I've been getting some mind-food and I'm in the mood to share some thoughts. Forgive me in case it's all bullshit,... just thinking.
@adamstgbit Now, that I can get behind. I have wanted a totally modular Bitcoin for a while now.
I just took a crude look at the cardano project (whycardano.com). Not pushing this as a token or anything, but those guys have some great ideas / views (and done some great research), also regarding governance. They seem to use a sane, modular approach to architecture / implementation. They also understand crypto/money is a social thing (emphasizing the importance of incentives, using game theory) and what rules / policy people want in their money
do differ. They have a lot of good ideas, it's really worth a read, even if only for inspiration.
So here's a thought about governance models:
built-in governance
So cardano (and other alts like dash, tezos,...) aim to integrate governance into the blockchain / protocol. This can be done by stake-based voting on rule changes in the case of settlement-layer rules or by enabling the creation of user-defined tokens with custom rules and markets between those on a higher layer (all secured on the blockchain using the base settlement layer plus computational layer above that). It's a broad goal, but may be worth following.
external governance
On the other extreme with Bitcoin for example, governance is completely external to the protocol / blockchain / network. That's why this function is being executed in the political / social arena using legacy tools like discussion and polls. The shortcomings of these tools lead to all kinds of tactics being employed: narrative control, fixing ideas to persons and attacking those, propaganda, censorship... you know the list: all the dirty tricks and games that can be played to manipulate opinion and falsify it's distillation to draw an image of "what the community wants". Even the prediction markets (token futures) are being scewed heavily for this purpose. So yes, it sucks, but it's what we currently use in Bitcoin.
This "external" governance model at work in Bitcoin necessitates the possibility to fork the chain to create a tradable token representing a specific rule change. It's been said for a long time that "forking is a viable governance model" and it is! It doesn't come without problems, though. The main one is the fact that this process is subject to manipulation as described above, necessitates a ledger spinoff and creation of a new coin (with new name, new exchange markets, adapted wallets and everything you need for a coin) and also that it is immensely resource-consuming (discussion to no end, war, personal attacks, bad blood, hate, coding work, wallet adjustments and so on) and harmful to the coins utility and value (userbase confusion, reduction of network effect,...)
Wild Thoughts
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PoS: I've been thinking about proof of stake again lately and I'm not as opposed to it as I had been in the past. It seems
https://www.cardanohub.org/en/ouroboros/ is a cool solution and it seems the security properties (resilience against the common attacks being one of it) can be proven (also worth a look). Regarding Bitcoin: a Bitcoin spinoff using ouroboros PoS is something I would love to think about and probably support.
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Ledger Migration: theoretically it would be possible to migrate the Bitcoin ledger (for example) to a mere user-defined token (with the same monetary policy) within a more powerful blockchain system like cardano or ethereum. Of course the security properties would change and be at least degraded to that of the base layer of the host blockchain, if not worse. But still: a Bitcoin spinoff like that would be interesting to say the least.
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Blockchain/Ledger merging as a function of "external governance": This could be a powerful mechanism to re-unite communities in cases where the desired properties (consensus rules) of the chains/forks/coins have changed in a way that they are compatible enough for a compromise. Let's say for example the segwit1x and cash communities develop views in which they can both live with each others peculiarities (sw1x people find big blocks acceptable due to new research and cash people might be largely ok with segwit already as long as the blocksize limit and the sw fee advantage is removed). Now, technically the ledgers could probably be merged (goal would be to have 1 token after the merge, completely fungible) by adding segwit to cash and removing the eda or by removing the blocksize limit in core and implementing 3 sets of utxos (sw1x, cash, btc_new). Open question for me is how to fairly "fix" a conversion ratio of pre-merge tokens to post-merge tokens. Reminds me of how monetary union was implemented when the EUR was introduced: they just fixed exchange rates. Could maybe be done based on market price ratios, but would require some elaborate process involving the help of exchanges and a lot of heated discussion and market manipulation.
So... not sure if this "merging" idea has any merit at all (didn't think it through obviously). The upside is huge, though: increased security (if PoW is identical) and increased network effect. Also in the social / media sphere the effect would be huge: "The war is over: Bitcoin users reunite while exchange rate moons".
