The BlockchainGov Newsletter #13 | June Monthly Report

Welcome back to BlockchainGov’s monthly report! This issue features our new Cookbook for governance, the online symposium on network states, and different event reports.

I. Research

This month, marked the culmination of our collaboration with Project Liberty. Together, we are proud to present "The Blockchain Governance Toolkit. A Cookbook for a Resilient and Robust Ecosystem". We translated the findings of the previous report into actionable tools and recommendations aiming to pave the way for a more equitable and sustainable technological ecosystem! With insights from 11 leading blockchain networks - including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos, etc. - this toolkit offers multiple governance solutions (recipes), each with its unique features (flavor)

You can download it from here! Sofía Cossar presented the Toolkit at the Equitable Tech Summit 2024 alongside Project Liberty partners.

We're also very curious to test some of the Toolkit's proposals during an upcoming Governance Workshop, we'll hold in Bruxelles during EthCC.

A new diptych of essays was released during this month in the frame of the New Network Sovereignities' online symposium. In the third essay, Michel Bauwens asks whether we are witnessing the emergence of a new civilizational order blending local and trans-local governance. Nathan Schneider motivated by Michel and Primavera, takes us on a journey through the history of religions & monastic orders to imagine network sovereignties as spaces for the aesthetics and ethics of solidarity.

The pre-orders are now open for Blockchain Governance, the new book by Primavera De Filippi , Morshed Mannan , and Wessel Reijers . The synopsis reads:

How can digital cash truly be “trustless”? What does it mean that blockchain offers a new paradigm of the “rule of code”? How are decisions made when a blockchain system faces an emergency, and who gets to make those decisions? In Blockchain Governance, Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers, and Morshed Mannan offer answers to these questions and more, in an accessible, critical overview of legal and political issues related to blockchain technology, now the foundation of a multi-billion-dollar industry. Moving beyond the hype, they show how blockchain offers fertile ground for experimentation with radically new ways to govern people and institutions. Blockchain-based systems, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos, and countless others, offer new ways of organizing digital cash, “smart” contracts to execute transactions, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to collect art, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to coordinate humans and machines. What these applications have in common is that they govern the behavior of people and artificial agents through distributed systems. Drawing from their extensive experience in researching blockchain technologies and communities, the authors discuss the origins of Bitcoin in cypher-anarchism and extropianism, spectacular events like the million-dollar theft of the DAO Attack, and the hostile takeover of the Steem platform. While engaging with political and legal thinkers such as Hobbes, Kelsen, and the Ostroms, these narratives explore how blockchain governance problematizes fundamental concepts such as rule of law, sovereignty, legality, legitimacy, and polycentric governance.

Find the pre-order here and stay tuned for more news on the book, which is set to be released in August for The MIT Press .

II. Events

Jamilya Kamalova presented at the The Ostrom Workshop (WOW7). Her presentation, titled "Dispute Resolution for Blockchain Commons: Applying Ostrom's Principles to the Governance of Decentralized Networks," explored how Ostrom's principles of managing commons can be applied to digital commons (blockchain peer-to-peer systems). The presentation aimed to demonstrate the wide array of dispute-resolution tools available in blockchain ecosystems (Kleros, Unicrow, UMA , and many more) and highlight innovative methods for governing and resolving conflicts in decentralized networks.

IV. What are we reading

• Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures - This book examines strategies to address transnational failures hindering sustainable development goals and explores the potential of multilevel agreements to protect fundamental rights and public goods. It also considers if judicial challenges to measures like EU carbon border adjustments will disrupt UN and WTO law.
• The Creation of States in International Law - The number of States has grown due to the independence of former European colonies and the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the USSR. This book explores the evolving criteria for statehood, recognition, and their application in international law, highlighting the rise of many new States. Useful for conceptualizing new networked sovereignties developments.
• Constitutionalism and imperialism Sub Specie Spinozae - Contemporary interpretations of Spinozan theory critique both constitutionalism and imperialism for their dual nature of constraining and enabling power (potentia). Spinoza’s works suggest that celebrating constitutionalism while condemning imperialism is problematic due to their analogous operations.
• Financing Worker Takeovers in Italy: Unveiling the Functioning of the Marcora Act Framework - Law 49/1985 (Marcora Act) supports Italian worker-takeover cooperatives, aiming to preserve jobs in distressed companies. This paper clarifies the Act's financing schemes and evaluates their effectiveness and limitations. An interesting read for DAOs scholars and Exit-to-community supporters!

This is everything for June! See you next month!