Dear Anyone #1: Friday September 7, 2018

This series of posts was inspired by a friend of mine. We'll call her Erika. Erika was a reading a book by a guy (doesn't really matter) and this guy, apparently, sends out weekly emails to his loyal followers with a quick hit of things that interested him that week. Articles, videos, music, books, whatever. It didn't have to be work-related, though often it was. It was just a good way to introduce people to things the author thought was cool that week.

So, "Erika" said "Jeff you like cool things." To which I immediately agreed. And, with that, we're off...

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Dear Anyone,

This is the cool stuff I've been looking at this week.

Currently Reading: Still slogging through Michael Chabon's Moonglow. Don't get me wrong, I've actually come to really like this book and as I'm wrapping it up, it is surprising that the book it most brings to mind is Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. A book that was also at times a bit of a slog to get into because of the strange frame of reference (quasi-first person), which made it hard to pick up and put down.

Best News/Article I Read This Week: I mean, it has to go the New York Times Anonymous Op-Ed, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," right? But, it could also go to Bruce Kogut and Anca Metiu's Open-Source Software Development and Distributed Innovation, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol 17, No. 2 (2001). I was a software developer in the 80s (as a kid) and through the 90s (as a newly minted college grad and even into my MBA). I was deep into open source software and policy and its licensing and legal nuances is the reason (or one of the main reasons at least) I went to law school. While the article completely bungles the legal concept of "public domain" and intellectual property ownership, it's largely besides the point, as the authors dissect how programmers from around the world organized themselves to create such monumental pieces of software as Linux and Apache and Mozilla (it was still Netscape at the time). I'll admit that I giggled gleefully throughout most of it and it kind of blew my mind.

Best Music I Listened to This Week: Yello's 1981 second album "Claro Que Si." Great dance-y, early EDM best listened to alongside Bowie, Kraftwerk, Devo, the Talking Heads, and Gang of Four.

Governance in Blockchain in the Government

I was asked to supervise an independent study for an undergraduate student in International Studies. The student came to me interested in the use of blockchain in Government, and, in particular, the use of blockchain in Estonia in creating their digital identification system that underlies many of the social and financial services.

I thought I would share the course outline and initial readings for anyone interested in this subject. I'm wondering how and if this might turn into a course, but I haven't gotten that far yet - so ignore the non-teacher-y parts of these data dumps.

COURSE OUTLINE

1. Technical Governance v. Meta Governance
1. Blockchain Basics
2. What is Consensus?
1. Proof of Work
2. Proof of Stake
3. Hashgraph
3. What is a Fork and why do they happen?
1. Ethereum Forks
2. Kogut Article - What can Open Source Development teach us about decentralized governance?
2. What is the Role of Government
1. Anarchy: State-to-State Negotiation and Accountability
2. International Organizations
3. Decentralized/Network Governance
3. Technological Issues
1. Interoperability
2. Scalability
3. Decentralization
4. Institutional Legitimacy
5. Security
1. Blockchain Security Issues(Upper Tier Attacks)
1. Lack of Governance: Who determines what happens with the chain when something goes wrong and what are their motivations? Transparent democracy or closed dictatorship?
2. Bad Contract Code (Middle Tier Attacks)
1. Replay (51%) Attack: duplicate transaction on each node in chain
2. DDoS Attacks: Forks 2 and 3
3. Lack of Quality Control and Certification (The DAO Attack)
3. Wallet Security Issues (User Attacks)
1. Phishing, Spoofing (wallet, address), etc.
4. Case Studies
1. Case Studies: Decred and Hashgraph (Governance)
2. Case Studies: Z-Cash (Privacy)
3. Case Studies: Ripple (Blockchain in Banking)
4. Case Studies: Cicero/Accord (Blockchain in Law)
5. Case Studies: Estonia (Blockchain in Government)

Reading List (so far, this is very incomplete - the outline is pretty set, particularly the first half of it, but I'm still working on the reading list; if you (is there a you out there??) have any thoughts, let me know.

• Hashgraph White Paper (see Readings)
• https://qz.com/730004/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ethereum-hard-fork/
• SEC DAO Report (see Readings)
• https://www.etherchain.org/hardForks
• Kogut & Metiu - Open-Source Software Development and Distributed Innovation (see Readings)