Toward a Participatory Digital Ethnography of Blockchain Governance

Abstract

Blockchain governance occurs through a combination of social and technical activities, involving smart contracts, deliberation within a group, and voting. These processes are significant as they demonstrate how governance of distributed infrastructures is evolving. While typologies of blockchain governance can be constructed by gathering on-chain interactions and formal rules, other aspects are more difficult to observe, including governance interactions occurring inside discussion forums. In this article, we discuss a participatory digital ethnography technique, whereby participants and researchers use a bespoke bot to identify governance interactions occurring within project forums (on Discord). The technique is designed to be used in conjunction with the analysis of software for the purpose of mapping and understanding the “governance surface” of different protocols. We describe our tools and methods for understanding automated futures through a case study of the SourceCred community, an organization using, developing, and maintaining open source software called SourceCred. The SourceCred codebase is also used by other decentralized communities for various organizational functions, including reputation and compensation.

Disruptive Technologies for e-Diasporas: Blockchain, DAOs, Data Cooperatives, Metaverse, and ChatGPT

“…Tom Boellstorff's chapter "Rethinking Digital Anthropology" (2012) underscores the importance of recognizing the digital as a significant domain for anthropological exploration. It calls for a re-evaluation of what constitutes "the field" in anthropology, extending beyond physical locations to encompass digital spaces where cultures and identities are actively constructed and negotiated (Diminescu, 2012;DuPont, 2017;Rennie et al, 2022). Digital anthropology can yield ethnographies on e-diasporas as networks driven by human agency.…”

“…Considering the arguments and counterarguments in this ongoing debate, an alternative and widespread response has emerged from crypto-libertarian or pseudo-anarchist positions. This has given rise to a growing body of literature on decentralized systems in peer-to-peer interactions, with a particular focus on blockchain (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016;Zook, 2023), DAOs (Buterin, 2022;Mathew, 2016;Monsees, 2019;Rennie et al, 2022;Rodima-Taylor & Grimes, 2019), and data cooperatives (Bühler et al, 2023a;Spelliscy et al, 2023). Blockchain technology can aid in creating secure and decentralized environments for these platforms, ensuring the privacy and protection of users' data and interactions.…”

The Ethnography of a ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organization’ (DAO): De‐mystifying Algorithmic Systems

“…To achieve their purpose, DAOs "aim to be governed by democratic or highly participatory processes or algorithms" (Law, 2021). Here, governance is broadly conceived as the "field of action", including the rules and processes for membership, participation, expression of preference, accountability, and recourse (Rennie, et al, 2022). Yet, designing for flexibility in this complex web of social and technical elements and in line with a clear purpose is not an easy task.…”

“…Similar to blockchain governance, DAO governance across the multiple categories of DAOs occurs through a combination of social and technical activities, involving 'smart contracts' that automate decisions upon certain conditions, community deliberation, voting, or other methods to signal preference, and accountability mechanisms, including "decentralized courts". While some of these behaviors and interactions occur transparently "on-chain" or on the public blockchain ledger and in formal manifestos, constitutions, terms and conditions, or process 'docs' on GitHub, other dynamics are difficult to observe without insight and participation in online discussion forums (Rennie, et. al., 2022).…”

Prospects of blockchain governance: Understanding key public values, principles, challenges, and opportunities

“…As such, each block contains a cryptographic summary or footprint of a previously created block and thus all records are digitally connected to each other in a consecutive information chain, hence the word blockchain (Bodkhe et al, 2020; Fu et al, 2022; Gardas et al, 2022; Heidari et al, 2023; Liu, Lu, et al, 2022; Lumineau et al, 2021; Pelt et al, 2021; Yan et al, 2021). Such recording of data always happens in a chronological order, usually using specially dedicated timestamps and cryptographic algorithms, and in an intrinsically consecutive manner as long as new blocks are created in the chain or even network of chains, when blocks cross‐reference each other (Rennie et al, 2022; Tan et al, 2022; Valdivia & Balcell, 2022). Thus data is always irreversibly imprinted in the content of all newly recorded blocks.…”