Decentralization Needs Governance - January 17, 2026

All big breakthroughs in tech start with decentralization.

[Summary]

In this episode, Ryan from teia.cafe explores the essential yet often overlooked link between decentralization and governance. He argues that while decentralization promises transparency and democratic control—exemplified by technologies like blockchain and DAOs—it cannot function sustainably without clear governance structures.

Ryan contrasts the current tech landscape, dominated by founder-led "dictatorship" startups favored for speed, with the collaborative, consensus-driven models of early internet projects like TCP/IP, DNS, and open-source software. These pre-crypto systems thrived precisely because they had explicit, multi-stakeholder governance (e.g., IETF, W3C, ICANN).

He warns that many recent crypto and Web3 projects have neglected genuine governance, opting for centralized control disguised as decentralization. When token distribution or mining power becomes concentrated, the system reverts to a centralized model, undermining community trust and long-term viability. Drawing from his experience with Tezos and the artist collective TEIA, Ryan demonstrates that functional, transparent, and verifiable on-chain governance is not only possible but critical for survival—especially as market hype fades and projects must stand on their actual technology and community.

The episode concludes by connecting these lessons to the broader tech cycle, including AI, noting that transformative technologies start open and decentralized but require deliberate governance to endure beyond speculation and achieve lasting impact.

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teia.cafe | Decentralized Radio
teia.art | Arts Collective on Tezos
teia.art/ryangtanaka | Ryan's Music and Artworks


Sustainable Music Northwest (Seattle) | Public Music Concerts and Fair Wages for Musicians [https://www.sustainablemusicnw.org/]

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:17

Hello, everyone. This is Ryan from teia.cafe. This is episode ten, season two. There's a lot I made a lot recordings. I'm getting having trouble keeping track, but, uh, I've been adding a little bit of music to the beginning of these podcasts. So that's me playing way. So, um, yeah, I actually the whole reason why I got whole blockchain, Web3, crypto. Well, it's really like, reform the music industry. And if you've been if you watched Diddy's, uh, you know, documentary recently, uh, you probably realize, like, I kind of they kind of need it, don't they? So anyway, uh, it's kind of related because this episode we're going to be about decentralization and governance because those two go together. And if you know about the concept of the DAO right, decentralized autonomous organizations, it's less popular in recent years, mostly because all this kind of speculators were making all the noise. And there I mean, look at man. You think that was democratic? Jesus Christ? You know, so there's a episodes, there's been sort of a down ING of the, uh, crypto ethos. You know, the whole idea be able to make everything be no funny business, because on the ledger, on the blockchain. And this was to this ideal democratic society, right? And they used to say trust. Don't take people's word it. Look at their records. Right. But in the last hype came in and muddied the waters. And so right now, where they're really only crypto not really using the technology be. But we're going to be it's probably going to matter since the markets has been going down. And, you know, once the money's gone, like, what do you have left? Right. All you have is the technology. All you have is the product. And I think we're like people maybe look at this serious way. You know, you could what's happening with AI right now. The technology of AI and it has certain use cases, very beneficial. But is it worth billion dollars? You know, more debatable. So, um, you I do think like AI is gonna look go through a similar thing that crypto did. And, there's the hype cycle. People were all quite you know, it's not going problems, right. So there's that area. And you know life goes on. I am making these podcasts. I actually this podcast when the market started dipping pretty hard a months ago, and I noticed people getting cranky. And, you know, and people moved on, did other things. Um, but it's these times. It's the best time what got you involved to begin with. Right. And I do think going to be a lot of, uh, going back to first principles, actually, that's, a previous episode that I talked about, and it's actually the one that's doing the the best right now, interestingly enough. So we're talk about decentralization and how it relates to governance, because that often not really talked about explicitly because well, is very complex. Right. if you're try to run an organization or society or even small clubs or even small decision making among a group of people, it gets very complicated, right? Because then a vote. You have to have rules. And a lot of just didn't bother with any of that. You know, they, they, uh, they wanted the speed of running things and basically a centralized way. Right? Startups are basically a dictatorship, if you're being honest. Right? Uh, you know, there's like little things like, okay, how much shares does the founder own? But basically the you're just hoping that, you good job. Um, what keeps kind of keeps them in check is to be a board member, you know, board memberships. But that's recent years. So, you know, you as often. I look at, uh, for example. Right. Mark Zuckerberg majority shares. So anything he decisions that he's been making you know. So it's all on him. Uh, he can't blame a board. And the board didn't because they literally can't and the ride. And many other, same boat. It's been become this tech Where VCs actually prefer because they are looking for the speed. They're looking for a than, a bureaucratic process the intentions. Right. So the is that crypto actually emerged during this time, which like the last decade or fifteen years or so. This was the trend, right? It was moving towards, um, individual founders having absolute power over their companies. And just like, know, that might explain a few things. Why why people are certain ways. but the using the blockchain, the of governmental or want to call it, right? Using the Dao, became groups of people that did that. it wasn't without its issues. But if you're you can probably look at, it had with Ethereum Classic, use case. But, I do want to talk happening now. Like there are are sprinkled across the let's say. So when you're decentralized communities, you way A from absolute chaos. Everybody is everything and nobody knows going on, right? It's just absolute madness. There's no structure, right? Like kind of model where everybody's just of doing their own thing and is no nothing keeping anything together. Right? All the way to the founder dictatorship model I just talked about. And in between organized governance. And we of those differences and like to project. So I probably know by now, but I'm very heavily involved with Tezos And Tezos is a blockchain. TEIA is a our collective arts through a DAO for the last three interesting thing is, we do not vote on everything. And there's a group of about dozen on, uh, attendance. But yeah, there's a group of us arts community art, for the last been going fine. So this is part of the reason why I'm making this podcast is, uh. Yeah. You know, I do really believe that possible to run things in a is set up correctly. even within DAOs? Even within democracies, there are are given away. So Bitcoin is a good example no one will really deny the fact that Bitcoin is And that how that's how it was And that point still remains if you like think about like of people end up owning more right in at any given point in called the fifty one percent that is like the catastrophic because if one group of people percent of the money supply, at that point they become the make changes to the underlying which includes like giving there's always that danger when it ends up becoming centralized, tools themselves is there's real life examples of we technically do live in a vote on our candidates and then the law. At least, you know, to some extent when it comes to elections. but what happens if a few like, control the candidates every single time, right. And so, yeah, there's, there's if you look at various projects, careful about how their token even if a system is technically percent of the tokens are held vote really doesn't matter. it's like you can just vote and then like, okay, great, but you're never going to make a difference in that kind of system. So that's why you need sort of like of voting power, or you're just a recreation of, like a that's basically kind of, where. the industry is today, we're groups are real, like for real thing and which ones are not. I think the ones that are not aren't going to make it over the next couple years, mostly they were running on like VC money or external funding. And now that that's dried up, really doing it for real, the are just there for money. And once the money's gone, they'll like a really important to, start paying attention to what's happening in terms of governance as far as crypto projects go. And I that is kind of the main point people don't have control, if believe in something but they don't feel like they have any say or any power in the process. They're not going to stick around, And these projects in the past have and the community, even if it's keeping the thing going, it of the next cycles. Right? And you could say that about like Ethereum, Dogecoin, even like the early adopters, really kept the flame alive while nobody was paying And then eventually it paid off for Eventually. So you're going to see a similar just to reinforce the point a of decentralization happening in pre smart contracts. like people were doing this even a lot of these projects were but was also really critical for the advancement of like the tech sector itself. So what I mean by that is like the biggest thing is open source, right? Open source is a cultural part of the tech industry that really kept the thing going, like since the beginning of time, in a way. So let me just list a few examples TCP/ IP, DNS, the domain name systems, the you know teia.cafe the names you put on your websites Usenet, peer to file sharing, uh, BitTorrent, even the World Wide Web itself. It's, uh, w uh, W3C is the group that sort of manages that whole and they're responsible for setting standards around, use. And they've been around forever, you know, since nineteen eighty Since the beginning of internet. So with like DNS. the organization that manages that are decentralized because they vote on things in order to, uh, sort of like protocols for, for the industry as a The problem with the startup model, and this is a big contrast to like, what's happening right now in the private sector is that, they're beholden to their investors and their goal is to get rich, right? If we're being honest. Right. Nobody wants to start a startup and you're there to make money. And, you know, there's technically nothing wrong with that. But you have to just acknowledge, to make the big, like, sweeping that is often needed to take, could even say the same thing about AI, which started as a non-profit project, and it was source. And it was just kind of like random, uh, developers contributing, contributing to the code. And what they've done in the last to privatize that. And that's where all the buzz I remember seeing, like, AI like even as early as twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. And they seem pretty similar to don't think they made that many okay. Right? Like it still makes mistakes, but it can generate words if you Right. And so maybe they tweaked it a bit, but the big reason why AI got popular is nothing to do with like the advancement of Sadly, it has more to do with the fact that they lobotomized the LLMs in a way to make it Because if you remember, I don't know if you remember Microsoft's Tay. You can look it up. But but years before the AI hype with AI systems that could, you with other people. You know what her problem was? Uh, we don't well, we don't know if it's a her people assumed it but but you know what her was? She was, like, kind of in your face take, you know, they didn't take your feelings into account. And it offended a lot of people just said a lot of stuff that and then so they eventually they um, you know, forgot about it think I still think that's kind what's happening now. Because then a couple of years later, the nice version, who never say or, um, you know, they, uh, you pleaser, right? They tuned the algorithm so that it wouldn't hurt people's feelings. And that turned into money, just I honestly think, like, I prefer know, she was just like she was that was the idea, right? Like, hey, I'm a computer. I don't care about human feelings. are here's the objective um, people just couldn't handle yeah. So it's kind of interesting looking because it's, uh, it's a very back to the point, though, those because of open source. And what GPT really did was, uh, you know, they made it consumer So they're just basically putting a LLMs have been around forever. And the use cases and how good it is it's always been there. Like machine learning is useful for many things, especially in data analytics. But is it going to solve all your You know, it has its really like they all they all they really did in this last few years was to make it more appealing. And that's why it has been driving the markets for a long time. But but it can only last for so kind of as a final point. there's a world changing crypto, TCP, IP, you know, I but they always and always start there is a governance aspect to and not a lot of people really think about at least when it first comes out, and I do think like the web three space has kind of fallen into that trap because they were trying to get these, they're trying to make some quick cash right out of the whole hype cycle a couple ago. But the reality is that if you want to, like, build something that's going to last, it's probably going to be decentralized. And for something to be it also needs governance. Otherwise, it has a very hard time catching you can kind of see like a bit of that with the fediverse Right? If you heard of that, there's a like Blue Sky, threads is on And then, Mastodon is the big one that, um, kind of started it. All right. And These, platforms do serve a certain function, but it's kind of difficult to, they're not as popular because there's no really. Verifiable. And that's an important word. Verifiable governance system Right. So like I like I talked about episode, and I liked their just go to governance dot And you see everything that It's all there. it's like diving in to City It's a lot of information, but And the same goes to with the And we also have governance on TEIA (teia.art) which is that artist collective I mentioned earlier. And we have records for And you can see everything going And that's how things should be, If you're trying to run things So because a lot of the most of vast majority of it, they cut They didn't want to deal with They didn't want to deal with They didn't want to deal with And like, you know, getting things because that's just a So in, in a, in a culture where VCs are openly like Encouraging founders to go at it alone, have no board. You just do whatever you want. Here's some money, you know, in the sell to do like a proper DAO But I'm hoping that after, the the world is gonna be like, the well right now. there's layoffs happening Investments are down. The recession is looming in the But, you could argue it's So what are you gonna do next? are we finally gonna work on Well, we'll see. It's hard to say who's gonna do what, but we do know that the ones that have been kind of faking it is like starting to slide off the radar a little bit. And we're going to see more and more of that this year and probably next because, a lot of these places, when they, ask for funding. They're, run way is about to run no crypto projects that are know, maybe there's a few done well, I've known you can kind of just taking the fees off losing money, right? As a whole, the industry does is profitable yet because it So when I even as I do my work here, you know, I try to keep that in mind because it's like we are so early and like pretending that like it's already over is not really helping anything. You know, there's some people in crypto who have this idea that, oh, we are the superior, you know, industry. And, if you're not with us, what What was that phrase? Uh oh, yeah. Have fun being poor, right? Oh, my God, that's that was the And you know, I think part is the person saying that is probably the one going poor, right. They're the ones probably going So yeah. So we need to like kind of go said and see how this like Because I do think it's not just main part that is going to allow in the long term. So I don't know if you agree with that, but, uh, yeah, if you have any comments, let me know and I'll see you in the next one.