It’s been roughly three years since the original playbook on Progressive Decentralization was published by Jesse. His piece lays out a three step process, whereby projects first find product-market fit, gradually start to encourage community participation, and eventually distribute ownership to a community of engaged users.

In the years since, we’ve seen numerous projects execute and iterate on this playbook. Yet, best practices around specific implementation details are still emergent and evolving, and the field has become rich with new ideas. 

As such, we’ve compiled this catalog to be a go-to resource for all things progressive decentralization – spanning core concepts and key building blocks, legal theory around decentralization, all things token design, and examples of progressive decentralization in practice. 

If you have suggestions for additional pieces, please let us know.

Introduction to Progressive Decentralization

• Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications by Jesse Walden
• Deep Dive on Decentralization (video) by Jesse Walden and Robert Leshner
• Progressive decentralization: a high-level framework by Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers
• The Meaning of Decentralization by Vitalik Buterin
• Why Decentralization Matters by Chris Dixon
• DAOs are Not Corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters by Vitalik Buterin
• Crypto’s Business Model is Familiar. What Isn’t is Who Benefits by Jesse Walden
• Progressive Decentralization: From Closed to Open Network by Amy Jung
• Progressive Decentralization for Media by Li Jin
• More Than Semantics: “Crypto” vs. “Web3” is About What Will be Decentralized by Jesse Walden
• Productive Fees : Valuable Protocols / Extractive Fees : Valuable Companies by Jesse Walden 
• Past, Present, Future: From Co-ops to Cryptonetworks by Jesse Walden
• How Much is Enough? Progressive Decentralization from Layer One to DeFi (video) Mainnet 2021 panel with Eva Beylin, Alexander Filatov, Jen Senhaji, John Wu, moderated by Wilson Withiam
• The Ownership Economy 2022 by Variant Team
• What is Progressive Decentralization (podcast) by Josh Gordan and Jad Esber

Legal Theory Around Progressive Decentralization

• Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook for Web3 Builders and Lawyers by Marc Boiron
• Principles & Models of Web3 Decentralization by Miles Jenning
• Cooperatives: An Ownership Model for Digital Networks by contributors from Orrick, Upside Cooperative and KPMG
• How to pick a DAO legal entity by Miles Jenning and David Kerr
• A Legal Framework for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations by Miles Jenning and David Kerr
• Data Points to Measure Blockchain Network Centralization by Josh Garcia and Jenny Leung

All Things Tokens, Governance, and Progressive Decentralization

• Designing Governance Tokens by Alana Levin
• When to Launch a Token by Alana Levin
• The New Creator Playbook: Jumpstarting Communities through Tokens by Li Jin
• Hybrid Ownership by Caleb Shough
• Business-Governance Fit by Chris Ahn
• Token Design: Mental Models Capabilities, and Emerging Design Spaces by Eddy Lazzarin
• Progressive Decentralization and the Future of Governance (video) by Sandeep Nailwal
• Airdrop Design | Past, Present, & Future by Brian Flynn

Progressive Decentralization in Practice

• Expanding Compound Governance by Robert Leshner
• Introducing UNI (Uniswap Protocol) 
• Introducing the Optimism Collective (The Optimism Collective)
• MakerDAO Foundation Proposal (MakerDAO)
• Decentralization in Practice via The Graph (video) by Eva Beylin, Yaniv Tal
• Introducing GTC – Gitcoin’s Governance Token by Kevin Owocki
• Create the Uniswap Foundation (Uniswap Foundation)
• Open Sourcing the Flashbots Builder (Flashbots)
• Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks by Varun Srinivasan
• dYdX Full Decentralization (dYdX)

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Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any investment and should not be used in the evaluation of the merits of making any investment decision. It should not be relied upon for accounting, legal or tax advice or investment recommendations. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax, and other related matters concerning any investment. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by Variant. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, Variant has not independently verified such information. Variant makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This post reflects the current opinions of the authors and is not made on behalf of Variant or its Clients and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Variant, its General Partners, its affiliates, advisors or individuals associated with Variant. The opinions reflected herein are subject to change without being updated.