Closing the Loop on Blockchain and Governance Course

Back in September I published what I thought was a tentative course schedule or outline for an independent study in Blockchain and Governance that I was asked to supervise. This course was definitely a "Build as you fly it" kind of thing, so the end product ended up not looking a whole lot like the starting product, but here it is in all of its glory. In all, I was pretty happy with the course; I think it lent a nice development of a multi-factor approach to governance in blockchain applications.

I think the key insight that came out of this course, is that governance isn't just on one tier of the platform, but all tiers of the platform and that governance decisions need to include the holistic, and complicated, interactions of multiple nodes. In short, and by way of example, Ethereum (or HyperLedger or Bitcoin or Ripple), isn't just the platform/protocol layer, but also consists of the application layer, and the "user" layer and each layer has some stake in the governance of the other layers. Any governance in any layer that doesn't account for that will fail. For example, see this Maersk article about their partnership with IBM on a HyperLedger-based shipping application that is struggling to find adoption. By locking down governance in the protocol and application layer, users are, unsurprisingly, saying they don't want to participate. And, indeed, without considering the implications of governance decision in other protocols, there is general reticence to adopt the technology more generally.

We can look at models of international governance through network modes of governance and how it integrates both the international organization theories of governance and even the governance theories of anarchy to show that the complex system of blockchains is much more than letting miners vote whether to fork or not.

2018 - Fall Semester 

  

Wk 1 Blockchain Basics 

Wk 2 Proof of Work 

Wk 3 Proof of Stake 

Wk 4 Hashgraph 

Hashgraph White Paper 

Wk 5 Ethereum Fork  

https://qz.com/730004/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ethereum-hard-fork/ 

SEC DAO Report (see Readings) 

https://www.etherchain.org/hardForks  

review forks 

why did the “unplanned forks” happen? 

what were the “planned” forks intended to resolve? 

Wk 6 Intro to Managing Decentralized Development 

Kogut & Metiu - Open-Source Software Development and Distributed Innovation (see Readings) 

Krahmann - National, Regional, and Global Governance (see Readings) 

Crane - From governance to Governance (see Readings) 

Wk 7 - Anarchy 

Oye - Explaining Cooperation Under Anarchy 

Axelrod and Keohane - Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy 

Mercer - Anarchy and Identity 

Wk 8 - International Organizations 

Morrow – Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation 

Abbott – Why States Act Through Formal International Organizations 

Barnett – The Power, Politics, and Pathologies of International Organizations 

Wk 9 - Network Governance 

Provan and Kenis - Modes of Network Governance (see readings) 

Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery – Network Analysis for International Relations 

Banczyk and Potts – City as Neural Platform: Towards a New Economics of Cities

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)