Building trustworthy and trusted communities

Governance
1

Hey everyone!

It’s Ben- researcher in Mina Foundation’s protocol governance team :wave:

We continue to share our research on key governance concepts, principles and best practices.

This is the first in a series of blogposts that explores themes about trust.

Trust is essential to societal cooperation; without it, society doesn’t function. Crypto systems are ‘trustless’ to the extent that they do not need trusted intermediaries to implement and enforce their rules. However, trust is not eliminated since we still need to trust various groups of people and organisations who are responsible for the protocol and defining its rules.

This raises the question: how can we ensure this ‘social layer’ remains trustworthy to maintain confidence in the protocol? How can it be prevented from acting in untrustworthy ways that could undermine confidence in the protocol? How could demonstrating the trustworthiness of this social layer confer crypto communities with a competitive advantage?

We welcome any initial feedback on this draft before we publish it shortly!

For example, some questions to consider:

  • We propose key principles for trustworthiness, including transparency; comprehensibility; verifiability; and shared values and visions. What other principles do you think are relevant?
  • We also present a case study that highlights assumptions about crypto systems and the trust placed in their social layer. What do you think about this case study and the assumptions it reveals?
  • What assumptions does the community make about the trust placed in Mina’s social layer?

Please feel free to provide comments in the document linked above as you read or leave messages directly here in MinaResearch. We are planning to publish this blogpost next week so feedback before then would be great!

Best wishes

Ben

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Hey Ben, love the topic of the essay! Trust is a super important concept with respect to protocol governance, especially in the context of Mina’s ‘httpz’ mission.

I have 3 pieces of (hopefully) constructive feedback:

  1. It may add value to explore the relationship between trust in a system and the existence of a “social contract” among participants. Beyond the obvious comparison this draws between blockchains and modern nation states, this perspective could help explain the foundations on which ecosystems such as Mina are built (i.e. how certain blockchains are able to attract large amounts of financial capital, as well as facilitate global human coordination). This could also help introduce and explore the question: is trust a means or an end (and to what end)?

  2. I think the LUNA case study could be strengthened a bit by briefly describing the “so what?” To do this, it could be helpful to think about the following questions:

  • How was LUNA — in many people’s opinion, a fraudulent project — able to attract so much “trust” (ie money)? In general, what is the relationship between money and trust?
  • What implications did the LUNA case have on the rest of the crypto industry/other blockchain projects such as Mina?
  • How do we avoid similar cases in the future (i.e. how to change the way we generate and allocate trust)?
  1. A final thought for your next piece: you may also consider exploring the interaction between the concept of trust and other values that the wider crypto community values, such as decentralization, censorship-resistance, permissionlessness, etc. I think Vitalik’s older post on Legitimacy is a good place to start here.
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