Moderated by Eric Alston, University of Colorado
Organized by Eric Alston, Marcela Gomez, Ilia Murtazashvili, and Martin Weiss
This seminar features research on the frontiers of digital governance. How are our digital communities governed? How should they be governed? The seminar considers several specific governance questions implicated by blockchain (and major cryptocurrencies), and further extends to governance of digital communities more generally, including how and where they intersect with our real world communities.
An increasingly digital world is one whose digital institutions will only grow in terms of their real-world economic and social significance. Institutional and technological innovations like blockchain suggest immense promise (and disruption) to the forms of governance with which we are most familiar, and present a possible path forward for governing ourselves digitally. Nonetheless, digital governance presents many challenges to individuals and institutional practitioners in terms of how to obtain the efficiencies long provided by real-world institutions like default rules and relational contracting, both concepts that do not readily translate to the realm of automated governance by protocol. The one-hour seminar includes a 35-minute presentation by the author followed by 25 minutes for questions and discussion.
Digital Decentralization by Design: Escaping the Paradox of Power, September 23, 2020
Professor Cowen (University of Lincoln, UK) presented on political economic questions associated with networks involving blockchain.
Is Bitcoin a Decentralized Payment Mechanism?, September 16, 2020
William Luther (Florida Atlantic University) explains why bitcoin is best understood as a distributed payment mechanism, processed on a shared ledger maintained by its users.