Blockchain Governance and the Fourth Estate

<p>In simple terms, blockchain governance is the method by which a blockchain is maintained, managed, and improved.</p> <p>For example, deciding to change a protocol is an act of governance. So is rolling back the chain after a hack.</p> <p>Different blockchains have different governance systems, and many of them have grown and evolved in an ad-hoc manner. Some of the parties that have an influence over how the blockchain runs are: the developers, the miners, whales (people with lots of tokens), and the users.</p> <p>But there is one group that I had never thought about before, and they only came to my attention following the recent Ropsten Ethereum blockchain split, where after the London upgrade there were two chains.</p> <p>And the shorter chain with less mining effort was actually the "correct" chain (if the London update is considered correct).</p> <p>This episode is about how I realised that there is another significant group in the blockchain governance space, one that I haven't seen identified before.</p>