Collaboration, contracts, and the tyranny of platforms

Smart contracting platforms like Ethereum and Solana address the two most important components of coordination: global market-based standards upon which further innovation can build, and a source of digitally native trust production. They create a peer-to-peer contracting environment and streamline human coordination.

1. Sustaining collaborative innovation among independent projects is a governance problem.


2. A core part of governance is determining an optimal division of rights to control project decisions across various stakeholders.


3. Blockchains frequently require participation of multiple independent platform layers to deliver functionality to end users.


4. Some of thes

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Objective systems seem desirable, relying entirely on machines and not fallible and opportunistic humans. There is, however, a catch – machines may be running the code, but humans are acting on it. A subjective system might be able to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate transactions in a way that an objective one could not. Concepts l... See more

The modern financial system is a market for promises that involve large degree of trust. Human systems are incapable of executing all promises due to interests and goals that could go against them. The inability to commit to promise enforcement limits the set of promises that can be made. And this is the fundamental problem that blockchain as an al... See more