The BlockchainGov Newsletter #24 | August 2025
🕸 August has been marked by the release of new research and preparations for our Fall Symposium. Dive in with us!
📅 Symposium (Paris, 25–26 September 2025)
The BlockchainGov Symposium: Present & Future of Blockchain Governance is going ahead in September. Marking the final year of the BlockchainGov project, this two-day event offers a critical overview of five years of research on decentralized governance.
We have earmarked a limited number of places for interested participants who can join us in Paris and contribute to the discussions. 👉 Register here
I. One Year of Blockchain Governance
On 20 August 2025, we celebrated the first anniversary of Blockchain Governance (MIT Press, 2024) by Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers, and Morshed Mannan.
The volume offers an accessible yet critical account of the legal and political dynamics surrounding blockchain technologies.
II. How Engineering Replaced Politics
Nathan Schneider published a piece in Compact Magazine titled How Engineering Replaced Politics, where he examines how Silicon Valley’s ethos has shifted from democratic deliberation toward a culture of “first principles” and techno-determinism. It's a good read and you can read it here :
III. 📑 New and Highlighted Research
Online Governance Surfaces and Attention Economies Nathan Schneider, Michael Zargham, Ross Koppel, and Kelsie Nabben introduce a framework for understanding the interplay between attention and governance as co-determining forces in digital societies.
Articles of August If you follow BlockchainGov on X you will be up to date with our weekly feature “article of the week”, where we spotlight key readings in blockchain governance. Here are the four we featured in August:
Adaptive Governance for Blockchain Networks Esen Esener, LL.M, LL.M argues that the alegality of blockchain networks is no longer sustainable, proposing adaptive governance as a model for regulatory resilience in EU and US contexts. 👉 Read here
Accountability Protocols? On-chain Dynamics in Blockchain Governance Primavera De Filippi and Kelsie N. explore accountability trade-offs in Ethereum’s Lido protocol, highlighting the limits of “rule of code” and the necessity of off-chain processes. 👉 Read here
Value from Data? A Decentralized approach Kelsie Nabben demonstrates how data acquires value through socio-technical relations, reframing it as participatory capital. 👉 Read here
Blockchain Governance in the Wild A comparative study of 23 blockchain projects by Primavera De Filippi, Kevin Werbach , Joshua Tan and Gina Pieters explores how both formal and informal norms shape legitimacy and decentralization. It also has a great overview of the history of Blockchain Governance 👉 Read here
IV. 🎙 Governance Futures Podcast
August brought four new episodes of the Governance Futures Podcast, hosted by BlockchainGov's Jamilya Kamalova and Eugene Leventhal covering futarchy, decentralization, modularity, accountability, and trust in DAO governance. Guests included Vaughn McKenzie-Landell (Butter), Anthony Leutenegger (Aragon), Tally CEO Dennison Bertram, and Spencer Graham & Nick Naraghi (Hats Protocol).
New episodes every week 📡
📡 Governance Futures on LinkedIn
⚙️ Youtube
V. 🌍 Argentina Onchain Residency
BlockchainGov has partnered with the Ethereum Foundation, Polkadot Blockchain Academy, Mechanism Institute, SEED Latam, and Crecimiento to deliver a residency during Edge City Patagonia (1–14 November 2025).
The residency, Argentina Onchain, convene leading blockchain researchers, developers, and local stakeholders to investigate systemic inefficiencies and develop context-specific distributed ledger applications. This initiative represents a novel approach to connecting advanced blockchain governance research with its practical application in a highly relevant, real-world context. During the 2 weeks we will prototype institutional upgrades tailored to Argentina’s governance and infrastructural challenges in the very best of company.
VI. 🗣 Dr. Morshed Mannan at Oxford University
Morshed spoke at the third annual Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership conference at Kellogg College, University of Oxford on 29 August 2025 on the emergence of a variety of organizational archetypes in the platform economy - from corporate platforms to cooperative DAOs - and the need for tailored laws and policies to mitigate worker harms and workers' entrepreneurial risks in accordance with the features of each archetype.
VII. 🏛 European Decentralisation Institute
August also saw the launch of the European Decentralisation Institute (@eudecentral), an independent think tank dedicated to advancing decentralisation as a foundation for a sovereign digital Europe.
The Institute is supported by the Ethereum Foundation and ENS DAO, with many contributors that overlap with BlockchainGov’s research — including Wessel Reijers and Michael Zargham.
VIII. 🍂 Looking Ahead
September will be dedicated to the BlockchainGov International Symposium in Paris, where we look forward to welcoming many of you. We will also be recording it to share it with you all afterwards, so we can continue geeking out together.
Don't forget to register HERE.
That’s all from us this month. Thank you for reading this months newsletter!
Keeping you posted as always,
Until soon, The BlockchainGov Team 🕸️👀