gov/acc workshop @ EthCC (Sponsored by Octant)
This will be the first gov/acc workshop. This is not a conference - this event is meant for researchers and practioners who are actively working on advancing governance in decentralized communities. We will be a) reviewing and discussing the results from sense-making and b) form working groups to produce outlines of experiments.
Overview
The day will start with a review of problems and solutions that were generated from the Harmonica sessions, the virtual workshops, and the automated pipelines developed by the Coordination.Network team. We will also use at least one deliberative tool to get a better sense of people's thoughts.
From there will have a few lightning talks meant to inspire thinking about experiments.
The second half of the day will focus on discussing some potential experiment ideas and going into breakouts focused on the experiments.
Full Schedule
A revised schedule will be provided within a few days prior to the event, at the latest
Tentative Schedule:
10a: Doors open
10:30a: Workshop Begins
12:30p: Lunch
1:30p: Lightning Talks (5 minute presentation, group Q&A for 20 minutes after)
2:15p: Working group formation
3p-5p: Experiment design in groups
Lightning Talks
Bianca Kremer - From Book to Bot? Making DAO (Dispute) Research Actionable
Drawing on my chapter “Code, Community, and Conflict: DAO Disputes” in the newly published Oxford University Press volume Foundations of Decentralized Organizations: Blockchain and the Future of Corporate Law (Werbach, Micheler & Kremer, eds., 2026), and grounded in case studies and practitioner interviews, I share three key findings on how disputes emerge and fail to resolve in DAOs, and lay out an experimental agenda for making this research operational. The goal: move governance knowledge from the shelf to the stack.
Sam McCarthy - Looking Back to Move Forward: An Overview of the ENS DAO Retro
Given the current state of DAOs and decentralized governance, how do we improve? How do we determine what we should keep, and what needs to change?
In this talk, I’ll share a status report of the ongoing retrospective analysis of ENS DAO, including an overview of its methodology and outputs. I’ll briefly discuss the importance of mechanisms, such as retros, not only in bringing more accountability to DAO spending, but developing clear datasets DAOs can use to experiment, build, and improve upon. As a first in both scale and ecosystem importance, the ENS retro should set a precent other DAOs can follow to ensure we continue moving forward together.
Jan Droll - Who Should Represent Me? Towards Inclusive Community Representation.
Voter apathy of 99% compromises decentralization in DAO governance. While delegation aims to address this issue, users lack guidance in selecting appropriate delegates. In my talk, I present a delegation dashboard prototype that suggests delegates to users using similarity metrics and discuss its current limitations, outlining a framework and future directions to increase participation in DAO governance.
Jeffrey McLarty - Announcing: The Novo Origo Prize
What if a truly decentralized network emerged now, what would ideal governance look like? Imagine, no existing foundation, lab, dao...no committees or elected humans! Agora is launching a contest to imagine exactly this.
Sponsors
Thank you to Octant for sponsoring the event, and to Metagov and the Ethereum Foundation's Academic Secretariat for funding the initial gov/acc activities!