Principled Blockchain Governance Requirement #2 - Toxics not Welcome!

So open entry it is, if we're to start from a principled position of blockchain governance.

But, from that principled position of utter fairness, we hit a problem almost immediately: If we let anyone play then … we get everyone ! Now, the problem with everyone is that statistically this includes some good people and some bad people. When we’re building our community, we’ll pretty soon discover that we don’t actually want everyone. What we’d really like is the nice people, and leave the nasty people out.

Where, nice and nasty are definitional challenges of course. Everyone had a mother, and my nasty folk might be your nice folk. To some extent we solve this problem by just allowing them, the nasty ones, to fork the code. But the nasty folk still come in if we succeed with our community, coz, that’s where the value is, right?

Now, this is also a principled position: I want to exclude a certain group which are the criminals. Not because I dislike crime. I do, but rather because crime is toxic. It will destroy the community. We outlined this argument in that very early paper on bitcoin mining, which most people took as “bitcoin must die.” Might have been the title that triggered that response… Either way, let me lay down my requirement.

Requirement #2 - Toxics not welcome

And if you're still with us, head over for Requirement #3.