24/04/23
Hi everyone,
I’ll post updates on this thread as I work through the dissertation process.
To start, I’m excited to be working on this project. Thank you for the opportunity to research and write about this community. I really respect what I’ve seen so far, a lot of engaged and knowledgeable people working on a project they believe in.
At the moment, I’m focused on reading. The main goal is to firmly understand the current academic work on DAOs and make logical connections to other schools of thought. The most significant thing is the clear gap between DAOs and polycentric governance in the literature (with a few exceptions that you can see in my research documents). This study of Pokt represents an interesting opportunity to make a deeper connection between the two. With this angle, it means that polycentricity will be formative for developing the interview questions (more on that to come).
Speaking of interviews, I need to apply for ethical approval from the university before officially reaching out to schedule anything. Applications open in a couple of weeks but if you are interested, I would love to hear from you.
I’ve also been assigned my academic advisor, Neil Pollock. I’m excited to work with him and you can check out his profile here: Neil Pollock – University of Edinburgh Business School
You can see all my reading notes, working analysis, and planning docs here: Research Directory - Google Docs
That’s all for now, thanks for reading.
LawJammed
05/01/23
So today is the first day I can officially contact my supervisor and get the ball rolling with them. I’ve been condensing the key literature into working documentation for (1) the literature review and (2) the interviews.
This document contains key elements of polycentricity that I’ll be considering: Important elements of polycentricity from reading - Google Docs
This document contains elements from existing reading I’ve done that clearly connect blockchain to polycentricity: Blockchain clear link polycentricity - Google Docs
I won’t be explicitly sharing the prep for the interview questions as this should be done independently of Pokt. This is because there is not much point in interviewing people who’ve already seen the questions’ structure, logic, and content. It is, however, all being recorded and will be available after the fact.
To have your perspective included in the research, you can book an interview slot here: Calendly - Jamie Law
Please reach out if you have any thoughts or questions about what you’ve seen.
05/10/23
Met with my supervisor and went through the ethics process. Attached are two consent docs for participants, these can be modified to respect anon/specific data requirements of any participants. Several interviews booked already and hoping for more in the next week or two.
Here you can see my early note draft of a literature review, it’ll change dramatically over time and I’ve only covered some relevant theory so far (not DAO-specific, or context information yet): Draft Lit Review - Google Docs
Please share any thoughts or ideas, I want to engage the community as much as possible in this process.
05/30/23
Hi all, I’ve completed a fair few interviews for the process and am starting to pull together a mode of analysis to understand the data I am collecting. I’ve also had a great chat with Jack about governance in general and I met with JP Vergne a well-known academic in DAO literature who shared some new research with me that will be incredibly helpful. I’m still working towards a draft by the end of July and am enjoying the process. Any questions or thoughts, or if you’d like to be interviewed just reply here. Thanks all!