Summer of Protocols Town Hall

TalkVenkatesh Rao, Josh Davis, Tim BeikoMarch 13, 2023

Tim and Venkatesh Rao (joined by Josh Davis) introduce the Summer of Protocols program, explaining its origins in Ethereum Foundation discussions about understanding protocol evolution and its goal of building broader 'protocol literacy' across disciplines. Venkatesh outlines the program structure—core researchers, affiliates, guest speakers, and residents—emphasizing open, collaborative 'hackathon-style' work, writing essays plus 'protocolish artifacts,' and fielding extensive audience Q&A on applications, funding, and inclusivity.

Topics

core-researchers-vs-affiliate-researchers-structure governance nerd-sniping-as-a-program-design-goal openpermissionless-collaborative-research-ethos organizations protocol-literacy-and-interdisciplinary-study protocolish-artifacts-as-research-output protocols town-hall

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Into the Spannungsfeld (SIG Kickoff)

Robert Peake kicks off his special interest group on the 'Spanungsfeld' (field of tensions), building on tension-mapping workshops from Edge City Esmeralda and Edge City Lana, and drawing on landscape theory of aggregation to argue that organizations and protocols must be understood as fields of coupled trade-offs and social conflicts rather than isolated engineering decisions. Venkatesh Rao joins to extend the discussion with concepts like agonistics, emotional homeostasis in organizations, cursed problems in game design, Schelling's micromotives and macro behavior, and the idea of 'unmanaged tension fields,' proposing that protocols function as tools for decoupling complex systems and managing chronic, unsolvable tensions rather than solving them outright.

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Governance Axioms

Eric Alston presents a framework of five recurring 'governance axioms' for protocol design—incomplete rules, governance-as-conflict, mechanical concentration of authority, asymmetric incentives from shared resources, and the transparency-privacy tradeoff—arguing these tensions can never be designed away, only managed through mechanisms like killswitches, veto-gates, and tiered amendment rules. Drawing on his experience advising Cardano's constitution, DAOs, and peace processes, Alston contends that 'incomplete rules' mean norms and discretion inevitably fill gaps left by any formally encoded protocol, and that durable systems require 'dynamic fidelity'—credible commitments combined with constrained capacity for adaptation rather than either permanent rigidity or unchecked flux.

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Open Social Protocols: A Commons-Based Protocol Layer

Jose Leal (with Scott Clearwater) presents Open Social Protocols, a framework built on Needs (recurring coordination conditions) around which communities publish, fork, and adopt Protocols rather than collapsing into single fixed agreements. He describes 'bridging protocols' that let multiple competing protocols for the same need coexist and interoperate, built atop the AT Protocol and a 'Common Ground' layer, citing examples like Morning Star Farms and Buurtzorg as organizations already operating this way without naming it 'protocol'.

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