Why research on blockchain constitutions matters In recent years, there has been growing interest among blockchain communities—from those surrounding DAOs to entire public blockchain protocols—to ‘constitutionalise’ their governance through the drafting and proposal of constitutions, covenants, codes of conduct, etc. This can broadly be seen as an effort by these communities to articulate their values, anchor their purpose as their governance is decentarlized and, to a degree, respond to various criticisms about their governance (e.g., rule by a shadowy elite). The language of constitutions has been intuitively appealing to some communities due to the association of the term with the production and management of public goods, and their explicitly political character. However, what has been lacking is a thorough and systematic understanding of the implications of constitutionalisation.

For a constitution to be an effective governance tool, it needs to be structured to fit its purpose and context. Consequently, developing such a systematic understanding is important to help projects evaluate the impact of constitutionalizing both from a legal and historical perspective as well as from an operational point of view.

What we’re doing This proposed project draws on existing theories and concepts on constitutionalisation to collaboratively develop governance principles for blockchain communities and evaluate these principles with pilot communities.

Two overarching questions guide our work:

1. When and why does it make sense for blockchain communities to constitutionalize?
2. How should blockchain communities structure their constitutions (in terms of substance) and the constitutionalization process to maximize legitimacy in the outcome?

How we’re doing it We’ve already conducted an extensive literature analysis and gathered input and feedback through an international academic conference dedicated to the topic in June 2023. Our findings are published in this report. In the next phase of our research we want to deepen our empirical research by conducting an in-depth analysis of existing constitutions including those of Optimism and Arbitrum, and begin testing some of our guidelines and best practices with selected pilot communities.

Targeted outputs and impact As an academic research project we will be publishing our insights and findings in a series of open access research reports and papers. The Gitcoin grant will help us to develop more supplementary materials for the practitioner community, including a “Constitution Cookbook” where we detail guidelines on various flavors of blockchain constitutionalism in an accessible manner as well as accompanying material such as blog posts, templates and public talks.

Together these resources aim to help communities constitutionalize in an effective and legitimate manner.

Who we are We are all part of the BlockchainGov ERC Project. BlockchainGov is a 5-year long (2021-2026) transdisciplinary European Research Council (ERC) research project, based as CERSA|CNRS and the European University Institute, aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on-chain and off-chain distributed governance practices. The project is led by Dr. Primavera de Filippi and is supported by a team of postdoctoral and doctoral researchers, as well as external academic collaborators across the globe.