The Shape of Protocols to Come

There were a ton of SoP events last week at Devcon in Bangkok, Thailand. It will take a little while to gather, organize, and synthesize the past month of workshops and talks, but some content is already available. This includes a keynote talk by Tim Beiko, titled The Shape of Protocols to Come, which was a program debut for the ~12,000 person audience of Devcon.

In just twenty minutes, Tim covers the history of the SoP program, key findings, and what protocol developers should keep in mind as they look toward the future. This talk provides both an excellent synthesis as well an exciting explanation of the thesis behind Summer of Protocols﹣it is an excellent entry point to this growing field of study.

Another major footprint left by SoP at Devcon was the Hardening the Commons workshop. Over three hours, participants built Capability Maturity Models (CMMs) to make sense of how to harden a particular commons. A hardened commons is robust against both internal crises of the commons and external threats. Hardness is a necessary quality, because it provides the certainty required for coordination problems to be resolved.

Each of the nine teams in the workshop created a CMM for a commons, ranging from evacuation routes to internet memory to the open-source encryption ecosystem. You can view a recording of the entire workshop, including lightning talks by Venkatesh Rao, Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Sam Chua, and Tim Beiko here.

Last but not least, Eric Alston (SoP23) gave a lightning talk where he compared the slashing penalties between different proof-of-stake networks. You can blitz through his informative, six-minute presentation here. There are sixty-five more videos, lectures, and guest talks on the Protocol Town Hall channel on YouTube, all publicly available. They're categorized into playlists like Technology, Art, Climate, Governance, and Economics. Check them out!

Last of the Summer Highlights

The Protocol Symposium's sixth and final research seminar is on protocols for prescribed woodland burns. Decades of fire suppression have turned forests from fire ecologies to fire climates. Now, all over the world, governments proactively burn flammable undergrowth to promote forest health and deter uncontrollable wildfires. However, due to tensions between stakeholders, prescribed burn targets rarely get met. This summer, Jiordi and Nathalia introduced critical improvements to California's burn protocols.

Protocols are an effective tool for managing climate problems, from floods to emissions. Jiordi and Nathalia's project seminar hits on several key tenets of protocol thinking and provides a tangible real-world example to initiate your learning path.

PILL Gallery

This week's pull from the PILL gallery includes two SoP projects and a guest feature, which was discovered at Devcon 7 in Bangkok, Thailand.

/Terminal Highway by Sachin Benny

Terminal Highway is the story of a protocol drifter who stumbles into becoming a sleuth.

"A complete refusal to see new patterns emerging anywhere seemed to be a job hazard for bureaucrats like Lorenzo. It worked in their favor most of the time."

Future Rack by Chenoe Hart

The 19-inch equipment rack format found in data centers has been used as a highly flexible technical standard since before the internet’s emergence. FutureRack is an investigation to explore an extended application for that protocol within the unexpected setting of our homes.

Protocol Art by maltefr

A provoking introductory essay to World Computer Sculpture Garden.

"Protocol art relies heavily on technical literacy and, as a result, is often perceived as hermetic. The blockchain is not a distribution channel for images but rather the material of the art itself."