulation
2023-04-20 | Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, Alameda da Universidade, Lisboa, Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal
BlockchainGov will be participating in the upcoming International Conference on DAO Regulation, hosted by the Lisbon DAO Observatory. The event will take place on April 20th, 2023, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
This conference will bring together scholars, industry players, and practitioners from around the world to discuss the most pressing issues surrounding DAO regulation.
Over the course of the conference, participants will engage in discussions on a variety of topics, including the shape of any future DAO regulation (direct legislative intervention, self-regulation, or no regulation at all?), mandatory decentralisation, legal personality, governance structures, limited liability and ability to contract, and sectorial issues such as dispute resolution, civil liability, tax law, criminal law, and conflict of laws.
Primavera De Filippi, Morshed Mannan, Silke Noa Elrifai, Kelsie N., Nathan Vandy, and Jamilya Kamalova will be speaking at this event!
We believe that this conference will be a crucial opportunity for anyone interested in the future of DAOs to gain valuable insights from experts in the field. We invite you to join us at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon to take part in this exciting event!

DAO Harvard
2023-04-02 - 2023-04-04
DAO Harvard: Exploring the Implications of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are an emerging technology with immense potential to revolutionize how we think about social and economic organization. However, as with any new technology, many questions need to be answered regarding the legal, policy, and societal implications of DAOs.
We are happy to announce that BlockchainGov will participate in the DAO Harvard event! This three-day conference will bring together practitioners, policymakers, and academics to explore these implications and discuss the future of decentralized social technologies. Co-hosted by Harvard Belfer Center’s Technology and Public Purpose Project and Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics, the conference will bring together an interdisciplinary set of stakeholders from academia, government, and industry.
Three themes will be addressed:
Day 1: Research
The first day of the conference will focus on ongoing academic research efforts related to decentralized social technologies. Researchers can present their recent work and align on future research priorities. The day aims to refine research questions, identify priorities, and foster collaboration across disciplinary divides.
Day 2: Law
The second day of the conference will gather lawyers, academics, and practitioners to identify the current pain points that DAOs encounter when trying to interface with the legal system. Topics include incorporation, liability, taxation, and more. The day’s goal is to understand the current legal approaches being experimented with and reflect on how legal frameworks could evolve to accommodate the needs of DAOs.
Day 3: Policy
The third and final day of the conference will be an intimate gathering of leaders across policy, business, and academia to discuss the role of organizations such as cooperatives, open-source communities, and DAOs in enabling equitable ownership and presenting antidotes to some of the harms caused by Big Tech. The goal is to discuss the hurdles these organizations face in realizing their potential and explore how novel entities like DAOs may improve outcomes in the US.
Overall, DAO Harvard represents a unique opportunity to explore the implications of decentralized autonomous organizations in society. The conference aims to foster collaboration, advance research efforts, and pave the way for a more equitable and decentralized future by bringing together an interdisciplinary set of stakeholders across academia, government, and industry.

Metagovernance Seminar | Ethnographic Study of Proof of Humanity DAO Community Fork and Governance
2023-03-15 17:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris)
We are proud to announce the participation of Sofía Cossar, Tara Merk, and Jamilya Kamalova in the Metagovernance Seminar.
They will present their findings from a six-month ethnographic study of the Proof of Humanity DAO, one of the first large-scale DAOs to undertake a technical and community fork. The research delves into the off-chain and on-chain governance dynamics that led to the community’s decision to fork and draws on significant themes from liberal democratic thought to make sense of the empirical findings.
You will find more information regarding the seminar here. Join us to hear from leading experts and engage in discussions on various topics, including computational tools for governance, governance incidents, case studies, and much more!

10th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2023-03-06 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Online
10th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Genereal Catch-up call

Polycentricity report
Constitutions literature review
Communication update

Blockchain & Constitutions

KLEROS
Internal Discussion on Blockchain & Constitutions

PhD developments

September papers

Extitutional Theory:

Preliminary document mapping extitutional theory

2023 Deliverables: DAOs and the World of Work

Readings and Discussion Points:

Goal: Creative brainstorming among team members focusing on recommended literature, potential collaborators, and the most interesting approaches to the research of this topic.
Outcome: Research plan and roadmap

2023 Deliverables: Blockchain and Public Institutions

Goal: Creative brainstorming among team members focusing on recommended literature, potential collaborators, and the most interesting approaches to the research of this topic.
Outcome: Research plan and roadmap

2023 Deliverables: Blockchain and Decentralization

Goal: Creative brainstorming among team members focusing on recommended literature, potential collaborators, and the most interesting approaches to the research of this topic.
Outcome: Research plan and roadmap

Theory: Blockchain and AI, Cross-Cutting Challenges

Goal: Understanding the common challenges to implementing blockchain and AI technologies by existing public and private institutions and digital communities. Particular focus on trust and confidence, legitimacy, and polycentricity.
Outcome: Potential collaborations for academic pieces of writing.

Proof of Humanity (PoH) llamada Comunitaria
2023-02-09 22:00 - 23:00 UTC
Después de recopilar sus comentarios sobre los hallazgos de la Investigación Etnográfica de PoH DAO, queremos organizar una llamada comunitaria dirigida por Sofia, Tara y Jamilya. Compartirán información sobre los puntos destacados de su investigación, escucharán tus comentarios y responderán tus preguntas.
¡Puedes encontrar la repetición de este focus group aquí!
﻿

Proof of Humanity (POH) Community Call
2023-02-09 14:00 - 15:00 UTC
After gathering your feedback on the PoH DAO Ethnography Research Findings, we wanted to organize a community call hosted by Sofia, Tara, and Jamilya. They will share information on the highlights of their research, listen to your feedback, and answer your questions.
You can find the replay of this focus group here!

WHAT’S GOVERNING WEB3?
2022-12-12 09:00 - 2022-12-15 17:00 UTC | RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Web3 is a ”decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain” (Gavin Wood, 2014). Web3 governance broadly describes the rules and processes that are used for decision-making over platforms and applications that are ‘permissionless’ – meaning anyone with the required resources and capital can take part.
Governance occurs through the software and infrastructure choices of node operators who are unknown to each other, yet whose decisions influence the security and direction of blockchain protocols.

The event is presented by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), the Cooperation Through Code project— a Future Fellowship project funded by the Australian Research Council, the BlockchainGov project of the European Research Council (ERC), Metagov, RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub and the Digital Asia Hub.

9th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-10-14 - 2022-10-16 | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
9th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Review the action items from the last meeting:

ERC BlockchainGOV

September Papers
Communication: website and social media
IGN ONTOCHAIN – DAOstar Grant
Legitimacy Repor

ERC 2023 Research Plan

Action plan

Ethnography: Proof of humanity DAO

Case Study
Roadmap

Extitutional Theory:

Preliminary document mapping extitutional theory

Identity, Privacy & Technology

Readings and Discussion Points:

Identity:

Sheldrake, P. (2022). Human identity: the number one challenge in computer science

Privacy :

Nissembaum, H. (2010). Privacy in Context
De Filippi, P., Mannan, M. (n.d) Tornado Cash: The End of Blockchain Neutrality?
Tornado Cash impact on blockchain neutrality

Global Governance (Pillar 3)

Readings and Discussion Points:

De Filippi, P. (2020). Blockchain Technology as an Instrument for Global Governance.
Cosmolocalism: Understanding the transitional dynamics towards post-capitalism

Roadmap for BlockchainGov Pillar 3
Roadmap for DAO Model Law

Data Trusts:

Readings and Discussion Points:

Micheli, M., Ponti, M., Craglia, M., & Berti Suman, A. (2020). Emerging models of data governance in the age of datafication. Big Data & Society, 7(2)
Nabben, K. Decentralising Data Governance: DAOs as Data Trusts (2022).
Morshed, Elettra, and Janis’ paper on data coops in the EU (2022), long version and short version

Polycentricity Reading Group
Exit to Community:

Roadmap on how to support OC in the E2C

Participants in Person:

Primavera De Filippi
Morshed Mannan
Tara Merk
Jamilya Kamilova
Sofia Cossar
Marco Crepaldi
Louise Frion

Digital Ethnography & Blockchain Reading Group
2022-09-26 | Online
The RMIT University Blockchain Innovation Hub / Digital Ethnography Research Centre, Metagov, and BlockchainGov are hosting a reading group on digital ethnography and blockchain. The group aims to bring together researchers interested in ethnographic research in the blockchain industry. The first session will be held on September 26th. The reading will lay the foundation for many of the upcoming governance-focused sessions and will form the basis of the discussion. In addition, the group will provide a shared space for ethnographers working in the blockchain space to interact and support each other’s research. Sessions are approximately one hour long, and participants are expected to have read the assigned reading ahead of time and come prepared with one or two questions. Each session will begin with a discussant summarizing the reading and introducing questions to guide the group discussion. All discussions will be recorded and shared internally, and Chatham house rules apply to all conversations and the use of recordings.

Blockchain Technology & Polycentric Governance reading group
2022-09-15 | Online
The “Blockchain Technology & Polycentric Governance” reading group investigates the polycentric governance of blockchain systems from descriptive, conceptual, and normative perspectives. The reading group aims to test several preliminary hypotheses related to the governance of blockchain-based systems, including the benefits and challenges of polycentricity, the characteristics of good governance, and the factors that contribute to legitimacy, trust, and confidence. The sessions are currently running and are held bi-weekly on Thursday at 7:00 pm CET for one hour, with an additional 30 minutes for discussion. Participants are expected to have done the readings in advance and will engage in open discussions after a fireside chat between panelists. The reading group is composed of participants ranging from blockchain practitioners to scholars knowledgeable about blockchain governance and polycentric theory.

Web3 Workshop/Open Questions in DAO Science Workshop
2022-09-13 - 2022-09-14 | Online
The Researching Web3 Workshop was a two-day online event focused on exploring Web3, a field built upon blockchain technologies. Scholars from academia came together to generate new research questions, learn about new and emerging technologies, and coordinate communities of practice. The workshop included short summaries and reviews of foundational topics, on-stage interviews with practitioners, opportunities for socializing and research networking, and access to curated resources for further research and study. The event also offered an optional pre-conference technology workshop for attendees to learn key Web3 technologies.
On this occasion, researchers from BlockchainGov, Josh Tan, Tara Merk, and Rolf Hoefer, led a workshop: “Open questions in DAO science.”

Extitutions & Blockchain / Web3 Research Workshop
2022-09-13 - 2022-09-17 | Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society, 1557 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, United States
Extitutions & Blockchain / Web3 Research Workshop
This research workshop was focused on extitutional theory, which is about the interplay between institutions and extitutions. The events included discussions on the differences between institutionalization and extitutionalization, the power dynamics between institutions and extitutions, and the role of trust and confidence in collective action.
Other topics covered included the use of extitutions in the Decentralized Web, Extitutional Governance, Extitutional Exclosures, and the Extitute of Research. In addition, different presentations, case studies, and discussions have been made, focusing on practical applications in the blockchain space.
Finally, the workshop on Friday, September 16, focused on designing an Oracle intermediary/interface specification, which would likely refer to the technical requirements for building a middleware layer that connects external data sources to blockchain smart contracts.
Overall, this event aimed to explore the potential of extitutions, their relationship with institutions, and their practical applications in various fields, including blockchain and decentralized technologies.

BlockchainGov Public Workshop
2022-09-11 | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
The BlockchainGov Public Workshop was divided into four sessions, each focusing on a specific aspect of blockchain technology.
Session 1 was dedicated to the case of Tornado Cash. After the arrest of Alexey Pertsev, the creator of Tornado cash, several points:

From a legal point of view: who is the operator?
Is it possible to stop it?
Is this protocol legitimate?

Then, participants focused on the governance of and by Ethereum after the merge. Finally, participants delved into the implications of the merge on the network and how the decision to merge was made.
Session 2 was about Blockchain and Legitimacy. The BlockchainGov Legitimacy Report was presented, and people gave feedback on it.
Session 3 focused on the legal modeling of DAOs and legal institutions. Participants explored how blockchain-based systems are adopting institutional solutions and legal tools to better interact with the non-blockchain world. The DAOs discussed included dOrg, Opolis, WorkDAO, and LaborDAO.
Session 4 was dedicated to upcoming collaborations in the blockchain space. The workshop discussed Metagov’s GovBase and DAO Research Hub and RadicalXChange’s historical cases of social verification.
Participants:
• Primavera De Filippi

Morshed Mannan

Tara Merk

Jamilya Kamilova

Sofia Cossar

Marco Crepaldi

Louise Frion

Xavier Lavayssière

Florian Glatz

Balazs Bodo

Vincent Danos

Yann

Bea Botero

Abeer Sharma

Vashti Marajah

Simon Pek

Nicholas Saul (afternoon only)

Vili Lehdonvirta

8th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-09-09 | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
8th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Review the action items from the last meeting:

Welcome on board, Marco!
DAO Model Law
Discussion & Debrief:

EthCC
ETHICOMP
dWeb Camp
DAO Day / Stanford blockchain week

Discussion on Proof of Humanity
Reading Groups:

Legitimacy Report

September Papers Updates
Communications & Upcoming events

Participants in Person:

Primavera De Filippi
Morshed Mannan
Tara Merk
Jamilya Kamilova
Sofia Cossar
Marco Crepaldi
Louise Frion

Stanford DAO Workshop
2022-09-01 | Stanford Center for Blockchain Research
The Stanford DAO Workshop, hosted by the DAO Research Hub and the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research, aimed to accelerate research on DAOs by bringing together leading DAO operators and researchers from various fields. The interdisciplinary approach aimed to identify and prioritize the key open problems faced by DAOs to make them impactful and sustainable. Participants presented open issues from the perspective of their field of research, and the group decided which ones were most important to resolve. The top open problems were ranked, and proposals were generated on how to fix them. Moderators gathered these proposals and presented them to a panel of funders, who provided feedback and insight into their respective organizations’ research funding priorities. The workshop also aimed to build a DAO research community by connecting participants and encouraging collaboration beyond the workshop. The insights shared during the workshop will be published. The participants’ research will be supported by connecting them to relevant academics and operators, assisting them with peer review and publication of their work, and helping them obtain funding where possible.

Exploring Digital Identity for Decentralized Societies — RxC unConference Event by RadicalxChange Foundation
2022-08-16 16:00 - 2022-08-18 21:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
Join us tomorrow at the “Exploring Digital Identity for Decentralized Societies” event organised by RadicalxChange Foundation.
The event will take place online, learn more and register here.
Will take place on 16th & 18th, 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM PDT / 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM EDT

Join the event if you are interested in any of the following topics:

DeSoc & Soulbound Tokens
Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials
Data Governance and Public Policy Issues
Regenerative Economy & Community Currencies
Web3 being applied to Governments and Governance
Blockchain for Good Applications
Proof of Personhood / Sybil Resistance / Anti-bots Techniques
Decentralized Identity Developments
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Self-Sovereign Identity
Privacy Implications with AR and VR

A working session and discussion on the challenges of DAO governance
2022-07-19 09:00 - 23:00 UTC | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
Blockchaingov meet up with the Kleros team
Chaired by Primavera De Filippi the meeting included our PhD students Tara Merk, Sofía Cossar, Jamilya Kamalova and our colleague Sabine Van Haecke-Lepic Ph.D who together with the Kleros team had a chance to discuss important challenges and issues in the blockchain space.
Thank you, Federico Ast and Clément Lesaege and all other participants for the lively discussion!

7th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-07-18 | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
6th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Review the action items from the last meeting:

Discussion & Debrief:

DAO Palace
Law and Society Association Conference in Lisbon

Papers:

Blockchain Constitutionalism
Toward Corporate Governance

Case Studies:

Proof of Humanity

Theory Session:

E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver & Vitalik Buterin Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul

June Papers Review
Academic Collaboration:

Metagov
BlockchainGov and RadicalXChange: Historical cases of social verification and Soulbound tokens.
ETHICOMP 2022

Reading Groups:

DAO Model Law
Polycentricity
Decentralized Justice Reading
Update on Legitimacy Report

Participants in Person:

Primavera
Morshed
Vashti
Tara
Jamilya
Louise
Sofia
Kelsie

The European Crypto Initiative (EUCI) Workshop, organised in collaboration with COALA and the BlockchainGov project of the European Research Council (ERC).
2022-07-16 09:30 - 2022-07-17 19:00 UTC | Paris, France, 210 Rue Saint-Martin, Paris
Photo Credit: EUCI LinkedIn page.
The second EUCI Workshop was organised in collaboration with COALA and the BlockchainGov project of the European Research Council (ERC).
The legislative and executive branches of government all over the world are intensively working on regulating blockchain technology and crypto. 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 to decentralized use cases, open blockchains and permissionless innovation. COALA is an international multidisciplinary collaborative research and development initiative that aims at reducing legal uncertainty in the field of blockchain technologies, smart contracts and DAOs.

The workshop was split into 2 tracks:

EUCI track (July 16th):

The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) – overview & future steps
Decentralisation & Regulation – main issues & future steps

COALA track (July 17th):

NFT Licensing Task Force
DAO Model Law

Working group members gathered physically during the day to have the opportunity to continue working together asynchronously.
The goal of the meeting was to allow informal interaction between the industry and the institutions and to present the results from the first day of the workshop. The industry side was presented to the regulators in terms of issues and concerns, as well as educational stands explaining the future potential.

6th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-05-31 14:30 - 19:30 UTC | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
6th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Discussion & Debrief from Florence
NFT Licensing Framework (call)
DADA Governance (call)
Academic papers:

Discussion on Decentraland paper

EthCC Paris.
Collaboration with Ellie Rennie (RMIT) : survey of legitimacy
Collaboration with Jason Potts (RMIT) : Micro-foundations: trust / confidence / agency and etc.

Participants Online:

Jamilya
Vashti
Sofia
Morshed

Participants in Paris:

Primavera
Philémon
Louise
Tara

Blockchain Gov Research Workshop | Legitimacy, Confidence and Trust in Blockchain Governance
2022-05-17 09:00 - 19:30 UTC | European University Institute, 9 Via della Badia dei Roccettini, 50014, Fiesole, 50014, Italy
This workshop is aimed at academics and practitioners interested in blockchain governance, with a focus on trust, confidence and legitimacy.

(European University Institute)
While interrelated, the concepts of trust, confidence and legitimacy are distinct. Trust speaks to a relationship wherein the trustor believes that the trustee will encapsulate their interests. Trust can also exist at the level of systems, such as markets, when it is often referred to as ‘system trust’ or ‘confidence’. Confidence refers to a situation in which, because of previous experience or general knowledge, expectations
are established with regard to a particular course of action, without even considering the risk that such an outcome might not happen. Legitimacy, in contrast, exists when a person or organisation conforms or consents to a set of rules, typically within asymmetrical power relations. Thus, trust and legitimacy can support one another but are not necessarily co-constitutive.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore how challenges of trust and legitimacy are materialising in the governance of blockchain technology―and how they may be overcome.
In particular, we are interested in examining questions relating to the following themes:

Actors – who should be responsible for blockchain governance?;
Governance – how do trust and confidence relate to blockchain governance?;
Legitimacy – what legitimacy issues are specific to blockchain governance?
Tools – what mechanisms can be put into play at the on-chain / off-chain level to promote better blockchain governance?
Case studies: Decentralised justice (Kleros), Virtual worlds (Decentraland), Art NFTs (DADA), Maximum Extractable Value, etc.

5th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-05-02 12:00 - 19:30 UTC | Online
5th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Review the action items from the last meeting:

Theory session: Identity

Siddarth, D. et al (2020) Who Watches the Watchmen? A Review of Subjective Approaches for Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols.
WorldCoin

Theory session: Privacy

Renwick R, Gleasure R. Those who control the code control the rules: How different perspectives of privacy are being written into the code of blockchain systems. Journal of Information Technology.

PhD Work
Every PhD student presents a brief description of:

the current state of the work (dissertation plan)
the ongoing process with the June Paper
challenges and pain points
calls for help or collaboration

Pilots: DADA, Kleros, Decentraland, etc.
Reports & Case Studies
DAO MODEL LAW
Next Steps:

Calls for Post-Doctoral Researcher and Communications Manager
Updates on Participation in Past events

Devconnect 2022 — April 18-25, 2022
Bitcoin 2022 – April 6-9, 2022, Miami
DAOScience WS in Amsterdam update

EUI Workshop on Blockchain Governance – 17 May
JOGL & Blockchain Decentralized Lab

Participants Online:

Jamilya
Tara
Esen
Vashti
Sofia
Philémon
Morshed
Primavera

Own this! Prensentation
2022-04-29 14:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Florence, Florence, Italy
Trebor Scholz’s upcoming presentation on his new book “Own This!” is not to be missed. In his talk, Scholz will examine the world in the midst of a changing landscape brought on by the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pervasive power of big tech companies. In addition, the presentation will delve into the concept of “platform cooperativism,” a movement that aims to establish democratic ownership and decision-making by workers and users of digital platforms as the primary goal of business.
Scholz’s book, which he will discuss during the presentation, provides concrete examples of alternative models that can be implemented to achieve equity, love, and solidarity. These include a digital cooperative of farmers in the south of India that brings their harvest directly to the market, a worker-owned and operated alternative to Uber run on the blockchain in Quebec, an artist-focused platform cooperative in Belgium, and an Italian short-term rental platform that donates half of its profits to the communities in which it operates.
Scholz’s years of work with people from all over the world have been distilled into this short, well-argued book that challenges the theories taught in business schools and used in corporate boardrooms worldwide. His presentation will be an insightful and thought-provoking look at the possibilities for a more equitable and democratic future in the digital age.

DAO Model Law COALA Workshop
2022-04-19 14:00 - 19:00 UTC | Creative Point, Kanaalstraat 132 H,, Amsterdam, 1054 XN, Netherlands
The COALA DAO Model Law workshop was aimed at improving the COALA DAO Model Law, a legal framework tailored to the specific features and needs of DAOs. The agenda included an introductory session on the model law, followed by breakout groups and plenary discussion.
The breakout groups focused on two main areas: general provisions and formation, proof of existence, limited liability, asset subscription, members’ rights, internal organization, and disclosure. The second group focused on DAO specific areas, including contentious forks, restructuring and failure, and the application of general business organizational and taxation rules.
The plenary discussion included restitution of each group’s findings and a discussion of potential key recommendations and next steps for the adoption strategy. The workshop aimed to collect feedback on improving the COALA DAO Model Law and brainstorm ways to revise it.
Overall, the workshop was an opportunity for participants to engage in critical discussions and provide feedback on the legal framework tailored to the specific needs of DAOs. The event demonstrated the importance of providing legal certainty for DAOs and their participants and ensuring the legal framework can keep up with the development and evolution of DAOs.

Open Problems in DAO Science
2022-04-18 | Tobacco Theater, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The DAOist Global Governance Gathering, which took place on April 18-19, 2022, hosted a workshop on DAOs. The workshop aimed to bring together researchers and operators from various disciplines to collectively develop a working definition of DAO science and an interdisciplinary research program. The workshop covered topics such as governance, law, political economy, and data standards. Several questions have been addressed, such as :

What are the open problems in DAO science?
What are the most pressing legal problems facing DAOs
How can the DAO Model Law help?

The workshop consisted of lightning talks, curated discussions, and presentations. The outputs were a definition of DAO science, a list of the most pressing problems, and the launch of an initiative to coordinate DAO science research and stakeholders. The workshop was open to DAO operators, lawyers, technologists, social scientists, and computer scientists.

4th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project
2022-03-28 10:00 - 18:00 UTC | CERSA, 10 rue Thenard, Paris, 75005, France
4th Meeting of European Research Council BlockchainGov Project

Review the action items from the last meeting:

updates in relation to the progress of action items.

Theory session (1): Blockchain & The Paradox of Democracy

Refresh your mind on the Dyzenhaus paper (last chapter of the book)
Read the Blockchain Paradox abstract
Discussion about the paper

Theory (2): Blockchain & Constitutional Guarantees

Read “Conclusions and Explorations” of Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change.
Read the Blockchain Constitution draft
Discussion about the paper

PhD Work :

Every PhD student presents a brief description of:

the current state of the work (dissertation plan)
the ongoing process with the June Paper
challenges and pain points
calls for help or collaboration

Pilots & Grants
Reports & Case Studies
Op-Eds
DAO MODEL LAW
Next steps:

Update on Participation in Upcoming events
Devconnect 2022 — April 18-25, 2022
Bitcoin 2022 – April 6-9, 2022, Miami
Blockchain Conference in Portugal
EUI Symposium on Blockchain Governance – 16-21 May
Blockchain Oracle Summit in Berlin 6-9 June
Hague Conference on Private International Law, Sept. 2022

Update on NFTs Documentary
Social media plan
Circulation of Calls for Post-Doctoral Researcher and Communications Manager
Participants Online:

Jack
Esen
Nathan
Jamilya
Wessel
Morshed

Participants in Paris:

Vashti
Sofia
Tara
Philemon
Primavera
