Eric Alston on Killswitches

Eric Alston is presenting his Ethereum Foundation Summer of Protocols Fellowship research at RMIT! There are VERY LIMITED IN-PERSON NUMBERS for this hybrid event (see zoom link below).

Abstract: Human-engineered systems have long required a recursive override that prevents the unchecked execution of system procedures from resulting in undesirable outcomes. In the age of complex engineered systems whose failure can predictably harm or kill those using them, this has led to the increasingly sophisticated design of killswitches, failsafes, and overrides. Indeed, the very timing of the emergence of these words to describe the increasingly explicit systemic function is a testament to its emergence as complexity and risk in our designed machines was increasing exponentially. But killswitches’ function is longer-standing, and more central to human ordering than simply a button or trigger on a machine, despite the close connection to short-circuiting otherwise automated processes. Killswitch governance can thus range from fully automated to highly distributed, with a host of costs and benefits to each protocol specification. In a world whose organizational processes are increasingly automated and distributed, this makes the presence of killswitch protocols within complex networked organizations more relevant, although whether or not these protocols are appropriately designed and included is a separate but important question we hope to provoke with this analysis. We consider killswitches as increasingly central to protocol design due to their role in ensuring true distribution of governance authority, yet this increased prevalence will carry with it a concomitant vulnerability to special interest capture and attack.