Welcome to the Decentralization Research Center report, a monthly briefing on events and research relevant to decentralization, DAOs and governance.

This Month’s Updates

Key Notes

This month, we present an eclectic selection of stories, highlighting the areas of research and inquiry that represent some of the most exciting work in decentralized governance.

DAOs continue to experiment with and iterate on new and evolving governance models. Andrew B. Hall and Sho Miyazaki share an empirical political science study of liquid democracy in real-world settings, analyzing data from over 250,000 voters and 1,700 proposals across 18 DAOs built on the Ethereum blockchain.

In exploring cooperative paradigms for artificial intelligence, Sarah Hubbard explores alternative ownership and governance structures for AI that may better serve the public interest than current models: “While there have been some shifts in corporate governance, there must be a greater movement toward empowering people to collectively and cooperatively govern the AI systems that are impacting their lives.”

In assessing how Web3 can transform social impact, a team of collaborators turn their focus to philanthropy: “In the face of multiple crises, systemic inequities, and entrenched power imbalances, philanthropy stands at a pivotal moment. Achieving transformational change requires bold shifts in how we understand and exercise power, mobilize resources, and distribute value.”

And in their new Blueprint to Digital Governance, Project Liberty proposes policy for a federal right of data portability, interoperability standards, distributed systems for better data stewardship, and for greater partnership with democratic allies in renewing our commitment to a global internet.

The Full Rundown

Other stories and research we’re tracking for you:

• Current research in “plural alignment” concentrates on making AI models amenable to diverse human values. But Christina Lu argues that plurality is not simply a safeguard against bias or an engine of efficiency: it's a key ingredient for intelligence itself.

• David Gray Widder, Meredith Whittaker, and Sarah Myers West explain how ‘open’ AI systems are actually closed: “We find that openness alone does not perturb the concentration of power in AI. Just as many traditional open-source software projects were co-opted in various ways by large technology companies, we show how rhetoric around ‘open’ AI is frequently wielded in ways that exacerbate rather than reduce concentration of power in the AI sector.”

•  a16z asked 50 partners to preview one big idea that will spur innovation in 2025. Answers include liquid democracy and greater adoption of the ‘DUNA,’an external "AI brain," big swings in biopharma, infinite games, a nuclear resurgence, "faceless" creators, Google search challengers, and battlefield AI.

• Nathan Schneider joins Flaming Hydra to discuss his conversations and insights with digital rights activists in India. “Their concern about democracy was not its slowness or inconvenience—normally the worry among Americans—but the dangers of majoritarian rule.”

• Kevin Owocki presents the Onchain Capital Allocation Handbook, exploring how, by addressing coordination failures and introducing new onchain strategies, crypto could transform how society allocates resources.

• RadicalxChange introduces their new publicaiton, Combinationsmag, exploring ideas about economics, democracy, and the relationship between technology and power.

In this episode of Techquitable, we sat down with Sheila Warren, voted one of the most influential women in DC by the Washingtonian and founder of the World Economic Forum’s blockchain and digital assets team. Here, she shares her perspective on the stalled crypto policy in America, her current work at the Crypto Council for Innovation and much more.

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