A Plurality Atlas

Who is Petar Maymounkov?

The engineer who handled the technical side of Gov4Git (later GitRules) and the Plural Management Protocol, the systems used to write and run the book *Plurality* with many contributors. At the time, Maymounkov was a researcher at Protocol Labs, the technology partner of the book project.

The book Plurality was not written by its two main authors alone. Dozens of people took part, and who wrote what, and which edits to accept, were decided together as the book was made. This is one of the engineers who built the "tools" for making those decisions.

In short

Petar Maymounkov is one of the engineers who built a tool called Gov4Git, and was in charge of its technical side [1][2].

Gov4Git is a tool for running a collaborative project that anyone can join (open source) on top of git, including "who decides what". Git is a tool that records the history of changes to text and programs [1][2]. The book Plurality was written by dozens of people besides its two main authors, and this system was used to prioritize the work, decide whether to accept contributions, and record contributions [3][4][5]. → Gov4Git (GitRules)

Connection to Plurality

A "Technical" contributor to the book. The book records its contributors in the "⿻ credits". Maymounkov is listed second in the "Technical" category [6].

How Maymounkov got involved. On a 2023 Microsoft Research podcast, Maymounkov described having worked at Protocol Labs for about three and a half years. For the first few years, as an engineer in decentralized development, Maymounkov saw what worked and what needed improving. That led to working on problems of governance, and in researching them, Maymounkov came across the work of Glen Weyl. The "plurality book" that Weyl was about to start, Maymounkov said, gave the work a concrete problem to take shape around. The program gives Maymounkov's title as Research Scientist at Protocol Labs [1].

Protocol Labs' partnership with the book project. On September 15, 2022, Protocol Labs announced that, as the technology partner of the book project, it would work with Weyl and Audrey Tang to build "Governance for Git" [7].

An article introducing Gov4Git. On March 19, 2023, Maymounkov, Weyl and Kasia Sitkiewicz (GitHub) wrote the Microsoft Research article "Gov4git: A Decentralized Platform for Community Governance". It explains that Microsoft Research and Protocol Labs are jointly building a system that runs on git and has blockchain-like transparency and decentralization without relying on costly means [2].

The PMP overview. The GitHub issue #333, "Gov4Git and the Plural Management Protocol overview" (February 26, 2024), was posted by Maymounkov (petar) [4]. Chapter 5-7 of the book links to this issue as "the Plural Management Protocol we used to create this book" [5]. → Plural Management Protocol

The paper "Plural Management". Co-written by Tobin South, Leon Erichsen, Shrey Jain, Maymounkov, Scott Moore and Weyl (January 2024). Chapter 5-0 of the book cites it in a footnote [8][9].

Main ideas

Governance is "trusted computation". On the podcast, Maymounkov explained that from the point of view of computer science, governance means the same thing as trusted computation: the rules of governance exist as a published program, and members of the community can verify that it is being executed as promised [1].

Today's blockchains have not caught up with their ambitions. On the same program, Maymounkov said that today's blockchain technology is promising but has, for now, spread its ambitions too wide to deliver on them fully (though it will probably deliver eventually). On top of git, the point was, similar guarantees can be had more easily [1].

The Plural Management Protocol. According to issue #333, the system works as follows [4].

  1. Contributors receive "Plural credits", marks of contribution that cannot be transferred to others. They cannot be sold
  2. Credits are used to set the priority of GitHub issues (work to be done). The method is a kind of Quadratic Funding
  3. Whoever resolves a high-priority issue is paid credits according to its priority
  4. Whether to accept a PR (a contribution) is decided by Quadratic Voting, in which the cost rises with the square of the number of votes

Keeping the ledger by copying it in git. Issue #333 explains that the Gov4Git ledger is copied not onto a blockchain but into every member's git repository. Unlike ordinary blockchains, it includes no financial rewards. Members copy the ledger for the same reason they copy git code: to take part in the community [4].

According to the records of the Japanese translation community, by April 2024 the word "Gov4Git" in the text had been replaced by "GitRules" [10].

What is debated

Further reading

  1. Collaborators: Gov4git with Petar Maymounkov and Kasia Sitkiewicz (English, podcast, 2023-05-03) — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/podcast/collaborators-gov4git-with-kasia-sitkiewicz-and-petar-maymounkov/
  2. Gov4git: A Decentralized Platform for Community Governance (English, article, 2023-03-19) — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/gov4git-a-decentralized-platform-for-community-governance/
  3. Plurality, 5-7 "Social Markets", the item on "⿻ management" (English, book) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/
  4. Issue #333, Gov4Git and the Plural Management Protocol overview (English, explainer, 2024-02-26) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/333
  5. The Governance for git whitepaper (English, technical document) — https://github.com/gov4git/doc/blob/main/whitepaper/whitepaper.md
  6. The paper "Plural Management" (English, paper, 2024) — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4688040

Sources

  1. Microsoft Research Podcast, "Collaborators: Gov4git with Kasia Sitkiewicz and Petar Maymounkov" (2023-05-03) — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/podcast/collaborators-gov4git-with-kasia-sitkiewicz-and-petar-maymounkov/
  2. Weyl, Sitkiewicz and Maymounkov, "Gov4git: A Decentralized Platform for Community Governance" (2023-03-19) — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/gov4git-a-decentralized-platform-for-community-governance/
  3. Plurality, "About the authors" — https://www.plurality.net/
  4. pluralitybook/plurality issue #333 (2024-02-26) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/333 ［CC0］
  5. Plurality, 5-7 "Social Markets" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/ ［CC0］
  6. Plurality, ⿻ credits — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/0-3/eng/ ［CC0］
  7. Protocol Labs, "Protocol Labs partners with the Plurality Book Project to build Governance for Git" (2022-09-15) — https://pl.xyz/blog/protocol-labs-and-plurality-book/
  8. South, Erichsen, Jain, Maymounkov, Moore and Weyl, "Plural Management" (SSRN, 2024-01-09) — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4688040
  9. Plurality, 5-0 "Collaborative Technology and Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-0/eng/ ［CC0］
  10. plurality-japanese, "Gov4GitはGitRulesになりました" (Gov4Git has become GitRules) (2024-04-10, in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/Gov4Git%E3%81%AFGitRules%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F
  11. pluralitybook/plurality issue #1071 (2025-03-14) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/1071
Related: What is the Plural Management Protocol (PMP)? ・ What is Gov4Git (GitRules)? ・ What are ⿻ credits (Plural credits)? ・ What is Quadratic Funding? ・ What is Quadratic Voting? ・ Who is E. Glen Weyl? ・ Who is Audrey Tang?

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