Welcome to the first Decentralization Research Center Newsletter!

With this monthly briefing, you’ll stay updated on events and research relevant to decentralization, DAOs, and governance.

If you’re working on related research or would like to get involved in our work, please reach out to us via [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

Connor Spelliscy
Executive Director
Decentralization Research Center

Attend

🇯🇵 DAO UTokyo (February 6-7, 2024) (overview). We’re co-hosting an intimate summit at the University of Tokyo with the Stanford Cyber Policy Center that will bring together practitioners, policymakers, and academics to think through DAOs in the Asia-Pacific region. Reach out to [email protected] for information on attendance. 

For a recap on our 2023 summits see links here: Harvard Summit on Equitable Ownership & Governance, DAO Stanford, and Canadian Emerging Tech & Policy Summit at the University of Toronto.

Read

Open Problems in DAOs (paper, thread). From granular privacy primitives to mechanism designs to model laws, this paper identifies high-impact problems in the DAO ecosystem where existing gaps might be tackled through a new data set or by applying tools and ideas from existing research fields. 

Co-authors include Josh Tan, Sarah Hubbard, Tara Merk, Ellie Rennie, Joni Priovich, Rolf Hoefer, Michael Zargham, Primavera De Filippi, Seth Frey, Silke Noa Elrifai, Kelisie Nabben, Jeff Strnad, Ari Juels, etc.

Other key work published by DRC Fellows and community:

• AI and Democracy’s Digital Identity Crisis (paper, thread, presentation) [Stanford JBLP] Co-authored by Shrey Jain, Connor Spelliscy, Sam Vance-Law, and Scott Moore. 

• What Kinds of Incentives Encourage Participation in Democracy? Evidence from a Massive Online Governance Experiment (paper, article) [Stanford GSB] Co-authored by Andy Hall and Eliza Oak.

• State of DAO Delegation Report 2023 (report, thread) [DRC] Authored by Kyler Wandler.

• DAO Decentralization: Voting-Bloc Entropy, Bribery, and Dark DAOs (paper) Co-authored by James Austgen, Andrés Fábrega, Sarah Allen, Kushal Babel, Mahimna Kelkar, and Ari Juels.

• We Should Fear Tech Oligarchs, Not OpenAI (op-ed) [The Globe and Mail] Authored by Connor Spelliscy.  

• Disruptive Technologies for e-Diasporas: Blockchain, DAOs, Data Cooperatives, Metaverse, and ChatGPT (paper) [Futures] Authored by Igor Calzada.

Listen

🎙️ Fireside Chat with former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo on emerging tech & policy (Video) — A discussion of the benefits, risks, and regulation of AI & blockchain with Tony Douglas.

🎙️ Law of Code Podcast #89 - Legal Liability for DAO Members (Apple Podcasts) - Jacob Robinson and Eric Hess discuss the evolution of securities regulation in the United States.

As you are a valued member of our network, we are enrolling you in the email update. Please click below if you do not want to be a part of this group. 

See you next month.

The DRC Team