Ethereum

What are some "hard power" structures in Ethereum?

1. Client implementations (execution/consensus nodes with slashing conditions)
2. Validators and restaking mechanisms (Lido, Eigen, etc.)
3. External collateral (RWA like USDC)
4. Over a longer term, funding and resource allocations (VC, grants, etc.)

Any others?

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

I consider ZK in general to be very hard power.

july

Soft power is something we can give to a person and we can take it away just as easily. We can give soft power to anyone or anything (even tea leaves!), and we can't be stopped from doing so.

Hard power is something that is held over us. It is granted without our consent. We can design social constructs, like our legal system or decentralized technologies, to democratize and restrict hard power of any one group over another.

This is the difference between me asking you for advice and choosing to listen to you, versus you holding a gun to my head and telling me what to do. They are not the same thing, and we should not conflate them.

A lot of people choosing to listen to a person they consider worthy of their trust is not the same thing as that person having hard power.

Explain? To be clear, this is what I mean by hard power:

Explain? To be clear, this is what I mean by hard power: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x915be27b

Or just generally, structures that hold hard power over Ethereum.

I don't consider fully constrained power to qualify, only power that is mutable under some conditions.

Oh I see, you mean hard power Ethereum has over its users? I was speaking more from the view of the users. "Hard power is the use of military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies."