Background & Biography
Primavera De Filippi’s work brings legal scholarship into direct contact with the design of digital systems. Her institutional biography at CERSA records studies at Bocconi University in Milan, the University of California, Berkeley, and the European University Institute in Florence, where she obtained her doctorate. The same biography describes a research focus on the legal implications of blockchain and the possibility of more open, participatory governance. It also records work with Creative Commons France, connecting her research to the practical organization of shared digital resources.
Her current institutional positions are independently identified by CERSA and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. The Harvard profile, updated in October 2026, places her CNRS research-director role in Paris and lists her as a Faculty Associate. France is therefore the professional base used here. Her Harvard affiliation and international collaborations broaden the scope of her work without changing that primary classification.
A recurring concern is the relationship between rules expressed in software and rules interpreted through legal institutions. In a paper with Samer Hassan, Blockchain Technology as a Regulatory Technology, De Filippi examined the difficulty of translating the flexibility and ambiguity of legal norms into machine-readable instructions. The paper distinguishes software that influences behavior from an attempt to make legal requirements operate directly as code. This provides a foundation for her later work on autonomous organizations and blockchain governance.
Her research also has a funded, multidisciplinary institutional setting. The European Research Council’s 2019 Consolidator Grant results identify De Filippi as principal investigator for BlockchainGov at CNRS. The European Commission’s project record gives the title In Blockchain We Trust(Less): The Future of Distributed Governance and a funding contribution of €1.997 million. It records a January 2021 start and December 2026 end date. The programme examines the relationship between blockchain technology, power, legitimacy and participatory decision-making.
Notable Contributions
De Filippi co-authored Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code with Aaron Wright, published by Harvard University Press in 2018. A Harvard Law Review notice describes the book’s examination of how blockchain systems can both support existing legal arrangements and create new regulatory challenges. Its subject matter includes payments, contracts, securities and public records. The central contribution is an account of how technologically enforced rules interact with law, including the continuing relevance of people and institutions around ostensibly disintermediated systems.
That inquiry developed further in Blockchain Governance, written with Wessel Reijers and Morshed Mannan and published by MIT Press in August 2024. The book connects blockchain communities with political and legal concepts including legitimacy, sovereignty and collective governance. The publisher identifies Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tezos among the systems discussed. Rather than considering governance solely as a voting mechanism, the book asks who makes decisions, especially when a network encounters exceptional circumstances, and how those decisions acquire authority.
Her collaborative work has also helped clarify the vocabulary used to discuss decentralized autonomous organizations. In April 2021, Internet Policy Review published a glossary article by Samer Hassan and De Filippi examining the meaning of a DAO. The article connects blockchain-based self-executing rules with the coordination of people and the distribution of governance. It distinguishes an organizational arrangement from the separate question of whether an entity has been legally registered. Such definitional work is relevant when researchers, developers and policymakers use the same acronym for substantially different structures.
Through COALA, the Coalition of Automated Legal Applications, De Filippi has participated in proposed legal frameworks as well as academic analysis. The DAO Model Law lists her among its contributors. MIT’s IdeaFlow programme subsequently identified her as one of the proposal’s authors when presenting a discussion of the model. The initiative sought a more consistent legal approach to blockchain-based organizations while preserving room for experimentation. It is a model-law proposal, not a statement that its provisions are binding in every jurisdiction or that all DAOs share a recognized legal status.
Her 2025 article How to Govern the Confidence Machine?, again co-authored with Mannan and Reijers, examines the relationship between technical assurances and human trust. Published in Regulation & Governance, it considers how successive forms of internet organization have moved the location of governance problems. The authors argue that introducing technological guarantees changes the relevant dependencies rather than eliminating the need for trust. The article also distinguishes governance of digital technology from governance exercised through that technology, giving readers a way to analyze both the institutions shaping a system and the rules the system imposes.
The BlockchainGov funding record situates these publications within a wider programme. Its stated objectives include investigating power within existing blockchain communities, examining the legitimacy and durability of distributed governance, and testing more participatory decision-making models. These are research objectives rather than guarantees that a particular network has become democratic. The programme’s value for this profile is the identifiable combination of legal, political and technical inquiry, with a named investigator and documented public funding.
Art provides a different method for testing related questions. De Filippi’s Plantoid project uses mechanical plant-like sculptures connected to cryptocurrency and smart contracts. In a 2021 interview with Arshake, she explained how the work explores economic agency and governance without assuming that an artwork possesses legal personality. She also emphasized the continuing role of human artists in producing new versions. The project makes otherwise abstract questions about automated coordination visible through an object people can encounter and support.
In a September 2026 interview with SLEEK, De Filippi described the further development of that practice. Plantoid can accumulate funds and use a proposal-and-selection process to commission a new sculpture. She also described the maintenance still required around the blockchain components and treated autonomy as an ongoing aspiration. Her discussion of protocol art focuses on creating rules through which people or machines produce a work. This connects artistic experimentation with her broader interest in who establishes rules, who carries them out and who remains responsible.
Public explanation is another documented part of her contribution. A June 2021 Harvard Gazette interview asked her to explain cryptocurrency’s uses, intermediaries and regulatory questions to a general audience. The appearance shows an ability to bring specialist research into a wider discussion. Historical commentary should be read in its original context, particularly when it concerns fast-changing markets or technology.
Why Katharos.ai Follows Primavera De Filippi
De Filippi supplies ways to examine the social organization behind technical claims. A protocol can specify valid transactions while leaving other questions open: who coordinates upgrades, whose preferences carry weight and how disagreements are resolved. Her books, articles and model-law work make those questions available for structured analysis.
Katharos.ai follows how these frameworks develop through research and practical experimentation. Her combination of scholarship and art is particularly useful for exploring the difference between automated execution and meaningful autonomy. The profile recognizes documented contributions to that discussion without assuming that every proposed governance model has been adopted or that academic affiliation endorses any particular commercial project.
Areas to Follow
- Publications and findings from BlockchainGov and related collaborations. - Legal proposals for decentralized organizations and their actual treatment. - Research on trust, legitimacy and decision-making in blockchain communities. - Plantoid and other experiments in protocol-based artistic organization. - Connections between blockchain governance and emerging AI systems.
Reporting Scope
This profile covers public academic roles, published work, collaborative proposals and artistic projects. It distinguishes research arguments from settled law and proposed frameworks from enacted rules. Institutional affiliations establish professional roles; they do not confer regulatory authority or certify the legal status of technologies discussed.
Areas of Influence
De Filippi’s areas of influence include blockchain governance, technology law, decentralized organizations and public understanding of programmable systems. Her contribution also reaches digital-art practice and questions of machine agency. These fields are linked by sustained attention to the people, institutions and rules that remain involved when activities become automated.
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Photo attribution: Primavera De Filippi at SXSW London 2025, 2025-06-03. Amy Martin Photography / WikiPortraits. CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Primavera_De_Filippi_at_SXSW_London_2025.jpg). Cropped at native resolution. Derivative: CC BY-SA 4.0.