Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
The core attributes of public blockchain have enabled it to function as a decentralized platform-enabled ecosystem that fuels novel products and services developed by various participants. There have been debates about how decentralized the platform governance should be in order to coordinate innovation activities. This raises an essential question regarding which governance approaches can be well suited for innovations in public blockchain ecosystems. Studying the core attributes of public blockchain ecosystems, we identify two key tensions about governance: the tension raised by the participation of multiple actors with different incentives and the tension regarding where governance is targeted to facilitate innovation. To address these tensions, we develop a two-layer conceptual framework of governance in public blockchain-enabled ecosystems and argue that the tensions can be alleviated by aligning the locus of authority and target of governance. To capture the dynamics of the governance activities, we utilize vector autoregression to test our conceptual model. Our findings reveal that decision control activities at the application layer play a critical role in influencing decision management activities at the architecture layer, highlighting the importance of distributed actors in shaping protocol evolution. We also find dynamic inter-relationships among governance activities. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Paper Number
1628
Recommended Citation
Yang, Yukun and Maruping, Likoebe M., "Modeling the Dynamics of Governance in Decentralized Public Blockchain Ecosystem" (2026). AMCIS 2026 Proceedings. 10.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2026/sig_dspe/sig_dspe/10
Modeling the Dynamics of Governance in Decentralized Public Blockchain Ecosystem
The core attributes of public blockchain have enabled it to function as a decentralized platform-enabled ecosystem that fuels novel products and services developed by various participants. There have been debates about how decentralized the platform governance should be in order to coordinate innovation activities. This raises an essential question regarding which governance approaches can be well suited for innovations in public blockchain ecosystems. Studying the core attributes of public blockchain ecosystems, we identify two key tensions about governance: the tension raised by the participation of multiple actors with different incentives and the tension regarding where governance is targeted to facilitate innovation. To address these tensions, we develop a two-layer conceptual framework of governance in public blockchain-enabled ecosystems and argue that the tensions can be alleviated by aligning the locus of authority and target of governance. To capture the dynamics of the governance activities, we utilize vector autoregression to test our conceptual model. Our findings reveal that decision control activities at the application layer play a critical role in influencing decision management activities at the architecture layer, highlighting the importance of distributed actors in shaping protocol evolution. We also find dynamic inter-relationships among governance activities. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
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