The 1st International Workshop on Distributed Infrastructure for Common Good (DICG) was held (virtually) on December 8th, colocated with the Middleware 2020 Conference.

With my supervisor Primavera de Filippi and Simona Ramos, we submitted our Blockchains for the Governance of Common Goods paper and I presented it in the first panel. The conference being virtual, I recorded a video of my presentation. It is 10 minutes long and does a decent job of presenting our research results¹. You can find a pre-print of the paper and the slides at the end of this article.

This paper analyses the use of blockchain technology to support the governance of commons-pool resources, as studied by Elinor Ostrom. It argues that the technological guarantees of blockchain technology —in terms of ex-ante automation and ex-post verification— can replace the traditional requirements of monitoring and sanctioning. Despite its own limitations and challenges, this novel approach to governance could provide new opportunities for experimentation in the context of commons-pool resources.

This paper is the first step in my project of linking the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and blockchain-based (and more generally speaking DLT-based governance). It calls for further theoretical and, hopefully, to experimental ground work.

You can find the paper on HAL or on the conference website.

Additional Resources

1. However, the video assumes a form of knowledge about blockchains from the audience. If that’s not the case yet, I can only recommend this excellent video