Risk analysis Risks have (at least) two important axes, probability and impact. You stub your toe — high probability, low impact. You detonate a thermonuclear bomb — High impact, low probability. AI is interesting because there is a large amount of disagreement about its impact. Is it just incremental empowerment to the…

Off-chain vs. on-chain governance Throughout the entire history of blockchain governance experiments, governance mechanisms have been able to be broadly categorized into two categories: off-chain governance, and on-chain governance. Some people confuse off-chain governance with a lack of governance, but this is clearly not the case, as networks without on-chain governance are still able…

Introduction This is a response to Matt Langston’s proposed Model-Independent Method to Measure Uncertainties in Fractal Governance Consensus Algorithms. As always, I’m very appreciative of those working to analyze/model this process, as it always helps me gain a more rigorous understanding of it. To fully understand this post, it is necessary…

Background It is important to be able to conceptualize a truly decentralized organization as a collection of individuals with competing missions/goals, rather than as a monolithic entity with top-down coordination. My previous article on Mutually Benefiting From Misaligned Goals introduces the concept of graphing each community member’s personal view on the…

…the contributions of others toward their own personal missions can and should, to an extent, still be considered valuable contributions to one’s own goal. Like-mindedness No visionary has a fully comprehensive description for what they think the future should look like, as there’s always some ambiguity in their goals. They also…

People often imagine that the basis for consensus mechanisms is an objective proof that some work was done, or that some objective amount of value is at stake, but this is not the case. Proof of Work is not proof of work A traditional proof of work is, in fact, not proof that any particular amount of work…

[XPOST] This is a (slightly modified) cross-post from an earlier post in 2020 on voice.com. Reposting on Medium because the topic is still relevant, I still generally agree, and voice.com is no longer a blogging platform. How to Interpret Exchange Votes Crypto exchanges use a fractional reserve ratio to make sure they keep enough liquid…

What is it, and how can it be used to build a better society? Introduction Today’s software engineers and economists are pioneering governance experiments based on blockchains, which provide a transparent and verifiable substrate on which to assemble societies' future consensus infrastructure. One such experiment is known as fractal democracy. Fractal…

Is quadratic funding always the game-theoretically optimal way to allocate funds to public goods? Note: Originally posted March 2021 on voice.com, xposting here since Voice is no more. Quadratic Funding A recent Block.one grant awarded to EOS Nation and EOS Asia has the EOS community discussing the possibility of creating a Gitcoin-like…