rework of a slide from the columbia CBER conference. still too much text =) ↓ Checks and balances matter in political economies. Ethereum is the only chain with this combination of affordances in the production of its shared resources: 💻 software has open + comprehensive specifications - execution + consensus specs, APIs, yellow paper - allows broader participation + constrains core devs from withholding special knowledge (intentionally or not) - anyone can make their own implementation → no single team can unilaterally make decisions which have outsized impact on the network 🌐 network has robust client diversity - +10 unique implementations used in production: this means a higher threshold for client faults to impact liveness/finality - mature, unsubsidized validator set → gives 100% uptime & healthy power distribution 💰 asset retains no special governance privileges - this means using rough consensus instead of explicit onchain feature voting - “capital as voice” is constrained - core contributors have better ability to weight the needs/priorities of all stakeholders, not just asset holders/validators (who may have a narrower set of concerns)