The Swarm Effect: China's 2022 Covid Protests

This paper analyzes China's 2022 COVID protests as a case study of 'swarm' coordination dynamics, examining how decentralized protest organization enabled mass mobilization against zero-COVID policy and how government responses specifically targeted these swarm characteristics. The research argues that understanding swarm protocols—their enabling traits and vulnerabilities—is essential for analyzing both protest movements and governmental counter-strategies.

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Article

Disentangling the State of Climate

Cory Levinson surveys the current landscape of climate protocols, tracing how carbon markets and DeFi have collided since 2023, with projects like KlimaDAO absorbing millions of carbon credits into blockchain form and Regen Network expanding into biodiversity markets. The piece examines how these protocols are attempting to create durable market mechanisms for environmental assets despite fundamental challenges in traditional carbon crediting.

article climate governance

Dec 2025

Cory Levinson

Talk

Salon VI: Fire Protocols & Attention as Autopoietic Space - 2024 Protocol Symposium

Natalia and Jordy present their wildfire protocol research, combining California prescribed burn management with cultural practices. They explore fire as both a practical governance challenge and a metaphorical concept, situating their work within the Protocol Institute's boots-on-ground protocol improvement projects focused on real-world fire management and Indigenous land stewardship.

autopoietic-systems cultural-stewardship fire-protocols

Oct 2024

Natalia, Jordy

Paper

Good Death

Sarah Friend argues that protocols can generate living worlds through accumulated user attention and interaction, and that a protocol's 'death' depends on whether it successfully cultivated such a world ecosystem rather than merely existing as a technical system. Drawing on gaming communities' definitions of when an MMO becomes 'dead,' she explores how platforms, places, and social systems generate worlds that persist or perish independent of their underlying protocol's technical status.

community governance protocol-watching

May 2024

Sarah Friend