Blockchain Governance and the Fourth Estate

Thank you to Keír Finlow-Bates for allowing us to share his videos.

In simple terms, blockchain governance is the method by which a blockchain is maintained, managed, and improved.

For example, deciding to change a protocol is an act of governance. So is rolling back the chain after a hack.

Different blockchains have different governance systems, and many of them have grown and evolved in an ad-hoc manner. Some of the parties that have an influence over how the blockchain runs are: the developers, the miners, whales (people with lots of tokens), and the users.

But there is one group that I had never thought about before, and they only came to my attention following the recent Ropsten Ethereum blockchain split, where after the London upgrade there were two chains.

And the shorter chain with less mining effort was actually the "correct" chain (if the London update is considered correct).

This video is about how I realised that there is another significant group in the blockchain governance space, one that I haven't seen identified before.