10 Principles for Blockchain Governance


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Introduction

The 10 principles in this presentation are related to our coordination strategies, therefore our individual and collective future development.

To guarantee the benefits of trust minimization, immutability, property rights, freedom of contract, wide adoption, and social scalability of their networks globally, blockchain communities need to make sure they comply with these principles when implementing future changes.

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These are the Principles

10 Principles for Blockchain Governance

1. Trust Minimization: To reduce the reliance on trusted third parties for entering, processing and finalizing transactions and smart contracts.

2. Immutability: Accounts, balances and smart contracts cannot be modified except by holders of corresponding private keys by entering transactions according to protocol rules.

3. Fungibility: Native tokens must all be the same and interchangeable globally.

4. Finality: Transactions and executed smart contract code cannot be reversed once entered, processed and finalized according to protocol rules.

5. Censorship resistance: As long as they are compliant with protocol rules, transactions or smart contracts cannot be prevented from being entered, processed and finalized.

6. Permissionlessness: As long as they are compliant with protocol rules, anyone from any place in the world can create accounts, enter transactions and smart contracts, or participate in the network as a competent developer, miner, validator, node operator, user, or any other prescribed participant or stakeholder.

7. Auditability: Transaction and smart contract history must be analyzable and reconcilable by anyone or by holders of corresponding private keys.

8. Reconcilability: Transaction and smart contract history must match mathematically to the latest and all future states according to protocol rules.

9. Least authority: Developers, miners, validators, node operators, users, and all other prescribed participants and stakeholders must limit their participation to practicing only the functions of their roles in accordance with protocol rules and these common principles.

10. Adherence: Developers, miners, validators, node operators, users, and all other participants and stakeholders must make sure they collectively decide and implement future changes to the protocol in accordance with these common principles.

Credits and Suggested Videos and Reading

– Trusted Third Parties are Security Holes by Nick Szabo: http://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/

– The Problem of Trust by Vitalik Buterin: https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/04/27/visions-part-2-the-problem-of-trust/

– Interpreting Power: The Principle of Least Authority by Nick Szabo: http://archive.is/mtixJ#selection-195.0-195.52

– Governance by Vlad Zamfir: https://youtu.be/w8DjFbCTjus

– Notes on Blockchain Governance by Vitalik Buterin: https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/17/voting.html

– Bitcoin’s Anarchy Is a Feature, Not a Bug by Elaine Ou: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/bitcoin-blockchain-demonstrates-the-value-of-anarchy

– Against on-chain governance by Vlad Zamfir: https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/against-on-chain-governance-a4ceacd040ca

– Scaling and Blockchain Governance by Donald McIntyre: https://youtu.be/DJCnUrrgKzs

– Note: Fourteen references by Satoshi Nakamoto about trusted third parties and reducing trust on the Bitcoin white paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Author: Donald McIntyre

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