There was a safe at a place I used to work that took three keys turned at the same time. Two of the three keyholders were always in the building. The third travelled a lot. You can guess how often anything came out of that safe.
I think about those keys whenever someone proposes a new way of making decisions in a software network.
Here is the setup. A network like this is a few thousand computers all running the same rulebook. Changing the rulebook means getting people to agree, and the rules about who gets to agree are called governance. Some networks write that down formally, with foundations, councils, token votes, elected committees. Others leave it almost entirely unwritten.
When a new formal body gets proposed, it is sold on what it can do. It can fund work. It can settle disputes. It can give a voice to people who had none. Those are real gains and I do not want to wave them away.
What rarely gets counted is what it costs to agree.
Two bodies have one relationship to manage. Three bodies have three. Four have six. The work of keeping everyone lined up grows faster than the number of seats at the table, and every seat you add is one more place where a single no stops the whole thing.
The strongest case against me is this. Informal governance only looks simpler. It is unwritten, somebody still decides, and when nothing is written down that somebody is usually an insider you cannot name and cannot vote out. A formal body at least drags the decision into daylight, where you can see who blocked it and ask them why. I find that hard to argue with.
What would show me wrong: a network that adds formal decision layers and then measurably decides faster, with fewer fights about whether a decision was legitimate, over several years. Not one good quarter. A full cycle.
Bitcoin sits at the other end of this. There is no council that can change the rules and no vote that settles it. Change is slow, repetitive, and often unpleasant to watch. What you buy with that slowness is a system with nowhere to send a lobbyist. Paralysis and safety can be the same property wearing different clothes, and which word you reach for usually depends on whether you wanted the change.
if this changed how you see it, Zap ⚡
