Decentralised systems promise resilience through distributed governance yet often struggle to build lasting collective intelligence. Decentralised groups can fragment when knowledge gaps emerge across generations of contributors. Rigid rituals and insider silos often undermine the flexibility needed to meet real community needs.
Interesting to note how knowledge can get lost over short bearing generations; over some years I observed the generations of sheep at a farm. One bleak autumn day, I saw the sheep running for cover as the heavens opened up. I saw them towards one of the farmhouses and was intrigued to observe them huddling against a wall which wasn’t covering much of the rainfall at all. Just three years previously, I remember the flock of sheep would go through a passage between fences to reach the barn underneath where it was dry & shielded the wind.
This swarm of wool was the same genetic group but yet all the sheep had changed as they weren’t kept beyond a few years. Within that time the collective consciousness did not remember the not-so-secret shelter.
Are teams in technology industries all that different? The sector with the largest turnover of employees of any industry: 13.2% (Xpert HR cites an even higher turnover rate of 18.3% for tech). In addition, lack of communication between employees who do not directly work with each other causes these sheep-like silos.
Until recently employees had water cooler scenarios, but in decentralised teams we have to actively create activities and meaningful experiences between employees to enable that same kind of communication.
Weak tie connections are essential for innovation because it enables employees to bounce ideas off each other—especially people who they may not necessarily like or perspectives they may not agree with. These challenges of assumptions are key to stretching ideas.
The phenomena of affecting each other in proximity can even be observed in studies of non-sentient objects. In crystallography there is a phenomenon known as Twinning where crystals affect each other in proximity. It occurs when crystal takes on the structure of another crystal grown under different conditions nearby. In ‘contact twinning’ two crystals are grown in differing conditions in close proximity to one another thus taking on a similar structure.
Today's decentralised initiatives also battle information silos and tribalism. Cypherpunk ideals have stagnated into thought leadership whilst waiting for decentralised infrastructure to be adopted. The convenience of relying on centralised infrastructure is comfortable but risks catastrophic consequences.
In October 2022, the Fantom blockchain was subject to a major exploit targeting its cross-chain bridges. The root cause behind the severity of the multichain exploit on Fantom was the ecosystem's overdependence on a single point of failure - a node personally operated by the Blockchain Founder’s own assistant. This RPC server made up 60 - 70% of chain activity.
Essentially, Fantom's technology was highly centralized around this single RPC server, which counterintuitively undermined its core promise of decentralization. This centralization introduced an immense amount of risk, making the ecosystem disproportionately vulnerable to issues with Zhaojun's private hardware alone. This led to cascading effects which expanded the damage from the multichain exploitation attacks and shattered trust in the network's security model.
No ecosystem aiming at decentralisation should depend to such extent on availability and security guarantees from a single private server controlled by one actor. This incident showed the immense risks this poses and was a stark reminder that although Fantom claimed decentralization, its bridges and activity relied largely on Zhaojun's centralized point of failure.
When we know these systems are not working, what are our options? Where do we go?
Here’s why I think we should refrain from reenacting hunter-gatherer camaraderie in primitive fire pits…
I was once in a collective of shanty-hymn singin, reiki healin’ self-proclaimed ‘Free Men’ & women. In metropolitan cities like London it’s possible to thrive off of the “ocean spray” without diving into the mundanity of bills or responsibilities.
When asked what it was like living in anarchist collectives of 30 - 50 people, I like to reference the chopping board wars between vegans and carnivores, or the daily bin bags of Gail’s Bakery breads & pastries. The 36 strategems for evading the queue of the solitary toilet. The weekly evening gathering facilitated by a talking stick passed around the circle. My guilty pleasure was to watch our Monday shanty soap-opera, which was usually a delicious, compulsive spectacle. One time we’re in the middle of the rounds when our resident spanish gardener Juan walks in to the centre of circle holding up the heads of his home-grown carrots. We look at each other.
“Which one of you ate my f*cking carrots?!”
He scowls & holds up green tufts with little carrot caps still attached. We exchange glances around the room in silence. He’d been growing them all year in his allotment-sized nursery. Juan examines each of us for signs of flinching as his silk dressing gown continues to drift open.
Ben reminds Juan that he can only talk when holding the talking-stick. Juan spins on his heel, the kimono momentarily floating up like a ballerina’s tutu. “Oh - from the guy who believes pastries are vegan?” The Oophh’s are audible.
One of our resident “Freemen” holds the walking stick above his head, “Juan can speak after I’m done, but we need to finish talking abo-”
Someone stands, “-But I was waiting before Juan!”
“I was first!” from another.
Juan is swinging his decapitated carrots and cursing in Spanish. “Which one of you ate my carrots?!”
The Freeman stands, softly pointing the stick with a jolly grin, “That’s not how it works, Juan.”
Its’s carrot vs. stick—a titan clash of compostable proportions.
A beat of silence. Juan plucks the stick from the Freeman’s hand. “I don’t give a shit about your stick. Where’s my carrots!”
“You can’t do that! By Common law, every…”
“-Says the man who declared himself legally dead?!”
At this point we all burst out laughing, goaded on by the seriousness of Juan. The (apparently) Freeman looks like a pressure cooker ready to rupture. A self-professed healer holds palms towards the sky, “Feel the love guys, feel the energy!” Chaos descends as a voice begins chanting Hare Krishna…
“Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare, Hare Krishna…”
Coup d’Carrot.
Our Oedipal clutch on the talking stick was the caricature of democratic ideals wrestling democratic form. We clung to the ritual as a symbol of inclusive participation while stifling actual collaborative decision making. Procédural ritual dance had been substituted in place of awareness & deep listening.
"Tradition is the living faith of the dead,
Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
- Jaroslav Pelikan
Just as with those soggy sheep confined by limited collective memory, we found ourselves backed foolishly against a wall by our own ritualistic ways of operating. The talking stick failed to make space for Juan’s spontaneous call for justice after months nursing his beloved crop d’la carrot. Our governance grew more focused on the talking prop itself rather than a flexible vehicle for inclusive decision-making.
Looking back to ancient tribal democratic models is impractical considering modern systems’ complexity. We cannot realistically scale collective decision making without grinding progress to a halt. Decentralising decision-making for today's intricate global supply chains and institutional interconnectivity requires accepting we cannot endlessly debate every minute detail.
“Better to do nothing than to engage in localized acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly. The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, "doing something"; academics participate in meaningless "debates," etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Those in power often prefer even "critical" participation or a critical dialogue to silence, since to engage us in such a "dialogue" ensures that our ominous passivity is broken. The "Bartlebian act" I propose is violent precisely insofar as it entails ceasing this obsessive activity-in it, violence and non-violence overlap (non-violence appears as the highest violence), likewise activity and inactivity (the most radical thing is to do nothing).”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes
Like today’s decentralised projects battling tribalism and thought silos, we discover lofty ideals don’t guarantee coherent collaboration. Decentralisation takes commitment to fluid cooperation.
Juan’s coveted carrots symbolise the very tangible collective needs that can get buried by procedural signifiers decreed to represent community. Rather than blindly flying the flag of [insert -ism or -ocracy here], Slavoj Zizek reminds us that the threat of pseudo activity is more dangerous than passivity.
We don’t have to dismiss the spirit of inclusive cooperation in those communal governance structures. Sociocracy pioneers solutions which emphasises delegation & consent over consensus. Alas, sociocratic organisations require a critical mass of participants in groups of circles, subgroups & representatives. I’ve observed sociocratic models emerge as do-ocracies in improvised grassroots environments.
Decentralised communities wrestle between structure & chaos, rules & rebellion. In them we rediscover rituals and roots that recall our wilder belonging to each other and the whole of life itself.
"No written law has ever been more binding than
unwritten custom supported by popular opinion."
- Carrie Chapman Catt”
Decentralisation’s monuments will not rise from sculpting any perfect abstraction made to impress high minds, but rather emerge organically from linked structures crafted block-by-block to welcome every individual story while keeping safe and visible the sheer breadth of their interconnectedness.
Just as those farm sheep found themselves backed foolishly against a wall in the rain, decentralised communities stand at risk of scattering when the storms hit if we do not nurture the collective intelligence to remember the pathways of our not-so-far forefathers.
We must challenge our traditions, bridge silos or watch our potential wash away.
Fin.
[Names in stories have been changed to maintain anonymity.]