The BlockchainGov Newsletter #11 | April Monthly Report

Welcome back to BlockchainGov’s monthly report! This month was packed with exciting events, including our inaugural community call, the release of a new journal issue, new articles, and a fresh podcast episode! Additionally, we're happy to share some inspiring readings that have been circulating among our team members, covering topics like infrastructural power, law theory, and crypto-memes!

I. Research

Primavera de Filippi edited the new issue of Zygon Journal around “Blockchain, Religious Imaginaries, and Theology” Read it here!

Moreover, Primavera penned a new article “Blockchain Governance in the Wild” alongside Kevin Werbach, Joshua Tan, and Gina Pieters. It is featured in the third volume of the Cryptoeconomic Systems journal on MIT Press.

Finally, "Proof of Humanity: Ethnographic Research of a “democratic” DAO" by Sofia Cossar, Tara Merk, and Jamilya Kamalova was released as an official EUI academic paper.

II. Podcast

Sarah Horowitz is the latest guest at Overthrowing the Network State, our podcast in collaboration with The Blockchain Socialist. Sarah is the founder of the Freelancers Union and author of the book Mutualism. Sara was a co-conspirator at Zuzalu who brought her extensive experience in building worker-focused organizations. With Primavera and Josh, she discussed the practical realities of building mutualistic organizations, the history of workers’ movements, and how crypto can build this through solidarity primitives. Listen here.

III. Community Call

This month we held the first BlockchainGov Community Call! We discussed Coordi-Nations & New Network Sovereignties with the new residents at the SOAM residency program. Primavera and Sofia presented the concept and its various affordances while Alessandro Y. Longo presented the ongoing legal case between Prospera and Honduras, as an example of a proto-network state. Find the recording on the BlockchainGov YouTube channel.

To not miss the next one, enter our Discord server!

IV. What are we reading

Here are five readings among books and papers that we're discussing within BlockchainGov this month.

• Thoughtfulness and the Rule of Law (Jeremy Waldron) - An important study of the rule of law by one of the world’s leading liberal political and legal philosophers. Waldron’s understanding of the Rule of Law is important for framing questions related to blockchain constitutionalism, the idea of the rule of code, and developments of new networked sovereignties.
• Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Quinn Slobodian) - A relevant text to understand the developments of extra-state sovereign entities and how their development can be negative with the functioning of liberal democracy.
• Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Keller Easterling) - This volume explores how spatial formulas shape the globalizing world, serving as a potent tool for both state and non-state actors to wield power beyond legal confines. It presents space as an information system akin to software, influencing urban development and politics.
• Radical infrastructure: Building beyond the failures of past imaginaries for networked communication - This study compares existing cases of Internet infrastructure development to assess their potential for promoting people-centered change amidst ongoing crises. It identifies shortcomings and opportunities in radical, non-hierarchical alternatives, proposing alternative heuristics for truly radical infrastructure.
• ‘Hodling’ on: Memetic storytelling and digital folklore within a cryptocurrency world: This paper explores the use of storytelling within crypto communities on platforms like 4chan and Reddit, categorizing narratives into themes of despair, comedy, and courage, interpretable as forms of digital folklore.

This is everything for this issue! See you next month!