DAPPCON 2025: Tending the Infinite Garden: Organizational Culture in the Ethereum Ecosystem - Ann

Transcript

[Applause] All right. Uh, thank you for the introduction and thank you all for being here today uh, bright and early. I'm truly delighted to be part of DAPCON and I'd like to extend my sincere gratitude uh, to the Nosis team and the DAPcon team for putting such an amazing event together. Um so it's a real privilege to be able to share uh the research that my colleague and I have been working on. So my colleague is Dr. Paul Dylan Enis al also known as Polar on Twitter if you follow him. Um so we today we'll be presenting insights from our latest paper called attending the infinite

garden organizational culture in the Ethereum ecosystem. So this talk is about an academic paper and so this presentation will be part of a larger sequence and it will be followed by Dr. Paul Dylan Enis who as I mentioned co-authored this paper with me. Um so I will introduce the paper, outline our central arguments and key findings and then uh Paul will basically uh take over and provide an update on the developments that happened in Ethereum since the paper was written. So in this sense my talk will set the stage and context uh for what comes next.

So before we delve into the actual paper, let me take a moment to introduce myself. So for the past seven years, I've been immersed in the crazy world of crypto trying to make sense of how developers and other actors in this ecosystem imagine and attempt to realize decentralization and decentralized governance. So I have a PhD in communication studies but my roots are in anthropology and my research has consistently center on the what we call the social layer of crypto studying uh the culture of public goods in Ethereum.

And so uh Dr. Paul Dylan Enis who's my co-author and longtime colleague in this ecosystem. We were one of the earliest social scientists who started researching and producing literature around Ethereum's social layer. So I wrote one of the first papers on Ethereum in my field and Paul wrote a book and basically since then we decided to join forces and write this article together on Ethereum's core dev culture and governance. So to begin, I will give you a brief synopsis on what the paper is about and present our core argument. We focus on the role that culture plays in shaping Ethereum's governance by exploring what

we call social imaginaries of Ethereum's core developers. Now I'll explain what social imaginaries are in a moment but in essence we argue that in the absence of centralized hierarchy such as with the case of Ethereum these social imaginaries that we identified in the paper they step in to define the boundaries of legitimacy in decisionmaking within Ethereum's protocol governance. So you might be wondering okay what are social imaginaries? So social imaginaries is the theoretical framework that science and technology scholars like to use. Um so I don't want to get

too philosophical here of course um there is an element of studying people's subjectivity and people's relationship to technology but to put it more simply it's really just trying to understand the collectively held beliefs norms and attitudes about a technology and it it deres its theoretical understanding from philosophers like Charles Taylor who describes this as the ways people imagine their social existence how they fit together with others how things go on between them and their fellows. And so the reason why we should study social imaginaries is because it allows us to uncover the dominant ideologies and a question assumptions that shape our

understanding of technology. So for instance, there is a widespread belief that technology is inherently neutral or that economic efficiency should always be prioritized. And so studying social imaginaries equips us to envision alternative technological uh futures and pathways. And it empowers us to rethink existing directions and avoid perpetuating hegemonic structures or political agendas inscribed in tech because ultimately technology is ideology and we must not overlook the politics of technology.

And of course, we're not the first ones to look at social imaginaries in the context of crypto communities. Many other scholars have done this prior. So, uh, studying the shared visions or stories people hold about money, power, and infrastructures. One of the leading voices in the space is Lana Schwarz who helped bring the concept of social imaginaries in blockchain research. So she was looking at the early bitcoin community and she identified something called infrastructural mutualism which is the idea that money doesn't have to come from the state but instead can be built collaboratively from the ground up. It's rooted in this ethos of open-source communities and the cyberpunk love of privacy and autonomy. But she also

observed another imaginary at play in the Bitcoin community called digital metalism which is a more individualistic uh hardline vision where Bitcoin is treated like digital gold. This one leans heavily on libertarian ideals uh which recognize value in scarcity and independence from institutions. Now, Ethereum brought a whole other imaginary into the mix known as the world computer, which was of course coined by Gavin Woods, but then it was later embraced by the Ethereum community. Now, this vision sees Ethereum not just as money, but as a global platform. It's uh it's it's a kind of like open playground where anyone can build apps and

experiment with new economic primitives and models and reimagine how we live and collaborate. Then there's the hacker engineer imaginary. This one channels the energy of hacker culture and DIY tech. So think rebellious anti-corporate and anti-serveillance. It's a reminder that blockchain didn't just spring from markets. It also carries the radical DNA of peer-to-peer networks. And so Paul Dylan Andis and his collaborators also proposed the imaginary known as productive money. So unlike Bitcoin where the ideal is to hold the uh to hoard or huddle as we say, Ethereum's native currency, Ether is always in motion. It's used to pay gas fees, secure the network, and reward

contributors. So Ether just isn't just sitting on a mattress, right? It's working. And this is where our contribution comes in. We added a new one called the infinite garden. Now this idea sees Ethereum as a living breathing ecosystem which is organic and involving and full of potential but like any garden uh it needs care and it can grow wild or grow stale and while it invites endless experimentation it also faces the risks of becoming fixed uh and less of a garden more of a monument. Uh so we'll dive deeper into the into this later, but for now just know uh it's a metaphor that captures both the hope and the tension at the heart of Ethereum's future.

So for this research uh here's our research approach. We interviewed key figures from Ethereum's core development group. And what's interesting about Ethereum core devs is that they're part of a porous group. So anyone theoretically can be a core dev through consistent contributions and there are no formal barriers. So, our interviews weren't limited to just developers. We also spoke to researchers and coordinators. Um, and here are some of the people we interviewed, including Vitalik Danny Puja Tim Alex Ben and Trent. And our interviews were semi-structured, meaning we had a set of open-ended questions that allowed for deeper exploration of topics um as they came up. Now, I don't have time to fully dive into how Ethereum governance works,

but here's a quick overview of the key stakeholders involved. So we have the core devs, the full nodes, the stakers, the media, the DAP builders and the end users. And this structure forms what we call a polyentric governance system. Essentially it means that multiple overlapping decisionmaking centers operate autonomously but interact with each other through cooperation, competition and conflict resolution. No single entity holds control but governance happens through coordination among these decentralized bodies.

So now having said all that and and doing some of the context setting for the research, I'll discuss some of the key themes that emerged. So the cyberpunk theme is one that was pretty prominent. For anyone who doesn't know, the cyberpunk movement began in the 1980s. It emerged from online hacker culture as a protest against the growing power of the state to monitor its citizens uh through digital network. So they were a group of advocates uh who um they basically uh used cryptography as a route to non-violent direct action and social and political change. So we found that uh some of these values still permeated in the worldviews or imaginaries of uh Ethereum devs. You

know, we had quotes by Ben Eddington stating things like, "We are for decentralization, we are against political control, and we are for credible neutrality and making Ethereum robust against capture in all its aspects." And so, while it's no surprise that Ethereum's roots are tied to cyberpunk ideals, what stood out in our findings is how many of the people we interviewed see themselves as part of a broader lineage of the cyberpunk heritage. Um and this traces directly back to the infrastructural mutualism social imaginary uh that's grounded in open source collaboration and decentralization.

Um so there is a deep resonance with in Ethereum core devs uh where they view their work as an extension of these cyberpunk principles and a broader historical lineage. Now, another key theme that emerged during research was conflict resolution, specifically how core devs manage differing perspective within their group and within the wider Ethereum community. So, our interviews uh took place around the time of a major Ethereum protocol upgrade known as Chappella, which went live on April 12th, 2023. And this upgrade allowed for participants in Ethereum staking uh mechanism to withdraw the ETH they had locked up during the transition from mining to

staking which was a huge milestone for the ecosystem. So many of the developers we spoke with emphasized the clarity of the decision-making process uh reflecting Ethereum's collaborative governance approach. Despite some setbacks and maybe back and forth discussions on the technical side, uh we found that the considerations were relatively straightforward as Alex Stokes put it. Um and the process was pretty streamlined. Um and Danny Ryan also reinforced that decisions were largely based on rough consensus meaning that complete agreement is not required but a general alignment is reached among participants.

And also Ben Eddington has highlighted how decisions are generally made through discussions where descending opinions are welcome and heard. You know this very much aligns with how developers work uh which is based on this pragmatic engineering ethos uh that is committed to excellency and p uh precision. Another key theme that emerged was market pressures. So one of the key research questions we had for developers was to understand the extent to which market pressures influence the decision making of core devs. And what we found was that after Ethereum's transition to staking in September uh 2022, developers did not initially prioritize enabling withdrawals of staked ETH. However,

other participants within Ethereum's polyentric ecosystem, notably stakers, media, and end users, felt that unlocking staked ease should be the top priority. And so, in response, the core devs adjusted their focus uh deprioritizing other upgrades and shifting their efforts to enable withdrawals through the Chappella upgrade because they wanted to deliver on that promise and they felt that the imperative to deliver on that commitment. Uh so we specifically found Ben Eddington's remark important because he emphasized how developers have a degree of autonomy from market pressures and they do not allow to sway them from their core mission stating mercifully we've been free of commercial pressures.

Core devs are pretty resistant to being told what to do and we will make our own minds up. Okay, that's pretty cyber punkish, right? Um okay, so now we come to the term uh infinite garden, right? Uh so this is the imaginary that we are sort of contributing to the broader literature of imaginaries. So the infinite garden this term was coined by Ayameaguchi which was the former executive director of the Ethereum foundation and it perfectly captures the essence of Ethereum's ethos in Io's own words. Uh it's described uh she describes Ethereum as uh a protocol for human coordination. Coordination is a game but not that one is played to win.

Coordination is more like tending a garden where uh one works uh only so that the garden continues to thrive. So this analogy reflects a temporal dimension to the thinking of Ethereum core devs. Social imaginaries provide a way for understanding our place in time and space among others and within history. Beginning in 2020, Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Bhutaran introduced what is often to refer to as the Ethereum road map. However, it's important to note that this road map is not an official or formal document everyone must follow. Um, so rather it correlates various long-term uh research trends of Ethereum's protocol development and the road map uh

converges towards a sort of endgame, the point where Ethereum's protocol will be so mature that it will no longer require major upgrades and its development will stabilize. So for core devs, their primary task is tending the infinite garden. And just like any infinite garden, there is always maintenance to be done. But at the same time, seeds are being planted for the long term. So you might be wondering, okay, so what infinite garden? Great. Uh what does this all mean? Okay. Well, I think this is interesting because uh while clear structures uh of processes and practices in the Ethereum exist such as EIPs, all core dev calls and research uh forums, uh we found this particularly social

imaginary important because beyond EIP1 and a readme text, Ethereum lacks a formal uh constitution or governance document. And these social imaginaries, we argue, serve as the essential enabling conditions uh for Ethereum's governance to function seamlessly. So in the absence of formal guidelines for off-chain governance, these imaginaries uh play a vital role in defending the boundaries of acceptable actions and behaviors. As a result, core devs lean heavily on these implicit imaginaries to endure um to ensure cohesion and within the Ethereum community, they guide them by fostering a shared sense of foundational values, long-term alignment, and nuanced understanding uh

of the ecosystems collective expectations, which is important for a collective without a formal hierarchy for maintaining legitimacy. which is to say also let's not overlook the role of culture in Ethereum's governance. So the infinite garden suggests an imaginary um it's an imaginary suggests a dynamic ever evolving ecosystem where growth and and and and transformation are ongoing. But a key challenge we discovered was for core devs in maintaining cyberpunk values as the ecosystem grows and these concerns reflect an underlying anxiety.

As Ethereum grows the original cyberpunk ethos could become diluted. For the core devs, this growth signals success, but it also invites the possibility of new visions of Ethereum that may diverge from the d the foundational values uh they aimed to embed into the into the protocol uh at the origins. So these are the findings of the paper. The paper is currently in publication and of course we are always happy to continue the conversation and hear out your ideas. uh feel free to reach out to me or Polar on Twitter. Um this is my uh crypto Twitter. Um and yeah uh I will now hand it off to my colleague Dr.

Paula Dylan Enis who will speak with you on the developments that occurred uh in Ethereum since this paper was written. Thank you so much.