Who Governs Blockchains? A Five-Stage Analysis of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano

When people talk about decentralisation in blockchains, they usually mean who mines or validates blocks. A less-asked question is who decides how the rules change. In Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano, protocol changes go through improvement proposals (BIPs, EIPs and CIPs), and most of the decision-making happens in off-chain discussions on forums, mailing lists and GitHub rather than through formal votes.

In this talk, Wenrui Zuo (University of Edinburgh) will share findings from the Blockchain Decentralisation Index (BDI). She will follow proposals in all three ecosystems through five stages, from the first idea to the final outcome, and look at who takes part at each stage, how much a small group of core contributors shapes the outcome, and what happens to the discussion when those people step away. Along the way, she will show network maps of the discussions in each community to make these patterns visible.

The session will also introduce the EDI dashboard, the Edinburgh rollout of BDI. This public tool tracks blockchain decentralisation, and now includes a new governance layer covering Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano.

Find our more about Blockchain Decentralisation Index at: https://github.com/Blockchain-Decentralisation-Index

Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/my/hyperledger.community.3?pwd=UE90WHhEaHRqOGEyMkV3cldKa2d2dz09

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