Blockchain Governance in the Wild

Abstract

Blockchain Governance in the Wild 2 Our work differs from the existing literature in three significant ways. Firstly, there has been very little comparative work among different blockchain networks or communities-what exists generally focuses only on Bitcoin and Ethereum at most. Secondly, this is not a theoretical study of potential successes or failures: We instead survey practical implementations, and governance development plans of specific projects. Finally, we do not examine only the governance decisions encoded on-chain. Our work expands to consider social norms, informal practices, and institutional governing entities associated with the project outside of the code. We believe this paper is the first to formally document and highlight the importance of informal governance structures within blockchain projects.