Devon Zuegel, software engineer and writer, discusses how governance experiments in smaller blockchain communities could provide lessons for traditional voting systems like the US Electoral College.
Insight
Zugal: Lack of open-source incentives drives centralization by large tech firms
“Yeah, the irony behind open source is it's supposed to be this big decentralized thing where everyone can democratically participate, but because the incentives aren't nicely tied to the contributions people make, all of the funding ends up coming from massive…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zugal: ConsenSys is virtually the only entity building Solidity developer tools
“When I, as I write Solidity smart contracts, like, the developer ecosystem is just not there at all. Like, now there's a few exceptions. Like, ConsenSys has built A lot of good tooling. But besides consensus, like, basically no one's building tools.”
Insight
Devon Zuegel: Misaligned open-source incentives cause corporate centralization
“The irony behind open source is it's supposed to be this big decentralized thing where everyone can democratically participate, but because the incentives aren't nicely tied to the contributions people make, all of the funding ends up coming from massive compa…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Devon Zuegel: ConsenSys is almost alone in building Solidity developer tools
“Like, whenever, as I write Solidity Smart Contracts, like, the developer ecosystem is just not there at all. Like, now there's a few exceptions. Like, ConsenSys has built a lot of good tooling but besides ConsenSys, like, Basically, no one's building tools.”
Assertion Partly supported
Zuegel: LinkedIn API shutdown destroyed businesses built on its data
“When LinkedIn shut down that service, just lots of businesses literally went out of business. They could not function anymore because they were based on that.”
Opinion
Zuegel: OAuth is centralized, janky, and limited by tech monopolies
“OAuth as a tool that people can use as you're building a little side project. You don't want to have to build a whole complicated login system. You plug in OAuth. This is a huge step forward, but it is not really sufficient for everything. It's Centralized. It…”