Post-Decentralization B; From Fixed Protocols to Cognitive Ecosystems

Abstract

Existing theories of decentralized systems—typified by blockchain consensusprotocols and distributed autonomous organizations—universally harbor a foundational presupposition: governance rules and protocol structures are fully specifiedprior to system operation, and evolution occurs only within the parameter spaceof those rules. This paper systematically demonstrates the theoretical limits ofthis “fixed protocol” preset, pointing out that when the rules themselves becomethe focal point of conflict, traditional analytical frameworks lack the conceptualresources to address the situation. By integrating the bounded rationality tradition from decision theory with the self-organization ideas from complexity science,this paper proposes “cognitive ecosystem” as an alternative theoretical framework,reconceptualizing participants in decentralized systems as autonomous agents holding evolvable cognitive architectures, and redescribing the system as a whole as afield of structural coupling among multiple cognitive architectures. Under thisframework, forks are not system failures but legitimate expansions of conceptualspace, and consensus is not unanimous agreement but functional differentiationacross cognitive niches. The paper demonstrates the explanatory power of thisframework through the cases of the Bitcoin block size war of 2015–2017 and the2016 The DAO incident, and discusses its further application prospects in the governance of digital infrastructure.