Blockchain in or as governance? Evolutions in experimentation, social impacts, and prefigurative practice in the blockchain and DAO space

Abstract

Blockchain has become much more than simply a fintech technology, and is enabling and inspiring new conversations around politics, governance, organization, institutions and power structures. I published an attempt to start a rigorous academic treatment of ideology in the blockchain space through my master’s thesis titled Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain at Queen’s University. Since then, there have been continued rich discussions around politics and experimentation in line with the ideals of the blockchain movement. Examples include discussion of blockchain governance as a social contract, discussion of social scalability and how this enables us to organize, forums such as etherean.org, and movements such as RadicalxChange.org and the concept of Liberal Radicalism. Some of these movements have been started by similar actors in the blockchain space: Vitalik Buterin of the Ethereum project co-authored the paper on Liberal Radicalism which is deeply intertwined with RadicalxChange and the ethos of decentralization, and Lane Rettig is an Ethereum core developer and launched Etherean.org to be a non-maximalist community-based discussion of social aspects and implications around the emerging technology. While the cryptocurrency markets trended downward throughout 2018, there have been strong social indicators of a more mature system though increased interdisciplinary participation and development around the technology as well as increased interest by the public sector for use cases such as records keeping and identity solutions. I expand upon some of the concepts discussed in my thesis, and provide further evidence for the particular observations based on additional events I attended and took part in through late 2018 and early 2019. Primarily, additional evidence is taken from my attendance at both the ETHDenver and RadicalxChange conferences. I further develop some of the ideas and connections between the community that has emerged around blockchain technology, and the more recent adaptations in the political sphere, as well as implications of new forms of social organization allowed through the use of such technology.