Welcome to the monthly Decentralization Research Center update.

This monthly briefing will keep you updated on invitations for 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 info@thedrcenter.org. We’d love to hear from you!

Connor Spelliscy
Executive Director
Decentralization Research Center

Attend

🇺🇸 DAO Workshop, August 6th — Join us for the third annual DAO Workshop at the Science of Blockchain Conference at Cornell Tech in New York City!

This event is presented by the DRC in partnership with Metagov and Tally and brings together academics and industry representatives to explore updates on DAO research and development. See here for more information and to apply to attend.

🇺🇸 Emerging Tech, June 14th — Public Knowledge is hosting its annual Emerging Tech event with a focus on generative AI and the decentralized web at the beautiful Capitol Visitor Center in Washington D.C. See here for more details and to apply.

Read

Some of the most relevant work on decentralization from the last month, including pieces by DRC Fellows, Affiliates, and Researchers as well as the wider community:

• Cryptopols has introduced labels to better track the state of crypto legislation and sentiment in the U.S. Multiple authors take a look at DAOs, their potential and vulnerabilities.
  

• Elinor Rennie examines Metagov’s KOI Pond experiment.
  

• Nathan Schneider investigates the unique links between blockchain and theology.
  

• The European Crypto Initiative provides everything you need to know on crypto regulation and advocacy.
  

• Hisashi Oki explains the novel ways DAOs are used in Japan. “In Japan, DAOs are largely viewed as an evolutionary step rather than a radical departure from existing systems, with many established institutions and local governments using DAOs for self-improvement and branding.”
  

• As misinformation and disinformation campaigns heat up ahead of elections, we return to Shrey Jain, Samuel Vance-Law, Connor Spelliscy, and Scott Moore’s paper on AI and Democracy’s Digital Identity Crisis, and present The Gov Lab’s 27 ways to counter election subversion.

Listen

🎙️ Techquitable: Participation in a Decentralized World — DRC Fellow Nathan Schneider joins us to discuss the need for accountable centralized structures in decentralized participation. In this wide-ranging talk, Nathan also explores democracy’s decline in the digital domain, tech’s illusion of power, the broad spectrum of decentralization, and how to create diverse and equitable tech ecosystems.

🎙️ Into the Bytecode: Martin Köppelmann: AI agents as onchain actors — In this episode, Martin Köppelmann, cofounder of Gnosis, discusses Gnosis Pay, AI agents as a new form of life, and how agents and prediction markets are conceptually interconnected.

Thank you for reading, and see you next month,

The DRC Team