Legitimacy is a pattern of higher-order acceptance. An outcome in some social context is legitimate if the people in that social context broadly accept and play their part in enacting that outcome, and each individual person does so because they expect everyone else to do the same.

Legitimacy by brute force: someone convinces everyone that they are powerful enough to impose their will and resisting them will be very hard. This drives most people to submit because each person expects that everyone else will be too scared to resist as well. Legitimacy by continuity: if something was legitimate at time T, it is by default legitimate at time T+1. Legitimacy by fairness: something can become legitimate because it satisfies an intuitive notion of fairness. See also: my post on credible neutrality, though note that this is not the only kind of fairness. Legitimacy by process: if a process is legitimate, the outputs of that process gain legitimacy (eg. laws passed by democracies are sometimes described in this way). Legitimacy by performance: if the outputs of a process lead to results that satisfy people, then that process can gain legitimacy (eg. successful dictatorships are sometimes described in this way). Legitimacy by participation: if people participate in choosing an outcome, they are more likely to consider it legitimate. This is similar to fairness, but not quite: it rests on a psychological desire to be consistent with your previous actions.

Application-layer projects that support public goods in the community should get the support of the community, and this is a big deal. The example of DAI shows that this support really matters!

But this goes far beyond just Ethereum itself. NFTs are one example of a large pool of capital that depends on concepts of legitimacy. The NFT industry could be a significant boon to artists, charities and other public goods providers far beyond our own virtual corner of the world, but this outcome is not predetermined; it depends on active coordination and support

And blockchains are full of coordination games

when you dig into the nuances of what the most important thing is, it’s usually not the current tactic, but it’s actually the overall strategy. And the North Star is the thing that you need to protect

I actually think, even concepts like roadmaps and generally, plans are actually overrated. The best possible roadmap is have a very clear guide view of what matters to your merchant, have a super strong model of your own capabilities as a company. And then we run the function of deciding what is the very best thing you can work on. Every moment, you have teams ready to pick the next task instead of everyone of doggedly working off a thing that, of course, gets interrupted by reality.

In every company, there’s a founding story. Everyone gets this clear sense that, hey, the reason why we have this job, the reason why we’re on this mission, the reason why we’re doing this thing is because at some point someone took the first step, wrote the first line of code. That story is imbued in the company