Governance¶

Protocol governance is the process by which people propose, implement, coordinate, accept, reject, or ignore changes. No proposal document, developer meeting, miner signal, validator vote, client release, or token ballot controls a permissionless network by itself. Effective change requires enough of the ecosystem to run and build on compatible rules.

This section separates publication, technical review, implementation, activation, and adoption. It also distinguishes base-layer governance from DAO governance, where contracts can count votes and execute specific actions on-chain.

Chapters¶

Bitcoin Governance: proposals, implementations, node enforcement, and economic coordination
Ethereum Governance: EIPs, client teams, AllCoreDevs, upgrades, and social adoption
BIPs: the publication process and what BIP status does not decide
EIPs: standards tracks, editors, review, and Core EIP coordination
Core Developers: technical influence without unilateral protocol authority
Validators and Miners: ordering, signaling, activation, and the limits of block production
Users and Node Operators: software choice, economic acceptance, and coordination cost
DAOs: contract-governed organizations and their operational boundaries
On-Chain Governance: proposals, voting power, quorum, delegation, timelocks, and execution
Off-Chain Governance: discussion, rough consensus, releases, and social legitimacy

Three layers of a decision¶

A governance analysis should ask:

Who can propose and publish the idea?
Who can implement, release, activate, or execute it?
Who can refuse it and continue under another rule set?

Answers may differ. Editors can merge a specification without persuading implementations. Client teams can release code users decline to run. Miners or validators can order blocks but cannot make fully validating nodes accept blocks that violate their rules. Token voters can pass a proposal that a multisig still controls in practice.

Governance¶

Chapters¶

Three layers of a decision¶

Further reading¶