Enhancing the democratic nature of voting processes within decentralized autonomous organizations

Paper entitled “Enhancing the democratic nature of voting processes within decentralized autonomous organizations” in Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance.

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the problem of power imbalance within decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and propose potential solutions that could contribute to enhancing the democratic nature of DAOs.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors apply a qualitative methodology. Using a thematic coding analysis, the authors process data collected from interviews with 11 experts.

Findings

Multiple factors contribute to the perceived lack of democracy within DAOs, such as token concentration and effective stakeholder communication. Next, quadratic voting has the potential to enhance democracy within DAOs, but this mechanism must be implemented mindfully. Finally, the results were nuanced when it comes to the effectiveness of liquid democracy in DAOs to enhance voter participation and representation.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first research contributions to propose recommendations to address the power imbalance within DAOs and to contribute to the advancement of decentralized decision-making structures.

Assessing the impact of network factors and Twitter data on Ethereum’s popularity

I recently published a paper entitled “Assessing the impact of network factors and Twitter data on Ethereum’s popularity” in Blockchain: Research and Applications.

Abstract. In March 2021, we witnessed a surge in Bitcoin price. The cause seemed to be a tweet by Elon Musk. Are other blockchains as sensitive to social media as Bitcoin? And more precisely, could Ethereum’s popularity be explained using social media data?

This work aims to explore the determinants of Ethereum’s popularity. We use both data from Etherscan to retrieve the relevant historic Ethereum factors and Twitter data. Our sample consists of data ranging from 2015 to 2022. We use Ordinary Least Squares to assess the relationship between these factors (Ethereum characteristics and Twitter data) and Ethereum’s popularity.

Our findings show that Ethereum’s popularity—translated here by the number of daily new addresses—is related to the following elements: the Ether (ETH) price, the transaction fees, and the polarity of tweets related to Ethereum.

The results could have multiple practical implications for both researchers and practitioners. First of all, we believe that it will enable readers to better understand the technology of Ethereum and its stake. Secondly, it will help the community identify pointers for anticipating or explaining the popularity of existing or future platforms. And finally, the results could help in understanding the factors facilitating the design of future platforms.

bouraga-ethereum-popularityDownload

Feel free to share any comment or question you might have regarding the document itself or the topic in general.

Cheers!

Sarah

Requirements Elicitation for Applications Running on a Blockchain: Preliminary Results

Poster Presentation at the CAiSE Forum 2021

Abstract. Blockchain has been one of Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for several consecutive years. The technology has evolved from a platform allowing transactions of cryptocurrency between peers (e.g. Bitcoin) to a platform allowing the design of Decentralized Applications (DApps). Despite their growing popularity, little attention has been paid to the Software Engineering aspect of DApps. In this work, we aim to start bridging this gap by addressing the Requirements Engineering of DApps. We collect, analyze and integrate DApp user reviews in order to propose a first list of user requirements for DApps. The results can have practical implications for both practitioners and researchers. The former can use the results to guide them in the design of DApps, while the latter can see this paper as a first result to build upon to advance the software engineering field of blockchain-based applications.

BRAINS 2020

The 2nd Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services took place in September 2020 (BRAINS2020) was supposed to be held in Paris, but unfortunately due to the COVID-2019 pandemic, the conference had to be held virtually.

In my very first poster session, I’ve presented the poster you can see above which focuses on the prediction of gas for transactions on Ethereum. Obviously, the conditions were not ideal for exchanges with the other attendees, but the organizers did a great job in enabling interactions despite the virtual setting.

Abstract. The author uses data about transactions onEthereum as sources for studying the relationship between thehistoric of transactions for a given address and the amountof gas consumed for a transaction. The author combines dataabout transactions, and blocks to predict the gas usage for atransaction. Specifically, how much gas will be consumed for the next transaction, given the initiator’s transaction history. The results demonstrate the value of considering the transactionhistory for gas usage predictions.

Feel free to leave any comment or question you might have regarding this poster in itself or the topic of the poster.