Episode #77: Collective Governance
Our guest today is Greg Slepak, Software developer of Espionage 3 & founder of the okTurtles Foundation, who talked about the bitcoin block size debate as surfacing “politics” in the bitcoin ecosystem. Resident podcast guest Steven McKie joins us to add ‘basic income’ to the mix. Lots of tangents here as important protocol and software development projects require people of disparate views and plans to come together over common standards and code. Good behavior is good politics because it builds credibility. The politics are intense, there are ways that bitcoin governance is like government, and proposals to fork the software are kind of like constitutional amendments. After Greg talked to us, I’m increasingly comfortable thinking of bitcoin governance as a market phenomenon.ย Greg also delves into the gritty details regarding the recent Ethereum/Ethereum Classic hardfork shenanigans.
Gil V
We got some Athena Bitcoin Schwag coming soon. Love to ship some over to you guys!
-The Athena & BitQuick Peeps
Cynthia
I attended a Blockchain DC event on Tuesday – and the regulators were out in full force – primarily the FTC who said they were concerned about consumer protection and fraud. It is hard to design around fraud in advance, because no one is going to admit that a smart contract or any other transaction was created with a fraudulent intent. I understand the interest in having the code be the contract – but the likely early adopters (like small businesses and the self-employed) would not have the skill set right now to be confident enough in the code to let it take over even the simplest tasks – at least to adopt in significant numbers. The large organizations can deal with that risk (like Booz Allen, Microsoft, IBM) but the promise to me is to help small players become big players without incurring oppressive fees. Is it still possible with all the attention being paid by financial organizations? Also, without any human intervention, fraudulent activity will run amok because you can’t code ethical behavior (yet).
Shinobi
Just watch and listen to this.
https://youtu.be/4r4njjPP4sM
Shinobi
Ok guys. It’s about time we talk about governance into the Crypto world. This is the most important problem to be solved in order to get things going on and see massive adoption from the people. You should really speak with Evan Duffield from DASH and get a deep look at what a good governance system should look like. It works and it is a real competitor to Bitcoin. This is not your average shitcoin. This is real stuff. And please just read a brief review before discarding it. Cheers.
Corey Petty
I agree. I personally own some dash, and enjoyed an previous interview with him on Let’s Talk Bitcoin. We’ll look into getting him on the show to discuss things.
Greg Slepak
Thanks for having me on! Some errata for the show, what I said about Coinbase wasn’t 100% accurate, so I clarified it in this followup post: “Clarifying The ‘Free ETC’ Coinbase Confusion”
https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/758538782169665536 โ https://gist.github.com/taoeffect/c910ebb16d9f6d248e9f1f3c6e10b1b8