This June, we hosted our inaugural governance and mechanism design event, GG, sponsored by Uniswap Foundation. The event took place at Edge City’s pop-up city, Edge Esmeralda, located in Healdsburg, California, marking a major milestone for our research into protocol governance.

Why GG

The protocol governance ecosystem divides into two distinct groups: those who make governance decisions and those who build the systems they use. A third group, who remain even further removed, work to establish which forms of governance produce the results society needs while another explores entirely novel ideas for collective decision-making. A key challenge in our field is that the ideas and efforts of one group often remain isolated from the other.

GG’s mission is to bridge this gap by creating physical and virtual spaces where governance folks from various fields and organizations come together. GG offers a collaborative environment for practitioners, experts, leaders, builders, researchers, and investors to coordinate their efforts.

By promoting a shared understanding of the challenges and fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, GG aims to advance mechanism design as a critical tool for addressing protocol governance issues.

What Happened

The event featured a diverse group of attendees, including governance practitioners, researchers, builders, and investors. Participants included:

• Researchers: Leading thinkers like Robin Hanson, Bo Waggoner, Jeff Strnad, and Matt Stephenson.

• Governance Experts: Representatives from Uniswap Foundation and Optimism Foundation.

• Builders: Innovators such as David Minarsch (Valory), Connor McCormick (Network Goods Institute), Matan Field (Common), David Zhou (Doxa), Paul Sengh (OpenBlockLabs), and Leo (Community Graphs).

• Ecosystem and Investors: Key figures like Juan Benet from Protocol Labs and representatives from Blockchain Capital.

The event was packed with insightful talks, fireside chats, interactive workshops, and governance-related games. Full playlist here:

What GG Means for Butter

For Butter, the success of GG represents a significant step forward in developing the MechGov (Mechanism Governance) research space.

Key achievements include:

• Strengthening Relationships: GG allowed us to forge stronger ties with fellow researchers, builders, and governance professionals.

• Building a Community: We’ve established a GG Telegram group and recently launched a research forum, which will serve as a hub for the best MechGov research and foster discussion within the broader governance community.

• Ongoing Support: Thanks to the success of GG, we received commitments to roll out governance games and to support GG events in the future.

Why We Chose Edge City

GG’s alignment with Edge Esmeralda’s mission made it a natural partnership. Edge City is committed to being a ‘society incubator’—a laboratory for experimenting with new ideas, technologies, and cultural practices that promote human flourishing. By bringing together people working in seemingly unrelated fields yet on the cutting edge of technology, science, and society, Edge City provided the ideal environment for GG to flourish.

What’s Next for GG?

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