The DCF Book Club was an initiative we started with the aim of engaging with our community over the hot summer months, which most people spent on a beach somewhere with a book in hand. We wanted to spread the word about important titles exploring decentralized technologies, privacy, censorship resistance, tokenomics, while also discussing them with you. Eventually, we discovered so many new books we wanted to share with you that we decided to extend the life of the book club and turn it into a DCF tradition.
Find below the books we read and liked over 2024, as well as the books we can’t wait to read in 2025. We hope you join the club and share your thoughts on each new book we include. We guarantee they’re all worth your time!
“Plurality”
Plurality is the brainchild of Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first-ever Digital Minister, and Glen Weyl, a technologist, thought leader, and creator of the RadicalxChange movement. Both Tang and Weyl are known for their work in democratic innovation and novel approaches to civic technology and participation.
Plurality offers a new way forward for technology and democracy. The book shares the ideas that enabled Taiwan’s internationally acclaimed digital democracy to achieve inclusive, technology-fueled growth. It was written as an open-source project by a community of enthusiasts spread all around the globe, whereas the concepts behind the Plurality movement continue to evolve.
Check out this interview with Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl, where they talk about their efforts in fighting polarization, misinformation, and political apathy.
“Read Write Own”
In his book Read Write Own, Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner of VC fund a16z crypto, examines the evolution of the Internet and the shift in how we interact with digital content. The book is structured around distinguishing the differences between Web1 (read-only) and Web2 (read-write) to the emerging Web3 (read-write-own) paradigm, powered by the blockchain technology.
The book breaks down how Web3 can create more equitable opportunities for creators, enhance digital sovereignty, and shift power dynamics in favor of users rather than centralized platforms. In the Read-Write-Own era, blockchain and decentralized technologies are enabling a new model where users not only create and consume content, but also truly own it through decentralized protocols. In this Web3 model, digital assets like NFTs and decentralized applications (dApps) provide real ownership of data, creations, and assets, thus giving power back to creators and consumers.
Listen to Chris Dixon and Rick Rubin conversing about what Web3 could really mean for the future of creativity.
“Blockchain Governance”
In Blockchain Governance, three researchers join forces for a comprehensive exploration of how fundamental ideas in political and legal thought shape the governance of blockchain communities.
Have you ever wondered how decisions are made when a blockchain system faces emergency? Or whether blockchains truly are governed by the “rule of code”? Primavera de Filippi, Wessel Reijers, and Morshed Mannan answer these questions.
Here’s a seminar featuring all three authors, demonstrating how blockchain offers fertile ground for experimentation with radically new ways to govern people and institutions.
“On-chain Capital Allocation Handbook”
The last book, featured in the DCF Book Club for 2024 was On-chain Capital Allocation Handbook by Gitcoin’s Kevin Owocki. Owocki is a vocal proponent of blockchain-enhanced capital allocation models, especially when it comes to funding public goods. He’s also attempting to push mechanisms like Quadratic Funding (QF) into the mainstream by popularizing them outside the crypto space.
Supporting Web3 public goods is one of DCF’s main objectives, too. After examining various capital allocation mechanisms, like RetroPGF and QF, in our blog, we were excited to discover more through one of the pioneers in the space.
If you’re eager to learn more before diving into the book, find the recording of Kevin Owocki’s participation in the Web3 Summit 2024, where he describes the variety of funding schemes and the richness of the capital allocation design space.
Books we’re looking forward to reading in 2025
There are so many books emphasizing the value of decentralization, that we don’t know where to start. The titles we are eager to devour as soon as possible are:
- Iulia Mihailescu’s “TrustLess: Strategy Lessons from the Web3 Era”: You may not be aware, but Agoric’s VP of Marketing Iulia Mihailescu is a published author. Her book presents a profound exploration of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and the Metaverse unraveling their implications on our world.
- Lyn Alden’s “Broken Money”: This book by Lyn Alden, an equity researcher and investment strategist, offers a detailed study of the history of money through the lens of technology, showcasing what’s wrong with today’s dominant financial system.
- Steve Kaczynski & Scott Duke Kominers’ “The Everything Token”: Although the NFT craze is long behind us, there’s no denying that NFTs aren’t just pictures on the internet, but a new technology for creating digital assets and providing irrefutable proof of ownership. In this book, a career marketer and a Harvard Business School professor are joining forces to demystify the coming digital revolution, showing how NFTs will transform our online and offline interactions.
These are just a few of the titles we’re excited about, as we’re sure there will be plenty more. This is your cue to join the DCF Book Club now and become a Web3 expert in a flash. Follow our channels X, LinkedIn, and Discord to be the first to know about every new book we add to the reading list.
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