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May 13, 2026
Chris McCoy

Distributed Governance in Production: A Field Record

Nine years, 126 governors, 30 countries, $30 million governed. What the operating record shows, and what it cannot.

Summary

Across 126 governors operating in 30 countries, a governance system built on a two thirds consensus threshold processed decisions over $30 million in assets with zero constitutional violations. This note documents the operating conditions and what they suggest about threshold design in distributed governance.

The threshold

The system requires two thirds agreement for consequential decisions and caps any single participant below one third of governance weight. Below one third adversarial participation, a distributed system can self correct. Above it, it cannot.

Operating record

The production period covers multiple years of continuous operation. Governor turnover occurred without loss of continuity. No single participant approached the one third ceiling at any point.

What the record does not show

Zero violations under these conditions is not proof that violations are impossible. The system has not been tested under coordinated adversarial pressure at scale, and the participant pool was self selected. These are real limits on what can be concluded.

Open questions

Whether the threshold holds as participant count grows by an order of magnitude remains untested. So does behaviour under conditions where participants have strong incentives to collude.