Referring to this meeting (tweet), "Does #BitcoinCash Need Governance?" This summary is strongly influenced by my own views but I think it is not far from a summary of the discussion. Sorry if I missed important details.
The market decides.
The market makes the final decision but that's far too late and reactionary for difficult issues. Any difficult issues will have caused a damaging loss of network effect by the time the market is forced to make a hard choice.
Futures markets are a powerful signal and can help. However in the absence of clearer consensus, they may end up being Keynesian Beauty Contests where the market convenes on the winner rather than convening on the best future outcome. In other words, they are not enough alone.
Miners decide. Stakeholders provide clarity.
Miners have a unique position in BCH to enforce rules and incentives with Proof of Work (POW). When there are difficult issues, stakeholders must make sure that miners have clear and convergent information from the whole ecosystem including other miners (e.g. through BMP). Then miners can be well informed for their POW decisions and the BCH network can continuously build network effect in a predictable environment instead of shedding it with regular conflict.
How to provide clarity?
What we need then are mechanisms to help the ecosystem converge on issues long before they become emergencies at the center of a split. Workable options are BMP, polling through liquid democracy, coin staking, and certainly more. It sounds like a number of people at the meeting have such mechanisms ready to publish. Some of my colleagues and I also have one.
No coercive decision makers.
Importantly, these mechanisms cannot be coercive. Coercive decisions from dictators, foundations or voting institutions will eventually interfere with POW and
risk damaging the properties that make BCH unique and valuable, especially permissionless participation and censorship resistance.
Looking forward to these historical moves in the near future.
Perfect one 👍