Quinn DuPont, PhD

Biography

Quinn DuPont is an information scientist, digital farmer, public speaker, and author, with subject matter expertise in infosec, crypto, and social and human behaviour. He has a PhD in Information Science from the University of Toronto and has worked in risk management, fintech, and information security.

He is the author of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains (Polity 2019) and Defining Web3 (Springer, 2024), Associate Editor, Frontiers in Blockchains; Research Fellow at University College London, Center for Blockchain Technologies; and Affiliate at The Future of Money Research Collaborative.

He has held research and teaching positions at York University (Schulich School of Business), University of British Columbia (Information Science), University College Dublin (School of Business), University of Washington (Information Science) Rutgers University (Digital Media), Leuphana University (Digital Cultures Research Lab), University of Victoria (Electronic Textual Cultures Lab), and Dalhousie University (Faculty of Management). His multidisciplinary writing has been published in journals such as First Monday, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, Global Policy, Metaphilosophy, amodern, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice, and other venues.

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Books

Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains (Polity Press, 2019)
Defining Web3: A Guide to the New Cultural Economy (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, no. 89, Emerald, 2024)
Making New Money: How autonomous communities produce and govern cryptocurrencies (in progress)

I carefully deflate the tarball tar zxvf bitcoin-0.1.0.tgz and Satoshi Nakamoto's bits spill across my terminal. BitCoin v0.01 ALPHA... Bitcoin is an electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority. Decades later the relic is reborn and I can feel the faintest trace of Nakamoto's Windows XP compiler. I look closer and see a half-built market.cpp filled with long forgotten products, users and adverts. I cat irc.cpp and Nakamoto's primitive system beacons me Send(hSocket, "JOIN #bitcoin\r"). It takes wild ambition to make new money. But more importantly, how did a few thousand lines of C++ code usurp such a colossal power?

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Recent Research

Github
New Online Communities: Graph Deep Learning on Anonymous Voting Networks to Identify Sybils in Polycentric Governance (preprint on ArXiv) (Github)

This research examines the polycentric governance of digital assets in blockchain-based Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). It offers a theoretical framework and addresses a critical challenge facing decentralized governance by developing a method to identify Sybils, or spurious identities. Sybils pose significant organizational sustainability threats to DAOs and other, commons-based online communities, and threat models are identified. The experimental method uses an autoencoder architecture and graph deep learning techniques to identify Sybil activity in a DAO governance dataset (snapshot.org). Specifically, a Graph Convolutional Neural Network (GCNN) learned voting behaviours and a fast vector clustering algorithm used high-dimensional embeddings to identify similar nodes in a graph. The results reveal that deep learning can effectively identify Sybils, reducing the voting graph by 2-5%. This research underscores the importance of Sybil resistance in DAOs, identifies challenges and opportunities for forensics and analysis of anonymous networks, and offers a novel perspective on decentralized governance, informing future policy, regulation, and governance practices.

Navigating the Research Landscape of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: A Research Note and Agenda (preprint on ArXiv)(with Christian Ziegler)

This note and agenda serve as a cause for thought for scholars interested in researching Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), addressing both the opportunities and challenges posed by this phenomenon. It covers key aspects of data retrieval, data selection criteria, issues in data reliability and validity such as governance token pricing complexities, discrepancy in treasuries, Mainnet and Testnet data, understanding the variety of DAO types and proposal categories, airdrops affecting governance, and the Sybil problem. The agenda aims to equip scholars with the essential knowledge required to conduct nuanced and rigorous academic studies on DAOs by illuminating these various aspects and proposing directions for future research.

"A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance" in Defining Web3 (Research on the Sociology of Organizations)
"On the Limits of the Imaginary: A Reply to Jacobetty and Orton-Johnson's "Blockchain Imaginaries and Their Metaphors"," Social Epistemology Review and Reply (2023)
"Shaping Ethical Computing Cultures," (64)11, Communications of the ACM (with Katie Shilton and Megan Finn) (2021)
"Prolegomenon to contemporary ethics of Machine Translation." In H. Moniz and C. Escartin. (Eds.), Towards Responsible Machine Translation. New York: Springer Nature, Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications Series (2021) (with Wessel Reijers).
"Cryptographic Media." In J. Hunsinger, L. Klastrup, & Matthew M. (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Internet Research. New York: Springer (2020).
Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains (Polity Press, 2019)
"Experiments in Algorithmic Governance: An ethnography of "The DAO," a failed Decentralized Autonomous Organization" in M. Campbell-Verduyn (Ed.), Bitcoin and Beyond: The Challenges and Opportunities of Blockchains for Global Governance (pp. 157–177). New York: Routledge (2017).
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Art, Culture, & Digital Media

Speaking & Teaching

Please contact me (quinndupont AT ieee.org) to discuss: algorithmic trading, financial modeling, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), social and human vulnerabilities, cryptoeconomics, digital polycentric governance, and digital political economy.

Invited Workshop, "Decentralized Governance" at Blockchain@UBC Summer Institute (Summer 2024)
Teaching York Univerisity, OMIS 6710 "Operations Management and Information Systems" (Summer 2023)
Teaching University of British Columbia, LIBR 559 "Blockchain Technology for Information Professionals" (Spring 2023)
Invited Symposium, Agrippa (A Book of the Dead). Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford 2023
Invited Workshop, DAO Harvard . Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Boston 2023
Invited Workshop, Blockchain Constitutionalism: the Role of Legitimacy in Polycentric Systems. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence 2023
Invited Speaker, "Discovering Polycentric Governance in Crypto," Bates College, Lewiston 2023.
Host, IEEE Research Notes in Blockchain (2021-2023)
Interview, "Overthrowing The Network State: Untangling Balaji's Helical Theory of History," Blockchain Socialist podcast 2023
Invited Workshop, Plurality Workshop. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley 2023.
Invited Speaker, "Dance Notation: Grammars for Understanding and Controlling the Body." Digital Matters, Seigen, Germany, 2022.
Interview, "Digital Ethnography in Blockchain and Governance," RMIT Mint and Burn podcast (2022)
Invited Speaker, "Technologies and Best Practice for Next-Gen Organizations" Huawei STW 2022
Interview, "Understanding Crypto: An Interdisciplinary Approach" Rational Reminder podcast 2022
Interview, "We're de-pegging Terra for "research purposes"," Blockchain Socialist podcast 2022
Organizer, Researching Web3 Workshop 2022
Invited Speaker, "Guiding Principles for Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and DLT Research," Frontiers in Best Practice in Research Ethics. University College London 2022.
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Contact me

I maintain a virtual open door policy. I am always interested in speaking with students, researchers, innovators, and technologists with similar interests. If you would like to speak with me please email me at quinndupont AT ieee.org.

Financial disclosure

Prior to 2024, I did not invest in cryptocurrencies. I now invest in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. I also provide crypto security and professional forensics services for Tailored Operations clients. Despite this financial conflict of interest, I retain a principled, risk-managed approach to advisory services. I do not recommend or endorse any specific cryptocurrency or digital asset.