Blockchain Ethics: Ethereum, Web3, and Decentralized Morality with Reuben Youngblom
As blockchain becomes more impactful in the world, our obligation to make sure that we are proceeding in a responsible manner increases. But what does a responsible future look like? In order to help answer this question, my talk will dive into the history of ethical issues within Ethereum (for example, the tensions between personal liberty and harmful actions, or "code is law" violations) and use these as a foundation to present one way (a more formal way) of considering these issues. Then, following in the footsteps of, e.g., bioethics or AI ethics, I'll share a framework for "blockchain ethics" before ending with a note on the future of ethics and responsibility in the Ethereum ecosystem.
/ cryptoeconsys
Reuben Youngblom
Researcher / Lecturer
Stanford / MIT
I am a blockchain researcher with a dual appointment at Stanford and MIT. My research at MIT focuses on MEV and the environmental impacts of cryptocurrencies (although I also run our peer-reviewed blockchain journal), and my work at Stanford mostly focuses on policy and regulation. I also teach a class at Stanford on introductory Ethereum development (we build dApps and will be diving deep into the PoS consensus mechanism this term), and I'm co-teaching a class on DAOs next quarter. Beyond my current work, I've been working with blockchain/crypto since 2016 and started actively doing Ethereum development in 2017. Since then, I've (co)founded 5+ Ethereum-based projects (none of which have been particularly successful, and only one of which is still active), been a mentor for several organizations attempting to bring more women and other marginalized people into the blockchain world (She256, Des Femmes, etc.), and just generally participated in a lot of Ethereum ecosystem-building (I've contributed to a ton of DAOs, I was part of the genesis block of Gitcoin's Kernel program, etc.). In short, I've spent the last ~7 years focused entirely on the blockchain space and mostly on Ethereum, and I would love to contribute to EthDenver this year.