Updated: January 15, 2025

A Unique Cultural Setting

In January 2025, I attended the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) for the first time. Before, I have visited large academic events in the continental US. But due to the breathtaking scenery (photos justify this statement) and atmosphere of the Hawaiian islands, HICSS makes a unique, lasting impression and provides both an enriching academic and cultural experience. I describe what I mean below.

Academic Excellence and Engaging Discussions

HICSS stands out for its thoughtfully curated presentations and diverse range of tracks. The conference consists of a plethora of authorship mini-tracks, which are owned by scholars deeply invested in the topics. So, it makes an impression on the corpora of smaller mini-communities who gather once a year to discuss the topics they are passionate about. Because of such deep engagement of track organizers, the paper presentation is highly curated, and you have a chance to receive focused feedback. (Due to the timing and the accessibility of the event, both geographically and economically, the volume of submissions is not overwhelming, which contributes to the more detailed inspection of each submitted work as well.) 

Continuing this, one of the conference's key strengths is the opportunity to engage with senior scholars and receive valuable feedback. Many sessions are chaired and attended by senior researchers, which fosters in-depth discussions of the presentations. For example, in one session, the track chair provided insightful reflections on why each paper was accepted, similar to an editor evaluating novel contributions. I haven't encountered such justification for acceptance experience in any prior events. 

Effective Networking and Interdisciplinary Learning

The relatively small size of the conference makes networking highly effective. I had the chance to meet scholars whose work I have read in IS journals but had never interacted with before, as well as reconnect with old academic friends. The chamber format of the event also suggests that you probably won't meet All of your favorite researchers in the same year. 

Additionally, HICSS's international and interdisciplinary nature makes it an excellent venue for learning about topics adjacent to one's primary research interests. For example, through the presentations I attended, I gained new insights into the digital twins research (kudos to Filippo Sanfilippo, University of Agder) and trust theory (shoutout to the "Advances in Trust Research" mini-track by Sirkka Jarvenpaa, Gene Alarcon, Kirsimarja Blomqvist, and Mareike Möhlmann).

I had been aware of the conference for many years, and after receiving two years of invitations from Ola Henfridsson to submit to the "Web3 Technologies for Digital Innovation and Transformation" mini-track, I made a resolution to attend the event. Below, I briefly discuss the summary of my presentation. The full conference paper can be accessed via the link:  https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/514b60e3-ae77-49d8-9270-5798e441be0e/content. 

What Was My Presentation About

At HICSS, I presented my ongoing research with Jiasun Li on decentralization in blockchain open-source software development. This line of my work sheds light on the development layer of blockchain organizations and investigates how blockchain projects are actually governed and maintained in practice. The motivation for this work comes from the open-source software (OSS) development roots of the blockchain technology and intends to draw parallels between OSS and blockchain phenomena as they are both often framed as decentralized and community-driven.

I began my presentation with a recent case involving ConsenSys and the SEC, where Ethereum’s decentralized developer community became a key legal argument. The link here is that sufficient decentralization in the software development layer became determining in the classification of the tokens as NOT investment contracts. This case highlighted how OSS development governance, often in the background of most blockchain narratives, can have real-world legal and organizational implications. To what extent is it truly decentralized? My research brings some further evidence.

Using data from GitHub contributions to blockchain projects, the study examines the distribution of effort among the developer community. In Ethereum, for example, less than 1% of developers contribute 63% of activity, and the Gini coefficient of this distribution is 0.84, indicating a highly unequal contribution pattern. While this pattern isn't unique to Ethereum or blockchain and reflects broader trends in open-source development, one may also consider the income distribution Gini index of Venezuela, which was 0.51 in 2023, and how it influences economists' views on the decentralization of national wealth. (I brought up the US income distribution index in the presentation, which is 0.418 in 2023, according to the World Bank). Concentrated code development may have several implications: first, the higher concentration of activity among the small group of developers creates an existential concern that once they lose motivation, there will be no one willing or able to continue their work; and second, these developers have ultimate control over the code that powers the developed financial infrastructure and economic system of Web3. While these risks are not necessarily guaranteed to materialize, the mere existence of the possibility spikes my interest in exploring the other forces that mitigate these risks.

Despite having such concentrated activity patterns of code development, there is no evidence of any violations by incumbent project developers. Beyond being an open space for voluntary code contributions, open-source is a strategy that sponsoring organizations pursue, with specific objectives, even if the primary aim is to create a public good. Therefore, I am attempting to identify the key factors driving the OSS blockchain movement, which may lead to distinct patterns of OSS development in both the short- and long-term. My framework suggests two factors pertinent to the setting: 

1. Governance: Whether the project is governed by an institutionalized entity, like a non-profit foundation or a for-profit firm, and

2. Funding: Whether the project is associated with a free-floating public token with market value 

Unlike the dominant view in the academic literature of the 2000s that OSS projects rely on voluntary, intrinsically motivated contributions, our research shows that this condition is not the only one that holds true. Many leading projects are tied to foundations and public tokens, which introduce extrinsic motivations for developers. For example, the presence of an institution like a non-profit creates a reputational benefit and sometimes salary expectations. The token availability creates the return opportunities from one's own effort contributed to the project. The two outlined major factors have not been systematically linked to the OSS innovation and participation outcomes in the prior research, and our study aims to do so. 

To capture participation and innovation, I am experimenting with metrics like the daily activity per developer (engagement) and the rate of innovation (e.g., commits over forks and watches). To be fair, there is no consensus in the literature on what metrics to choose to measure the sustainability of OSS development. Hence, the offered ratios are a sheer trial to select something sensible. My biggest ambition for this work is to be able to include data on over 6,000 projects representing a particular domain of one emerging technology with sufficient heterogeneity in governance and funding types, as well as contribution patterns. My Digital Research Asset Lab is currently working on scaling solutions for determining the values of categorical variables with intelligent generative technologies. 

The primary evidence suggests that the projects with institutional presence demonstrate higher engagement and innovation rates. Token on its own increases participation, not innovation. This evidence drives the motivation to test the hypotheses further using the larger set of data. 

Overall, the existing ambiguity between the decentralization narrative and the evidence of concentration of effort (and power of change) over technological development raises multiple questions: How do we define decentralization? What do we consider decentralized projects? Does the centralized effort help project sustainability? What are the incentives and mechanisms to decentralize effort? And what is enough evidence of development decentralization to be used in court?

Bottomline

I greatly benefited from the thoughtful feedback I received during the mini-track session, especially regarding how we define meaningful participation and differentiate types of contributions. These conversations helped me think deeper into the framing of the research question and avoid unnecessary "sensationalism." Further, they strengthened my intent to pursue empirical scalability to test the evidentiary hypotheses using large-scale data and inform the new generation of organizational and OSS researchers of the effects of decentralization on the dynamics of blockchain development.