The Blockchain Governance Toolkit: A Cookbook for a Resilient and Robust Ecosystem, presents a detailed governance framework for blockchain networks. It is designed to help developers create resilient and robust governance systems tailored to their specific project needs.
https://www.projectliberty.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/PL_Toolkit_Report_v7.pdf
Here is a summary of the key elements of the proposed framework:
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Governance Trade-offs (Flavors): Blockchain governance involves trade-offs across three dimensions:
- Expediency vs. Participation: Balancing between fast, cost-effective decisions made by a select few versus more inclusive decision-making involving a broader group of stakeholders.
- Immutability vs. Adaptability: Weighing permanent governance rules versus flexible rules that can change in response to internal and external developments.
- Determinism vs. Discretion: Choosing between hard-coded, self-executing on-chain rules and more discretionary, human-driven governance processes.
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Governance Primitives (Ingredients): These are the building blocks used to implement governance systems. They vary in scale and composability and can be combined to meet governance goals. Examples include multi-signature councils, token-weighted voting, proof-of-personhood protocols, and quadratic voting.
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Safeguards: To ensure resilience and robustness, safeguards must be implemented. These counterbalance strong preferences or intensities in governance flavors. Examples include:
- For Expediency: Recall mechanisms, slashing, and power checks.
- For Participation: Whitelisting and decay functions.
- For Immutability: Exit, hard forking, and exception states.
- For Adaptability: Formal blockchain constitutions.
- For Determinism: On-chain time delays and smart contract kill switches.
- For Discretion: On-chain fund distributions.
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Feedback Loops: Continuous evaluation and refinement of governance systems through feedback loops, integrating both endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external) governance to improve adaptability while maintaining resilience.
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Legal Entities: The toolkit also suggests that legal entities can be integrated into blockchain governance to provide additional structure, such as legal protections, contractual capabilities, and limited liability for participants.
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Final Thoughts: The report advocates for a governance system that is customized to fit the specific needs and context of the project. It emphasizes the importance of balancing governance preferences and applying the right mix of primitives and safeguards to ensure that systems are adaptable yet robust, and resilient enough to handle unforeseen challenges.
This framework is presented in a “cookbook” format, offering flexibility in design and allowing governance systems to evolve based on feedback and the context in which they operate.