Technocratic Councils for the Governance of Decentralized Blockchain-Based Systems

Discussion

Dean Eigenman:

"Although elitist and still requiring a certain amount of community governance, I think the one model which works especially this early into the development of blockchain based protocols are technocratic councils. I think the only way one can really make decisions on things like whether a protocol should be upgraded or not, is if the voting party has a firm understanding of the system it is built on and the effects each outcome would have. It seems irrational to think that every token holder will be able to make an informed decision, or even want to participate in governance. We saw with “The DAO” that most holders couldn’t care less as a minimum quorum was never achieved in its short lifespan.

The technocratic council should of course not be completely autonomous and ignorant on the desires of other actors in the protocol. A line of communication should be nurtured, to ensure a more cohesive environment for all parties involved.

Decisions made by the technocratic council should still not be final and automatically shipped to the entire network, users must still be required to opt-in. Assuming agreement by default is a malicious and naive solution, especially when one of the values of many decentralized protocols is to enable their users to have self-determination.

A governance model which includes a technocratic council is currently being worked on by the Melonport team, as teams move towards giving up the governance of their protocols." (https://medium.com/@decanus/against-community-governance-326dc82b27d3)