The previous requirement #2, Toxics not welcome! left us with a dilemma. We want a community in which we can all deal with each other in a positive fashion, but we know from bitter experience that total openness leads to corruption.
So how do I exclude the criminals, but allow open entry? The trick to this is to use a self-filtering mechanism, such that the crims don’t want to be there. We do this by contract law, and specifically we set up a contract that makes them vulnerable. Actually it has to make us all vulnerable, because we don’t know who is good and who is toxic until the moment of the dread crime. So it has to be a contract that makes crime harder and valid trade easier.
It turns out, this is really easy to do in contracts because we can set up a series of costs. Now, as this is a contract of entry, and it has to be open entry, it has to be a certain special sort of contract which I’ll call a Constitution. That’s not quite correct, but this is a blog post, and we’re making our law but we’re not lawyers, if you appreciate the subtlety here :)
Requirement #3 - Constitution!
If you like my Constitution you might sign up for it, or maybe you're write a better one and I'll sign up for yours! Either way, we'll have a filtering process where we all agree on what we all think is a good Constitution for our future good trade.
On that spirited note, head on over to Requirement #4 of this Principled Approach to Blockchain Governance.