Jun 27, 2018 - Decentralization, hashing functions, public key cryptography, and smart contracts are advantageous design features of blockchain systems. These require the coordination of multiple and diverse actors with differing incentives—cryptoeconomics—to solve any problems that arise. This research examines the impact of governance on these systems. Specifically, it explores governance needs at three levels of the blockchain stack: the Internet layer, the blockchain layer, and the application layer, including the deployment of decentralized applications (Dapps). De Filippi and McMullen explain the difference between governance by the infrastructure...

Dec 09, 2018 - Amid ongoing reports of surveillance, censorship, and massive hacking of data, this research explores how distributed ledger technology can address the challenges of the World Wide Web. The authors argue that blockchain can support the Internet’s founding ideals, decentralize the Internet, and restore the balance of power between individuals and large organizations. They focus on three big issues: open access, fair participation, and the recovery of the individual sovereignty as users. The authors interviewed such experts as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Joseph Lubin of Consensus Systems, Shane Greenstein of Harvard Business School, Rouven Heck of u...

May 10, 2018 - In this research project, Joel Telpner gives us a guided tour of regulatory risk. Pulling lessons from regulating innovation in telecommunications and the financial markets, he focuses on the extent to which the blockchain represents unprecedented regulatory challenges. He advocates a level-headed approach to determining when regulation is necessary and, in such cases, the form that regulation should take, so as to minimize the unintended consequences. Using illustrations by the legendary political cartoonist John Tenniel and passages from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: and What Alice Found There, Telpner gives executiv...

Oct 26, 2017 - This work helps CEOs to develop strategy around implementing and commercializing this new disruptive technology. CEOs must pick the right change agents to identify the problems to be solved with the technology so that the company picks the right pilot project. CEOs also need a strategy for communicating about that pilot with multiple stakeholders, learning from it whether it succeeds or not, and socializing lessons so that the company continues to experiment with the new technology.

Jan 16, 2018 - This manifesto for change calls for a new social contract, one that redefines the relationship between individuals in society and the institutions they have created to self-govern. It looks at the four drivers of this change—the Fourth Industrial Revolution, globalization of ideas and the economy, climate change, and demographic shifts due to war, drought, and oppression. It identifies such global disruptions as structural unemployment and inequality; failing education, healthcare, and research and development; human rights violations; and a biosphere in crisis. It identifies the four core change makers—the private sector, the state, civi...