EthCC 2: Vlad Zamfir

all right mm-hmm hey everyone I'd like to you know get started we only have two hours you know it's not that long so I'm gonna I'm gonna give a talk today about blockchain governance and other related topics it's gonna be a long talk I'm gonna stop for questions probably no promises but if we have time at the end I'll definitely give you guys an opportunity to ask some questions but I'm going to do some on logging so please bear with me and if you disagree with any of the things I define or don't define don't worry about it just definitions they you know you all take them as you like it and if you don't like them tell me about it later all right so here's the kind of outline we're talking about governance and we're talking about law we're talk about politics ethics and then I'm gonna talk about you know I'm gonna give a conclusion which is basically like my opinion the rest of the stuff I think is more I'm gonna try to be more objective within the conclusion I'm gonna be it's like a little bit more of my opinion so let's talk about governance by the each of these sections I'm going to split up into two parts the theory and kind of like how it looks in the blockchain space so governance is about decisions and kind of all the things that pertain to how those decisions happen and things that are affected by those decisions so everything like upstream from the decisions and everything downstream you know governance is basically like decisions plus like closure on causality around decisions I mean that's like the broadest definition so it's about the people who are making the decisions you know how they'd actually make the decisions you know it's like really kind of irrelevant to governance right who's deciding how are they deciding this is like the stuff of governance governance is about the coordination between participants in decision-making it's about the norms protocols and other institutions that they use to coordinate governance is about you know not just how we make decisions but how we coordinate around how we make decisions right and we have to use tools to coordinate like norms and institutions of various kinds you know infrastructure so the governance is also about to leak legitimization and the D legitimization of these institutions for coordination like do we decide to use the eeap's do we decide to stop using the eeap's you know the eeap's is like up infrastructure that is a core thing for coordination but a governance just not doesn't include just how we use the eeap's and participate in the Eve's but also like the fact the fact that the eeap's are legitimate in the first place and the fact that you know and and the processes by which we would deal Ajay - mais them took governance really is about politics also it's about the political process of legitimizing and D legitimizing stuff talk more about politics later mmm wouldn't forget though the governance is also about the people affected by decisions we call these people stakeholders and you know we'd like to see the stakeholders be affected in nice ways so you know that's kind of like what's watching the server what governance is about in theory right in a little bit more concretely for us in the blockchain space we have some things to govern we have a protocol definition / like reference and limitations we use names and trademarks in a way that's common and therefore must be governed we use nodes that run the blockchain protocol and they must also be covered so blockchain watching governance fundamentally just because it's a distributed system like software running on the Internet is about the governance of the protocol definition about the governance of the use of names and trademarks because this really is what the blockchain is it's like a software running on a network and the name is really kind of associated with the blockchain in a way that people use it to discover and use the blockchain and services associated with it right if you go to a block Explorer and it says it's Bitcoin and then it shows you theory and blocks it's weird doesn't happen for a reason because like people are really careful about how they use names in trademarks because they have to do with representing access to watching so you really fundamental things that we need to govern and so as a result we have fundamentally have certain kinds of participants the blockchain protocol developers right they are fundamentally kind of the there because like if someone's maintaining the protocol definition while we call them a developer and so we have we have protocol developers we have people who use the names in trademark right they're kind of fundamentally involved watching governance and so our node operators node operators are you know the people who run the software on the network really important natural participants who you don't have no way to escape being participants in watching governance because they have to institute the decisions and blah blah chain governance right like if there's a decision to change the protocol that the developers have to be the one who implemented if there's the decision to change what name is used to refer to what fork the people who use names trademarks will have to implement it if there's a decision to upgrade the protocol the people who operate the nose will have to implement it so these people are fundamentally participants in blockchain governance there's no way to disenfranchise them completely they're always gonna be they're just kind of in this fundamental way but outside of that outside of the fact that we're using distributed systems we have a lot of freedom and how to govern the blockchain just the fact that it's a distribute system and constrain governance all that much it says very little about how he should like an enormity way govern the blockchain at all even you know there says nothing about the institutions for coordination it says nothing about what norms we should have there's nothing about you know should we do coin voting should be do on chain governance what should be automated there's all sorts of things that haven't aren't mentioned or aren't entailed by the fundamental so we have a lot of freedom really in how we govern the blockchain because there's a lot of ways in which to govern software and lots lots of ways to govern names and lots of ways to govern nodes so and especially lots of ways to coordinate all of these decisions and governance outcomes are high stakes very high stakes outcomes are really talking about because blockchain governance because the blockchain is like a super powerful thing you know those blocks in governance creative fully autonomous software it's like a high stakes public outcome is watching governance going to be captured you know by by who by a legal system by some corporate interests by a cartel but a little hybrid you know is using the blockchain legal developing the blockchain legal and we're you know and if it depends then on what these these are really outcomes that are going to be determined in part by blockchain governance and in large part I would say by watching governance and you know we'll get to the legal questions soon you know here's a new one that people talk about a lot in the kind of tech side of things you know will we be able to block to up to upgrade the blockchain protocol like this is a big question for botching governance like how effectively can we upgrade it and how much backwards compatibility is actually required like do we need to make sure that all of the smaller contracts continue working forever good question you know and there's big figure questions like what is the kind of power of watching governments like what can we do not technically but what is like allowed by the governance of the blockchain has a change to the protocol you know something somehow off limits for blockchain governance and these are you know these are kind of you know really important watching governance questions and they determine outcomes and these outcomes are highly contentious because they're high stakes and because people have different preferences around how the how blockchain governance turns out and this means that blockchain governance is highly political it ends up being you know we're real political battle zone where people have political agendas people have political coalition's because they buy to try to bring about different outcomes so we have like talk big public outcomes that are going to be the result of watching governance the watch hands have strong Network effects and both these things together and especially together means that like blockchain governance is not going to be a competitive market outcome it's not like you know the result of like it's like me in the open market competition that determines the best governance and then we have some experimentation and the winner will emerge naturally through competition it's not realistically how watching governance works it's you know the strong network effects and we're talking about public outcomes and that's not how public politics works so we're really talking about a really high stakes public issue when we're talking about blockchain governance great well that was the like blockchain governance you know like like little section sorry the governance section but of course the law section and the politics section are also very very relevant to blockchain governance so you know even though this section called governance and blockchain space is done we're still going to be talking about blockchain governance I guess I'll if anyone has any questions right now I guess I guess I'll pause no one all right great so now I'm gonna talk about law and you know the way I like to do things is I give definitions abstract definitions and then I apply them and [Music] you know I'm more than happy to give overly broad definitions much prefer overly broad definitions over overly specific definitions so here is the definition of legal systems that I use and I'm gonna stick to it no matter what you say so don't even try to dispute this so legal systems are protocols for the management of disputes they are like you know a protocol that may not be a distributed systems protocol in the way that we think about it software they're administered also by humans but humans you know they follow protocol protocol actually was invented within humans before it was in software and disputes are super diverse things you know people fight about all sorts of things in all sorts of contexts in private and in public and it goes all sorts of ways and so law has it evolved to deal with disputes in all sorts of places in context because that's what law is writes protocols for managing disputes and there's lots of these protocols and lots of them operating all over the place they're as diverse and cover many many of these domains in very diverse settings because people have disputes everywhere but we need to you know distinguish between the descriptions of legal protocols and their operation just says we distinguish between protocol specifications and protocol deployments in computer science there are codes of law which are descriptions of legal systems legal systems don't even technically need to have codes of law to exist at all it just needs to be a protocol that's implemented and I've acting to manage disputes you know when I intimidate you out of having a dispute with me in some way if that was a protocol that was like not just in my implemented but systematically we you know use intimidation to prevent disputes you know as has happened before in different societies you know that becomes part of the rule of law so and and and that usually does not codified we don't say like we use intimidation to solve disputes but everyone figures it out pretty soon and people and people have had societies before where intimidation was like one of the primary ways that people prevent disputes and so the legal systems don't necessarily a claim have to even have codes of law but you know we've evolved a lot of legal systems with codes of law and code of law is a useful way to tell people and to learn about and to interface with then to further the legal didn't have memory right because you like you write down the code the code stays there when you look away someone else can pick it up later so codes of laws are really descriptions of legal systems but they're not the operation of law so really the actual executions of those systems right the actual administration of the protocols that are used to manage these disputes and remember these are really diverse because disputes are really diverse things there's all sorts of different kinds of disputes and havin all sorts of different places disputes are sometimes violent dispute management is sometimes violent and violence causes disputes so the law naturally has a place in structuring the use of violence it is you know almost synonymous with the term legal system in some people's eyes because of the fact that disputes are violent and that that's right that the excuse can sometimes be violent and violence pretty much always cause the disputes so you know and the way that we deal with disputes because we don't want to have too many headaches and heartaches is with protocol because the protocol as we know is like a powerful tool for making people not feel personally responsible for stuff and so it ends up being you know much easier if people deal with violence with protocol then if we do it based on people individual discretion about you know when violence is okay and how to deal with violence and disputes so you know the law really structures the use of violence in society and that makes it makes people you know who are really anti violence on a principled basis kind of weary of long but it's important to know that like law operates also disputes that don't involve violence legal systems kind of now pivoting to look somewhat different thought um I got to cover a lot of ground here legal systems they require legitimacy to operate effectively very least because the people who operate that in them need to de facto act as if they have legitimacy to you know in a way that's like meaningful and you know confident act as if people are gonna use the legal system that they're operating and whenever you take a legal action inside a legal system you're de facto acting as if that system has legitimacy so you know law really requires legitimacy to be super super useful because like a protocol for managing disputes that no one uses and that no one recognizes is not a very effective protocol for managing disputes so legal systems like require legitimacy and they you know have legitimacy is at least within the people who are using those legal systems and so it's quite complicated actually because you know there's many many different legal systems operating in parallel in different and overlapping contexts they're gonna have different codes and different norms that dominate their operation different ways in which they're operated there is kind of private law you know we think of as like law that operates in private really kind of at the end of the day no I'm not gonna define this class really precisely but you know things normally we think about in private law or if things like contract you know like private agreements and the disputes that arise when people don't do what they say they agreed to tort just to do with like private damages that are caused by people misbehaving or you know I'm not sure like what the broadest classification is but you know has to do with dem damages you know property law normally understand the disputes that arrived around rise around property I only understood to be handled by you know private law meaning legal systems that operate and deal with private issues issues that disputes that arise kind of in the private sphere and there's private arbitration and kind of private legal declarations like you know so you people do a lot of stuff in private voluntary interactions in order to manage disputes in order to prevent disputes in order to deal with them once they arise in order to settle them all in private right they people really like to keep their disputes private they don't want people to really see them you know disputes aren't always the most nice thing and so people you know so there's there's there's so there's and and there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't affect everyone it doesn't affect a lot of people just kind of mmm you know evolves around this culture more around like people's individual intentions and agreements and then there's like public law which really arises in a context that's much more public and involves other kinds of operation of law right other kinds of codes of law and other kinds of operation of law things like you know constitutional law you know which establishes the legal basis for the state things like criminal law which involves the penitentiary system you know like jailing people putting them in prisons when they cause public harms and are you know Dean by the legal system to be a public risk there's international law which operates in a very very public context you know there's public courts and and and and you know probably with public legal declarations which are you know designed to prevent and manage disputes in public so when you ask you know is my thing I'm trying to do legal what you're really kind of asking is is this gonna cause a dispute with someone that I'm eventually gonna lose or possibly lose and you know if you're asking this question I mean you may you may have an idea that you might have a dispute with someone in the future just saying you might have a hint that someone might be upset with something you're doing maybe because otherwise why would you care if someone's gonna bring in a spew with you and they don't you know they're you might lose and therefore I have to stop what you're doing so you know you kind of know if you're at when you're asking this question is it legal you know but I think this is the really like the the the kind of more relevant question is like you know it or like the better way to frame it so you don't get stuck into this question of like oh is it compatible with a code of law here or is it compatible with a code of law there can I find a co-op code under which I can interpret it like this or or precedent where I can interpret it like that you know instead of trying to think about just a code of law and the and though and the law that's been codified think about the operation of law and the disputes that you're gonna have with people who are actually operating the law or people who bring suits to the law right so you do something and someone Sue's you you know and you lose that like it de facto ended up being that what you did was illegal even though I may never have contradicted a code of law so you know often when you're asking this question it really does depend it's really not going to be determinate whether or not someone's gonna bring a dispute to you that you're gonna lose it's really not that easy it's not ever gonna be that easy that you can just know when you're doing something you're taking some action that's going to impact people in a way that they don't like that they're not gonna bring a dispute to you that you're gonna lose it's really hard to tell you know in the abstract or in many cases in some cases it's really hard to tell and this is why it depends it's such a common refrain because you really don't really it really is indeterminate because we're really dealing with disputes between people and people have you know all sorts of different like means and situations and arguments and cases and intentions and it's like quite complicated and depending on what is seen from all the parties on the way by the operation of law it might go one way or the other often so you know I don't know but indeterminacy is actually you know supernatural in legal systems it's very very normal when we don't know how disputes will what will happen especially when you know we're talking about interesting legal questions it's new ones really so and the other thing that kind of really was a super interesting revelation is that you know if you if you try to act like you know how disputes are managed will resolve when you really don't there's a really big risk actually that you create losers and winners if you're like a la personal advice and saying look you know this is how you should behave in order to minimize this to you all go well right and you try to create certainty for people when in fact the legal uncertainty is there you could you could really create at least the perception and people as legal matrices which is like understanding of their legal context of about who the winners and losers are going to be in disputes and when people disagree because there's actual indeterminacy and there's different interpretations in cases to be made you can create disputes by trying to inject certainty into legal arrangements by trying to create legal theories that things are gonna definitely turn out this way if you just behave like that and don't worry you won't have any liability if you just do this it's place that like waiver there and and then you know make this incantation here you'll be protected we often create disputes because you make people feel like they can be protected and screwing someone and thereby you know actually create more more costs through the creation of legal determinacy and would be created just by the ambiguity of not knowing whether what you're doing is legal actually it's a lot more peaceful all the times if we don't know what you're doing is legal so you know the ambiguity and undefined admission the code of law is actually legal asset it's create getting rid of it would create disputes if you try to make the law more precise especially if you try to make it perfectly precise if you try to get rid of all the ambiguity and all the undefined Innes it's not gonna be pretty it's gonna create a lot of disputes as you end up choosing winners in disputes and getting people the license to be because now they can just follow the law and play the arbitrage game rather than be more tactful in and understanding of the fact that human disputes exists in many contexts and are rather complicated and are not gonna be you know you're not able to come up with a code that is gonna like perfectly tell people and what situations they'll have what liabilities and what obligations and in what situations they have to do what or else they might lose it lose the dispute it's just it's not gonna happen the world is way too complex for ambiguity and an undefined adness of legal codes to go away they're really you know disputes are complicated the law is complicated and so you know despite that complexity though we want to have some idea of like some principles like you know what should Lobby like like well you know there are legal principles that we sometimes consider and look at in different contexts even though the thing is like way too complex for any one principle or any one doctrine or to just determine the way that disputes are gonna resolve and be managed right these legal protocols going forward so you know here are some things that people talk about sometimes around like what the law should do right should minimize the cost of management disputes right like let people know as much as possible how what liabilities are so that we don't run into situations where disputes arise right provide people certainty about the arrangements in order to minimize the occurrence of disputes in order so that one disputes happen we know what to do with them this is kind of them you know the very it's a very common law approach it's like the idea that like you know we should have predictability in the way that disputes are managed the idea that the way that disputes are managed to minimize the cost of management disputes you know that's one way that I that's how I like to think about it there's a this is this is kind of like a you know when you think about like law in the context of contract law we really think about law trying to do what people try to bear out people's intentions you know like they're trying to respect what people agreed to and use the facts of the situation to try to make right by what they want it so this is kind of like an impartial law that doesn't say what people should want but just says like okay look it's I kind of like a you know neutral arbiter of contracts this is like some people like really want this kind of conception of law where like the you know we can use the law to create private law with our contracts just by agreeing with between ourselves like how our relationships should be structured should be a tool for equity you know for making sure that actually there are you know remedies to unfair situations in context where that's like possible you know this is a bit kind of a quite a different quite a different motivation for long as is law as public policy which is a lot of times when people think about when they think about the war they think about like the legislature making public policy but of course you know legal systems actions much much more diverse than that because disputes arise and a much more you know they're not just public right where that we have disputes are really really much more complex it isn't just about public policy in public policy is this like interesting political tool that can be used to do pretty you know relatively arbitrary changes and you know law can and it's often used to institute public policies what this means is that you know rather than thinking about the settling of the dispute in terms of like you know just like the relevant facts of the case also you think about in terms of the public policy and you know is it is like this public policy say that like you know it should be resolved that way you know so and this the public policy and the use of law to resolve disputes in a particular way when that's like more fair or more in line with political goals is another very very real use of law right because if you have a political struggle and you're engaged in trying to create some outcome that your political opponents don't like there's gonna be potentially conflict so you really want the force of law to be on your side so that you win in those disputes so you know the law actually existed in this context that is you know as political as the context that governance existed because the law is used to manage disputes and disputes of rise in political situations as we fight over contentious high-stakes outcomes so the law changes with the political times as a result of this reality and you know and that really kind of underscores to me the like indeterminacy of law on another level not just because like if you try to specify too much we create needless disputes but because the whole legal legal systems are the whole can become reformed abandoned adopted so you know at the end of the day law is also a very political issue of course not of this to say that your lawyers don't know anything about disputes you know I talk about indeterminacy but that doesn't mean don't heed your lawyer's advice you know if they tell you you will get in trouble you know that you know I'd say that they might have a hint you know I'm not telling you that you won't get in trouble you might but you know you know at least when it comes to the legal system that their license to practice lie so now I'm going to talk a little bit about law in the blockchain space but I guess before I do because that was a big section I'll take some questions anyone not taking any objections to the definition but I'll take questions all right great everything must have been crystal clear so you know how do we manage disputes in the blockchain space how do we prevent disputes in the blockchain space especially you know as it pertains the blockchain governance because that's what this talk is supposed to be about well here are like some of the things that I've kind of noticed when I published in my blog post which you should all read if you haven't already find it on my medium said I call it exact against Nick Szabo's law or just against table Islam so this this is kind of like a really basic thing that we do to prevent disputes because we really really try as blockchain developers anyways to not break the protocol to not introduce any changes that will make the thing crash because we know for a fact that that will lead to disputes when the protocol breaks people get angry people are relying on the protocol it's very much not pretty even when the protocol is kind of broke kind of like flawed and could be broken and then you like fix it people still get upset you know they get really like upset even about like flaws that you know weren't exploited so if they do get exploited people get you know even doubly except upset it's a really really important way that we prevent disputes is by not breaking the protocol and not basically you know so like I think of it as in terms of like engineering you know you build a bridge you want to make sure that the bridge doesn't collapse because then people will get really upset with you especially if there's people riding on that bridge it's a very natural law that emerges I call it don't break the protocol and it's a law because it's something that people use to settle disputes in the blockchains based view and to bring disputes and to make sure that they settle on your way if you pat try to propose a patch to the blockchain you know as a kind of decision in watching governance and I can find a critical flaw in it and make that case I can without a doubt block that upgrade we also prevent disputes with pre-existing legal systems I call this one keep crypto law legal we do a lot actually to structure our affairs so that we don't have people sue us so we don't have people come and bring and tell us that like you know we're breaking the law in some way you know we we have contractual waivers of liability we act as if and are told by lawyers that code is protected speech and we structure our affairs so that we don't need a license and if we do need a license I guess we get one you know mmm you can really see this in like the whole like exchanges and money services businesses and watching space but you know even developers really take care of their liability so we really really structure blockchain governance and our affairs in order to prevent disputes with existing legal systems kind of by just by necessity but also because we operate in public right whereas lots and lots of us are public people who operate in public and so it's really hard for us to avoid getting sued and to avoid scrutiny by public ly operating legal systems so we structure operations to keep crypto law legal my crypto law I mean the operations of the protocols that resolve and manage disputes in watching governance just applying the definition and finally we have this other other law in Turin blockchain governance which is which we use to manage and prevent disputes which is a pre commitment to not do anything unless it's related to tech maintenance so if you can't pass off a change as if it's related to the maintenance and sustaining of the technology then according to Zappos law shouldn't happen and this is a law that you know we kind of have grown up with in the blockchain space through the mantra of immutability of autonomous software in the form of smart contracts which are supposed to create the certain team this legal certainty supposed to that is provided by the autonomous to the code execution of software code is law that's the effect of Zappos law that we should in managing disputes around around watching governance not do anything that interferes with the continued operation of the chain does all that allows maintenance all that's allowed is autonomous software but as we kind of learned and our understanding a legal system it's not the only law there's lots of legal systems in operation and some of them might not see your code as long they might disagree with you that this the the software must not change they might not think that it has anything to do with their operations of their legal system and they're you know probably right although they might interpret your intentions in some context around that software you know while code is launder neck Szabo's legal system we're in the sense that like you know the whatever the way the code runs is the way that the result disputes are resolved it's the only riddle I mean there's you know I mean I don't know anywhere any other legal system really that kind of is into this kind of automation of code as long and we kind of have this code as law thing thanks to Nick zombo's legal theories that he spread throughout the blockchain space and he has this kind of perspective of law that's really really based in private law all interactions with the software is voluntary you this is what you signed up for you can't complain this is like the paradigm of crypto law today you know this is what you've got you know you have this like as a liability waiver for the developers the software is provided as is you use it voluntarily some our contracts are in the same way you use them only voluntarily and so this is all just some that you opt into and so the theory is somehow that this is all going to be Lee is all legally okay however by essentially using the law using private law using waivers of liability code as speech theories about what developers should do to minimize liability namely nothing except for necessary as maintenance nick szabo and his ilk have legalized through the system of resolving and managing disputes in ball chains in the ball chain fully autonomous software and this has placed crypto law in an aggressive really aggressive posture visa vie existing public legal systems we're fully autonomous software would never be allowed especially because it's publicly operating and what Nick saw was law really does is it forces an extreme minimization of crypto law there's nothing that crypto law can do to manage disputes and by providing remedies or changes of watching protocol if that can be passed off as maintenance of the protocol so it creates a minimization of crypto long as a way to manage the disputes around blockchain governance it enforces a minimization of watching governance it means that watching governance is only supposed to do the minimum amount of stuff required to maintain the autonomy of software and nothing else it's really incompatible with any of the legal principles that we talked about earlier it you know doesn't care about the facts of the situation it doesn't care about equity doesn't care about public policy doesn't care about political aims it really is just about legal and political minimization because it was motivated and created in exile was legal thought and his political theories which are radically anti law and anti politics they're really radically believed that law and politics are completely unworkable and shouldn't even be tried and that we should not make any decisions because that is more socially scalable is the argument then law or politics could ever be but thankfully because of the way that like law and politics works this it depends kind of fashion we aren't stuck with Davos law as much as they want to say that which decided as much as we weave the bitcoiners say that like the nice thing about Bitcoin is I've governance was solved before was even public you know it isn't solved and we're not stuck with it because the law and politics are really indeterminate systems we can I believe do much better is it even the most cyberpunk law possible I mean he tried to come up with a really like something's the cyberpunk you don't he's a cyberpunk with a law hat and he's trying he tried to come up with the most cyberpunk law that he could and I really don't know if that's the most type of Punk a lot of possible like code is law whose code anyone's code and where does it operate everywhere I don't know if anyone's code operating anywhere in this hyper along paradigm is anything close to what a cyberpunk tradition should be like if we're gonna use protocol and cryptography to be involved in collective legal and political action is it really going to be a radical private law system where anyone can write their own and impose it on anyone anywhere in the world I hope not and so I think you know we have a lot of naivete in the legal thinking and watching space you know we think that we can reduce legal uncertainty and do it by creating fully autonomous software but that's crazy fully autonomous software just creates a needless conflict it's not gonna reduce legal uncertainty we're gonna have way more disputes than we're ready for there's really and I mean I guess of that it's certain and so there is some uncertainty that's reduced but it's not certain how those disputes are gonna return out you know is code gonna be speech or is the fact that now we can use protocol to institute a huge variety of kinds of organization that code is more than just speech and you know that like this like dispute around the protection of developers as they do whatever they want with protocol is going to arise and when I don't think anyone knows how that's going to go although people would love to say they know act like they know and create certainty and a lot of people to release the beast so I think we can find actually a much more comfortable crypto legal system I think we could actually do much better than the denial of our responsibility to manage disputes and actually understand that we have disputes that are gonna arrive and arise in watching governance that do arise and that today are you know settled only with the dismissal that we can't do anything so I think the legal thinking in the bakhtin space is very immature and very escapist I hope you agree what time can anyone tell me how much time I have left sorry I have one hour left okay great so let's talk about politics so politics is a theory you know describes the struggle for power and governance between different interest groups it really is about this political struggle for different outcomes that different groups prefer you know political thought is about considering the political order which is like you know the distribution of who has what power and governance it can be you know impartial or it can be with respect to advancing developing a particular political agenda political discourse is kind of the public and private discussion and conversation and signaling that we use to coordinate our legal thoughts or sorry political thoughts and actions in order to potentially have an impact one day on the political order political bickering as some call it political action is you know action that's intended to impact the political order it is you know activism voting even running a blocking protocol there's a lot of political action that people take in the world as they try to maneuver in this very real political struggle into positions of power and governance as they determine our shared outcomes that you know determines winners and losers in political struggle that is involved in these really really high-stakes games so politics describes the formation of political classes along the lines of interest shared and governance decisions it's very natural stuff here are some examples of political issues you know the balance of individual freedom versus like collective responsibilities geopolitics national elections gender politics data protection gun control immigration climate change there's a lot of public stakes that are under the kind of purview of political struggle and that the result of political struggle will determine you know and has determined so far and will continue determined going forward so you know politics is super real it's really high stakes game and we really exist in a political context and of course the politics is also about the struggle for power in the legal system for roles of power in the legal system both in setting the code of law and in operating the rule of law or operating the you know system of law and of course politics involves the use of legal action and legal systems because politics involves the pursuit of outcomes that will create conflict and disputes and you don't want those to spend and you know if you want to win using legal protocols just just part of the modern arsenal because we have legal protocol legal systems that are operating with enough legitimacy that they can be really important tools and even if you're not talking about legal systems that you're using just the legal declarations legal example legal thought can create political consequences as you manage disputes through the declaration of your intentions through the declaration of your worldview and so people understand how you're going to relate to them and so even in through the individual use of legal action we can engage in political action so and politics you know so it's kind of really now nowadays law is really in descent indispensable for politics as a result of the fact that politics has so many disputes and that laws commonly used in the management of disputes and people really expect it so as a role as a result really like law has like a both like sinister and liberating role in politics you know it has the opportunity to be used to impose the code of your enemies on to your on to your people it also has the opportunity to be liberating as it makes sure that disputes are resolved in ways that are favorable to your cause as opposed to in a way that favors this established political order for example so you know this is always the question like who's law for what ends you know enforced against who these aren't really kind of questions that make people really both afraid of the operation of law especially that's driven by public policy and really enamored by it as a way that they could liberate themselves from the influence of the people who are currently in power in the political order so she's an interesting question like what should the role of law be in politics I mean I don't know no just just a thought so you know the Pala of the watching space is actually very very political it's very politically motivated it was really born out of a place of legal and political action it was always about giving people the agency to use this technology in a way that you know will provide them freedoms that they didn't have otherwise it's always been liberation 'el force that people have taken up you know through their own personal political and legal actions something that they want to use to defend themselves against their political opponents it's being used for public political action right these watching governance outcomes as we described our public outcomes and you know protocols are actually much more powerful now thanks to blockchain technology you know before the blockchain we didn't really know how to you have public protocols that are stateful and now we do and that you know we think is a big deal and that means that we can use protocol to do political action in a way that's much more powerful than could have been before and so watching space but watching space is always about using protocol for political action however for the most part the kind of belief and worldview that people have in the blockchain space is that public politics and law are unworkable but they're better to not be tried the better to just completely abandon and not participate because you know law is corrupt politics sucks and that's just fundamentally the way it is and the way it has to be and it doesn't matter on the particular arrangements of the legal system the particular Arrangements the political order or of whatever legal attacked political actions you might take however unfortunately the minimization of law is legally unworkable because it puts crypto law in a collision course with existing legal systems it is an aggressive posture that says we're not handling disputes here nothing we can do for you and the minimization of politics is unworkable because we because really it imagines a system that is destined for war in the sense that it has an outcome it's going to pursue and it is not willing to engage in any politics engage in any compromise and getting in and going for that outcome it says I have my political action I'm not going to engage in any politics I'm just going to act to make the future that I want for the world and I think that's politically unworkable because it's not politically very mindful of the way that like other people in politics will behave you know mmm I feel like I can argue that better and I think is coming so you know the Paul the political thought here in the blockchain space says that we need for our political ends fully autonomous software but it actually doesn't come close to being optimal for achieving any particular goal because fully autonomous software is not close to being our core optimal for achieving any real political ham software it doesn't do what you expect and so it's really hard for it to be optimal for anything especially if it's fully autonomous I mean if we can patch it and change it as we go maybe it could be useful but fully autonomous software is not really optimal for any single political end other than perhaps then the minimization of public politics which you're in the determination of the future of software which is an insane political goal because it doesn't care about public politics and the which basically means it doesn't care about the political futures of the public and so I think that's really politically unsustainable so we have a really politically active and politically confused blockchain space today we want to use legal action and political action to create a change in the world and we want to deny at the same time that law and politics have any place in our own governance of our own affairs in our own governance of our own protocol of the trademark etc so you know we're really I think could use a lesson in politics as much as we can use a lesson in law so now but you know since we're talking about these like really high stakes political outcomes and and like determining them through political action without participating in political discourse I think it's a good opportunity for me to talk about ethics unfortunately I was rushing my slide so these next slides are a little bit minimalistic I apologize so what's the right thing to do that's kind of like what ethics is concerned about and specifically in the context of social interactions and the social the beneficial thing as opposed to the selfish thing so honest we're talking about the right thing to do I don't mean for you and your individual materialistic struggle in your own rational worldview I'm talking about the right thing to do in a social publicly defensible way not in the you know rational private way so you know there's there's lots of things that people who study ethics have come up with in their pursuit of figuring out the right thing one of them is this veil of ignorance idea that like you should act as if you don't know who you are in the situation and that the ethical system is the one that you would prefer if you didn't know who's who you got to be it's a way to be impartial the categorical imperative is something that says that you know you should only act in a way that you think that other people should also act it's kind of like this other attempts to provide a neutral frame for deciding how to behave in an ethical way you know it's trying to move away from just doing the selfish thing you know there's a lot of ethical thought that is Leverett against injustice similarly you know seeing how people treat each other at a really shitty way that you wouldn't want to be treated and which causes you know this thing we call injustice and you know ethics you know some I mean you know generally is like concerned about evil and not doing evil things and is like leveraged against the most part injustice and this is like I think part of the ethics thing as opposed to the just doing what's right for you thing I think this is another one that I think is like super important you know respecting people's agency it's like a nice thought from you know Tom asta kalasa fee somewhere I don't really know where you know like some how people should have the ability to determine their own lives and not just have their lives be determined by you and not have you dictate how you should live and this is like an important I think principle at least something to keep in mind when thinking about like how things should be in when you're engaged and say political struggle where you're ready to tear down your opponents now respecting human dignity there's another kind of important thing in ethics you know like not making people super traumatized to a point where they can't recover you know they're like like keeping people feeling like they can respect themselves and their place in the world you know these are kind of important things for you know in like you know ethics at least maybe I mean ethics is complicated also it turns out you know there's taking responsibility and doing it in a way that's like responsible you know this is also so about ideas that come up in ethics you have to make sure so now that you're mindful of the consequences of your actions and aren't recklessly causing people damage or and when you and when you take responsibility to make things good or big things right some how do you do that in a way that's mindful of the consequences of your actions you know and and you know this isn't at all like a overview of the theory of ethics or anything but you know so this is the last thing in my list you know ethics actually ends up being quite different in desperate circumstances the grounds that you need to justify your actions as desperate as ethical when your life is in danger when the stakes are super high and you have to act immediately like a little bit lower so ethics actually ends up being a little bit complicated because it's varied and it on the context of the actor and so as you may be suspect we're pretty naive in the blockchain space when it comes to ethics also you know pretty bad on law and politics and governance why would we be any better on ethics we have a lot of ethical escapism we have a lot of people who act like they're working on technology when that's the convenient narrative and we act like they're self-righteous like cypherpunks when that's the convenient narrative you know just working on technology cypherpunk activists just working on technology cypherpunk activists yeah I mean you know there's a lot of selectively ethical escapism we kind of believe really that what happens on the blockchain is not our individual responsibility it was like a really shared belief it's not our not us wasn't us that did this you know we may involve in some role here you know I'm building the protocol you know I'm maintaining this little bit you know even though like our collective actions have this effect individually we're not responsible and I think that that is you know a super powerful tool when it comes to political and legal action and when it comes to ethical responsibility it's pretty weak my opinion but I thinks it's complicated and context dependent and we really believe somehow that we're doing the right thing and well here's how I can rationalize it desperate times calls for desperate measures like somehow we found ourselves in such a politically and legally desperate situation that it has become ethical to do this to take at least from no not necessarily ethical but justifiable for our conscious apparently to take this political legal action without engaging in political and legal discourse to try to bring this change to the world to create fully autonomous software to enable a world of private voluntary interaction that's kind of that the theory somehow is that we were at a really rough spot there's a theory that justifies like this is like this as far as we come with ethics in the blockchain space it's like we're really desperate situation because of the legal and political order of the world which is based on this legal and political systems that are inherently unworkable and therefore we have to create through political and legal action fully autonomous software without really being involved in any kind of public policy debate because it's really desperate it's really desperate time it's not really a place for a global political discussion it's a place for private political action to overturn the global political order with the creation of autonomous software and we've done and we justify this with desperation because it's really just the only thing we can do everything else won't work it's a desperate time and this today is I think the ethics of blockchain that's where we that's where we're standing so I think we can do you know a lot better with our collective posture in law and politics and governance and in ethics so I want to talk about posture a little bit the posture is kind of your positioning especially as the signals their intentions especially as it's visible to other people whether intentionally or not you know posture is kind of like a positioning that you take in order for some reason you know usually you're trying to because you're doing something here I'm standing to you as from talking to you you know you're sitting over there as if you're listening postures that we take really have signal what we're doing in that moment and what our intentions are in that moment and we there's not that much you can do about your posture when you have a particular goal or a particular constraint I can't I don't have much to say between these two lines I have to hold the microphone to my face you guys kind of have to sit there and so the posture that we have is really Herman by the actions that were taking in the place that we inhabit in the world the position that we take and the blockchain space really has an insecure and aggressive posture with respect to existing legal and political systems we are insecure in our ability to engage in law and politics were aggressive in our pursuit of our political legal ends we're you know we act like we don't need to engage in legal and political processes but we have political and legal ends and we aggressively pursue them we have this posture that I think is not super helpful and I think actually the governance of our collective legal and political and ethical posture is like the single biggest blockchain governance problem that we have we have this real cultural issue around what are we intending to do and what is our position with respect to society and right now we're super aggressive insecure and I don't think it's a good look and I don't think it actually helps us I think we can be much more secure in our relationship with legal and existing political orders not necessarily saying that we should give up our political aims or our legal aims but I think we can be much more secure in the way that we're positioned I think we need some humility in the context of the political situation that we find in ourselves in which is much bigger than our ability to understand it fully we have only individually over anyone on a small view of the political landscape and we need to be humble in the context of the political arena as opposed to you know with hubris thinking that a fully autonomous software is just the thing that we need for sure definitely we need to understand that there's people's interests on the line and these high stakes outcomes and that they're involved in real political struggles you know we need to not be dismissive if you're in power of these people's interests you know even if it might be inconvenient to hear about how your decision or lack of decision are impacting them we need to be willing to hear arguments and information but also people's interests and what is gonna hurt them or be good for them from their point of view you know we need to not just be focused on the technical questions but also on the political questions we need to have kind of this faith and optimism that our coordination through political process can produce better results than any one of us can through unilaterally imposing our will on others you know we need to really believe that politics is worth it and workable as opposed to our current operating system which is that politics or at least it's not our operating system that's just our that's like the narrative that we have or like them more like the conceptual understanding you know it's not at all the real life where we have to deal with politics just as a part of governance and we need to really understand that the political struggles that were involved in are not free of conflict and of real trade-offs between people's people's interests and that these actions these you know individual and collective political legal legal actions of the kind that like running a blockchain really is is like a necessary and normal part of the political and legal process I think we need to you know have a posture that is much more peaceful and that is willing to like struggle in politics and law to have a peaceful outcomes as opposed to one that is certain that it's destined for war and that it's certain that it's going to like you know impose its will on people no matter what they want and no matter what is their stake in this outcome I think we need to have a much more peaceful posture if we want to have a much more secure watching governance system and I think that but also at the same time I think there you know we do need to care about public issues enough to go to war I'm not saying that we shouldn't go to war no matter what I'm saying we shouldn't act like war is predestined we shouldn't act like we're in such a desperate situation that we need fully autonomous software to achieve our political aims and that we need to create it through private legal and political action and instead imagine that we can involve ourselves in public political and legal processes and that war is not predestined that we don't need to privately impose our will on the public in order to achieve our political ends I think we need to adopt a posture that's much less deterministic much less ruthless and much more open to the determinism and big Uwe T complexity and it depends answers that is really characteristic of the kind of systems that we are dealing with and you know we're dealing with open systems that are prone to change due to context not closed systems that should run autonomously no matter what happens outside of them you know by creating autonomous software we're maximizing the paperclip I'm sorry if you don't get that reference it's like a rationalist thing anyways so that's kind of my you know my real conclusion here is that like I think we really need to change our posture from this like aggressive insecure world where we're trying to impose our legal and political will through our private action on the public to a world where we're willing to engage in public discourse in public law and politics in order to prevent the kind of war that we think is necessary in order to bring out our political actions but which really probably isn't quite as necessary and certainly doesn't warrant fully autonomous software let me say this if you wanted to go to war with the blockchain fully autonomous software would not be the most effective way to do it and almost any circumstance because like it probably isn't going to do what you expect and you probably are gonna have to patch it if you really want it to work well so no matter what your goal is no matter what your political situation I don't think fully autonomous software is the right thing for you I don't think it we're living in a world that's fully deterministic and that where you know the way that the system is going to evolve for certain is gonna reduce your legal uncertainty and your coordination cost quite the opposite you know I think we need to understand that we don't know that these political outcomes are undetermined that blotching governance is undetermined and that you know we have a lot of room in that indeterminacy to be reasonable and to make compromises in order to prevent conflicts and do not create situations where we just let people screw each other with impunity where we let people experience huge public costs and we act like it's not our responsibility I think we can adopt a posture that's much more effective for our political aims and it's much more ethical by like abandoning our culture of legal and political and ethical escapism and that's like kind of my opinion so thanks for listening [Applause] yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of questions I guess we have a microphone that's gonna go around thank you so much I want to provide a hat tip to Boris over there who does help open my consciousness up to a lot of this stuff last year right there right there that's him go talk to Boris if you have any questions he'll know better than me maybe you know Vlad this is the other Boris no hi Boris Vlad's Boris is good good theme great is always to get your definitions now it's our job to corral you down to more concrete things so I have a very concrete question to start things off do you think that a coin vote or similar implementation is a way to get broad stakeholder representation of the etherium Network no because most people in the etherium network are not you know having the same number of coins and so what what method do you propose to engage broad stakeholder inclusion on decisions in the etherium Network great that's a great question so there's different stakeholder groups that are you know kind of somehow you can think of that at least from a political point of view as being defined by their share interest and so I ideally we would have to be able to identify different stakeholder groups and identify ways to securely hear from them what their opinions are and securely because this is a high tech high stakes outcome where there's a big incentive to try to make it seem like different stakeholder groups have different opinions some stakeholder groups like miners and coin holders have a really natural anti-civil mechanism but other ones like users developers don't and there's all sorts of different kind of community members and so like my my own kind of feeling is that people need to create legal and political voices for the stakeholder groups that they're part of so if you are feel like you're part of you know the crypto law lawyers in crypto stakeholder group you know maybe coin Center you feel like they can represent you I don't know maybe not but but basically there's gonna be a bunch of people who are kind of somehow phases of the crypto lawyers stakeholder group and yeah they're they're probably going to be some I'm not sure if there are yet like you know it's gonna happen I people when they participate in politics end up creating ways to signal their their interests as they participate in political discourse and try to coordinate and so I think we shouldn't try to you know impose on people how exactly they represent themselves but we definitely need to encourage and listen for interest from different stakeholder groups if we care about good-faith participation in the political kind of process or even care about even just strategic participation I hope that was okay whoa we all you know we all so maybe this is less of a question more response in defense of nick szabo and the power i think of what he has stated i mean if you say it's he but I think it's kind of more accepted as a general principle and it's this which is that you miss the beginning when you talk about where the law gets its legitimacy from you're missing this bit which is it gets its legitimacy from the state and the state has this one thing which no one else can have which is the monopoly of violence so if you've ever been to a court before and ever being judged you'll realize in this moment where you go it doesn't matter what my opinion is anymore the judge can just put me in prison or find me or do whatever because they have the state and the core is one manifestation of that has the legitimacy the monopoly of violence right so if the blockchain ecosystem decides to stand under that voluntarily in this case as you would propose then you also have to realize then the state then does have a monopoly of violence over you can imprison and jail and fine anyone it wishes if you voluntarily accept that the power of Nix Abbas responses this hey it isn't to do with us this protocol just runs on its own it's like trying to sue nature and that's really powerful because then how can you imprison an earthquake or like King Canute yeah but it's also but but but it's also you know I mean it's like it's like really powerful that like you know because it's not a force of nature it's a protocol that we through our norms are making like a force of nature and trying to pretend like we're not responsible when really you know it's not a force of nature it's a distributed system and software running on nodes on the Internet is you could pretend you're not responsible but I don't think it's like really like a sustainable worldview because I don't think actually that it's very realistic it's just extremely simplistic but even the conception of the state as a monopoly on violence I think is a little simplistic of the law as being provided legitimacy by the state I think is way simplistic you know I think that the you know like for example like legal thinkers created the Constitution which provided legitimate legitimacy of the state so obviously like the law existed before the US government did and actually was used to conjure the US government into existence it's like a legal entity that's so it derives from there which makes the u.s. quite different in that regard if you come from Britain you know where the literature line of just legitimacy lies and it makes for a different very different reading of history well I mean even if the king is has an important role in law you know it's not like the king created the law I mean that's exactly what happened and that's that's the point that's why people around the world who are let's say just in America are desperately afraid of their government and that's really important because turns out governments have powers like kings and dictatorial powers it could do right the law and enforce I think punishment I mean that's what makes these things very like you certainly say okay well sure and some very something but the autonomous software thing doesn't prevent disputes with the legal system it creates them you know it doesn't do a good job of existing in the context of the violent disputes that could be brought with the structure with the power of law I mean I don't really believe that fully autonomous software is like the only natural response to the existence of corrupt legal systems I think that we have way more breadth of action in the context of the operation of law than to act like we have nothing to do except for maintain the software and I think that the it's basically a overly radical response to instead of being a more based on a realistic understanding of the world it's based on a radical ideological reactionary understanding that says that law and politics are fundamentally going to be you in this way and somehow that therefore we shouldn't govern software it's really a very very means argument that's full of holes and of simplistic legal theories and simplistic political thought that it doesn't stand to modern analysis I think it's like it's very very very radical and very much over simplistic and not but you know in in proportion to the complexity of the situation I think there is a natural tension almost incompatibility in language what you're saying politics requires deliberation and deliberation is anything that is not automatic so that's why what happens is when you say that and I totally see your point that if you do political minimization then you take the right from me see as a user of blockchain to deliberate on some of these matters so what happens is we are doing a category mistake when we are saying that automatic software should not have whole the type political angle to it because we are confusing between symbol mapping in a CPU and processors which is automatic and between the deliberation of human actors living their lives doing their things and also interestingly because I have lived in a totalitarian regime and so you know that if you do not let people deliberate it's actually dictatorial posturing so it's almost like you're hiding behind the software you know it's not what I call the Vegas added posture which like what happens in blockchain stays in blockchain I have nothing to do with the blockchain don't talk to me if you didn't give your phones back you know that's a Vegas posturing which I dictators use and in fact macro in France has even commented and there's some debate about this that too many checks and balances of these legislators and all but you just have to the executive powers you know it's like if Szabo wants executive powers the developer should have its I mean it's in it's not automatic instead but that's the point there should be a nice balance between deliberation which is political and automatic and we should not confuse the categories yeah I mean I think I totally agree with you that you know shutting down political discourse is you know very characteristic of the Talat arianism and of you know in basically the imposition of political will but I also think that politics is also about legal action as much as it is about discourse you know discourse is kind of the nice way out but legal action is sometimes extremely empowering and isn't always wrong it's not always imposing your will on people and to force them to eat it's often just liberation 'el and you know it's important to not think that just because someone is taking the legal action without participating in discourse that they are necessarily acting in bad faith you know it depends and it's complicated hey Vlad um so in political theory one distinction between a counterculture and a social movement that's been made is that they have different loci of contention so a social movement is I'm trying to sorry a counterculture is I'm trying to change your mind about something and that if enough people's minds change then something will get done whereas a social movement is a self politicized so you have some kind of name movement that is trying to get something specific from the hegemony I think in this case a state that they're a part of so with this kind of definition my my question for you is would you consider the blockchain space a counterculture or a social movement all right so counterculture trying to change people's minds individually what's a social movement again sorry social movement is enough of those people have gathered to try to get something from the hegemony they're a part of hmm I'm not sure no I think it's much more private private legal action um you know it says like look I can identify that within my like established legal and political turf I can take this action that will have a consequence that's better for my position and lots of people are doing this individually and because they believe due to the contractual waiver of liability and the idea that code is speech that they can take this action or they believe because of you know whatever legal arrangement that they have that is within their political and legal you know safe zone to take this action and that will have these consequences so I think it's actually a much less about convincing people than normal then then like a lot of political action around that's organized around say legislators are voting it's much more of a direct political action but if they're not self politicized so like we say the blotching community right but there's no political party of the blockchain space well there's there's there's I mean there's camps there's a I'm sure there's camps but I guess my thought is is that if by definition to get something from the state you have to be willing to interact with it does that mean that until we have some larger entity of a self-appointed political party of the blockchain space that will actually get anything done mmm I mean we are I get it we're already getting so much done it's terrifying so I don't know exactly what you mean I mean people are passing laws people are doing all sorts of crazy stuff I don't know IIIi think that you know I'm not sure the extent to which we need political representation in existing systems in order to posture ourselves in a way that's sensible with respect to existing systems not in a way that's that gives up our goals well in a way that isn't so aggressive and insecure because actually we don't need to today have that kind of posture because cryptocurrency ten years later more or less legal for now yeah thanks for talking I think mainly what you're saying is ok sabes law and cyberpunk ideals have led to a situation of legal government political ethical escapism right mm-hmm sure and you say that's bad and I think a lot of people whether they agree with you or not are really wondering what's an alternative right can we make something up more concrete kind of doing is like having a discussion on a meta level but whether something is good or bad without talking about actual alternatives and I think that's also what the first question was kinda about can we make this more concrete you know are you thinking about terms and conditions for the use of blockchain by thinking about contractual relations between miners I'm thinking about governmental you know institutions within chains I mean I think all of these are interesting questions like super interesting questions and I you know I'm thinking about them I don't know if I'm ready to like give any concrete proposals if that's really what you're asking for although I I do think I have like relatively concrete things that way I think we can do like you know including you know having abstract conversations and accepting indeterminacy as a reality which doesn't sound super concrete but actually but actually um it could a lead I think this is why I'm doing it to concrete changes that will like improve our ability to develop watching governance because today instead of having the disputes that arise the Lockean governance help us with boxing governance in the future they're dismissed and left unresolved and people just get upset and build up resentment and I think we're missing a lot of opportunities to develop watching governance and I don't think that anyone is has the authority or the ability to dictate what watching governance should be I think that like we need to I'm developing in an organic way and you know I'm sorry that that doesn't give you much certainty but I'm not sorry because if we tried to give you certainty then you would use the blockchain to just like cause hell or maybe not you but you know is it's very very much opens that possibility and I think that like the indeterminate position is actually much safer then a system where you know for sure that you're gonna have fully autonomous software or you know for sure that a cartel of a few dudes who almost the coins are gonna control it or you know for sure that like this corporation or that legal system has complete control of the blockchain so the issue a lot of time with trying to give an answer is it all the answers that we have available we know are wrong or not great and so you got to spend more time looking and I don't think that there's any answer that you can give me that says ok this is what watching governance could should be like that I won't be able to tear apart you know either because it's disenfranchising participants because it's for sure going to lead to some capture because it's for sure going to lead to some antisocial and anti public kind of results so it's really challenging and I think that like we have a really good problem to solve to try to figure out how we can make sure that the different stakeholders of watching governance are represented how to make sure that we have legitimate blockchain governance institutions how to make sure that we prevent disputes with existing legal systems how we can make sure it rent disputes between each other how do we make sure that we can achieve our goals you know whatever those are but without causing a whole bunch of collateral data I'll call out collateral damage through the institution of radical prescriptions so you know I think you know that there's we should resist the temptation to create certainty of to legitimize something just so that we can how things happen because what's gonna happen if we do is the things will happen in a predictable way and if we can predict that it's a bad way that it's gonna happen in that bad way you know so you know I think I think I mean although I should take a step back from that because like anything that we Institute could be diluted urmise it's just harder it's harder to deal with chitta - things than it is to legitimize them in the first place and so if we say look let's do coin voting or let's have like this kind of norm you know it's really really hard to let go it's really hard to let go of Szabo's law it's really hard would be really hard for us to ban in the eeap's process or the all devs call because people kind of assume that we use these for coordination so unless there's some kind of contentious crisis kind of event it's good it's really hard to to change these things so I think that you know if we Institute and legitimize any governance regime then we need to be really really ready to live with the consequences and I not ready to propose something that I'm happy to live with but I know I'm not happy to live with fully autonomous software and I'm confident to predict that like you know most people also won't be oh yeah do you think that our other ways or other types of political actions that exist then building autonomous code to reduce this distance between legal systems and abortion space yeah I mean I think there there are lots I think you'd be really hard hard-pressed to prove that there aren't any because like I mean it's such a such a radical minimization you know leaves a lot of room for any for for improvement so I mean again I can't give you any examples but no no no no examples Thanks hey thanks for the talk so you're kind of placing us in this like indeterminate position where you know let's explore it's kind of one of the keys here so it seems like in this like elected let's explore state it's probably easier for someone to let's say capture the process than it is if we just say okay let's ruthlessly cut out all political process right so um I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there are some set of trade-offs that come along with existing it's indeterminate state what do you think they sure yeah I mean anything becomes possible and it's like scary right although of course like you know acknowledging that everything is possible already is already scary enough right but having common knowledge that anything is possible you know makes opens up for possibilities that we don't like but it also opens up possibilities that we do like right I think we have to kind of understand that we need to remain vigilant so that we don't fall into the wrong comes but that there's no way to create change without it this kind of indeterminacy and that change doesn't necessarily be preordained to the bad outcomes you know we you know could easily be paranoid about the outcomes and imagine that for sure the worst ones gonna happen we could just as easily have faith that the only the best ones are gonna happen and you know the to be reasonable we want to just exercise judgment and not race to conclusions around things would be terrible or that like things gonna be you topic Thanks I so early on you explained that the outcomes of our blockchain is governed is crucial for some of the stakeholders but do you even think that some stakeholders but also people not actively participating in blockchain governance that they have the information or guidelines or tools available to actually understand how the governance in some of these block chains take place and if not should we do something about it well I mean not only do they not understand like how the to participate in governance but they probably don't even understand the fact that they are stakeholders to these decisions and it could be really really how really difficult to get participation from stakeholders who are affected by decisions both because you know it's hard to create governance institutions that allow for this contribution and because it's a lot of you know it's like a it's like it's just really difficult to get people to participate in watching governance I mean I need try to invite people you know try to get try to find someone to be in to you know to take an e p-- for you from like you know or like to like take some responsibility in watching governance it's really kind of hard and I think that you know it's gonna get better over time and but it's definitely not like a situation where we're happy where we're even able to let everyone participate in watching ours in some way it's permissionless anyone can create a github account and open and eat but that doesn't mean that it's accessible right like most people don't have the technical ability to represent their interests in blotching governance discussions today so it's it's definitely complicated and I don't have a clear answer to that either so I want to thank you first of all and want to remind everybody about the context that this isn't glad inventing indeterminacy in determine see is observed reality and furthermore the very the very idea of blockchain was an attempt to open up or reopen operating space and reopen indeterminacy so if we go back to 2008-2009 the Genesis blocks for blockchain we had a system that wanted on chain governance and on chain reinforcement of existing financial institutions and Bitcoin white paper was a response to that so determinism and being locked into one particular governance vision was the status quo and in many ways the Bitcoin white paper was an attempt to reopen the space and so I find this really really stimulating but I would be really really I think it's it's really really a bad outcome when people attach particular positions to individuals right that Zamfir is asking for indeterminacy or advocating for this particular position or in reality if we deconstruct it it goes to the very very Genesis block which again I find very very stimulating and very invigorating so thank you [Applause] maybe we can take like one or two less questions I'm gonna try and create some Vlad fences but you're very good at avoiding them I think that I heard you say and this is sort of a follow on from some of these other things that you believe that stakeholders should make attempts to self organize to participate in blockchain governance is that correct well to just to signal their interest in watching governance to do this poke to participate in fork politics so when you're talking about participating in blockchain governance that could mean a good number of things right there's a lot of like positions in watching governance like you could be talking about someone operating a node you could be talking about a developer you could be talking about people participating in the kinds of fork politics that's much more accessible definition yeah so you mentioned a number of different groups of stakeholders and basically do you think those stakeholders and let's be specific should in fact be forming groups so that they can act as beyond single individuals in participating in governance of the etherium network mmm probably I mean if you're talking about from their personal strategic interests yeah probably do you think that we have some responsibility again this nebulous we that are interested in the etherium network to encourage or signal that such groups should sell form yeah I mean I to me it's like just I mean we don't even have to they'll figure it out but yeah it seems it seems like a good nun to tell them that like you know that if you're participating watching governance should try to signal your position through a political discourse great thank you okay one one last question thank you for the talk so boy in some cases there are some bills these bills that the system cannot solve the software cannot resolve what do you think the softwar should do and what should a community - and so when you say the system do you mean blockchain governance I mean the fully autonomous so for fully autonomous off work well there's lots of disputes that fully autonomous software can't solve and there's not some disputes that we can't solve with watching governance and sometimes there is genuinely nothing you can do and that's very different from you know choosing not to do anything in order to minimize your liability but when there's nothing you can do the thing the right thing to do is and these when someone's bringing you dispute is to tell them sorry there's nothing I can do and to explain to them you know why there's nothing you can do yeah but sometimes he seems we still need a decision right sometimes well well there's nothing you can do there's no decision right I don't know I'm not sure I understand your question anymore my next question is do you think if if we have a fully a good fully autonomous soft wall ASIC could be like less important in its turn what will be less important you mentioned the theory of a seekers right I'm sorry ASIC miners ASIC - I don't remember mentioning ASIC miners I don't know what raising miners have to do is you talking something about the theory of earth kiss during the talk ethics ethics sorry my English is not so good so yeah I mean do you think it will be the same like equally important in the approaching space as real world or do you think it is like very important ethics or a six ethics it's a good question is I mean I I hope that ethics is going to be a thing and watching governance you know knock on wood I don't know yeah sorry I don't know great well thanks everyone bloopers yay thank you coming out [Applause]