Technodemocracy: The Future of Governance?

Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO and author of "The Network State", presented a keynote speech titled "Technodemocracy" at the Token2049 conference on September 18th. He argued that internet-based voting governance already exists, and there are currently three types: social media voting, DAO voting, and Estonia's online national voting. The fourth stage of digital governance will be driven by cryptography, he said. The same technology used to manage Discord servers can be used to allocate DAO funds, open doors to homes, and even control drones. Technodemocratic voting can control not only digital assets but also physical entities, meaning crypto wallets could control real-world resources.

Srinivasan also highlighted examples of Technodemocracy, such as crypto-verifiable voting, streaming voting, social smart contracts, demonstrably limited government, truly global businesses, truly comprehensive candidates, and a whole new political landscape (e.g., a Martian party led by Elon Musk, or an Open Source AI party led by Donny Ak). This technodemocratic revolution will initially be entirely online, but will eventually infiltrate the fiat world.