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.

Keywords

Blockchain governance sociology power organization state DeFi prefigurative politics Marx Weber Karatani future economics Ethereum ETH money RadicalxChange radical markets liberalism liberal radicalism

1. Introduction

In the following piece, I adapt and expand on several sections that were originally published in my master’s thesis titled Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain (Jones, 2018) to attempt to bring a cohesive account of where I see application and implication for politics, government, and social organization. In short, a spirit within many streams of governance experimentation in the blockchain space, making up an authentic politics of technology. My research methodology for data collection in my thesis included a combination of ethnography, semi-structured interviews and content analysis. If you would like to delve deeper into my data sources and methodology, please see the original piece, as I will be using this space to outline and expand on the original findings. As politics can potentially be seen as the broadest topic, the first section centers around one branch of the blockchain social and ideological ethos that has emerged within a sociopolitical movement called RadicalxChange. The piece then moves into aspects of tokens, money and its importance to functioning states, and some of the projects that are attempting to bring parallel, opt-in alternatives to traditional models. One of the other ideals that has been clearly continually embraced by the community is that of experimentation and iteration, discussed as novel economic experimentation, which is evident in many of the governance projects and initiatives in the space. Critical data politics and surveillance follows, with concepts of multiplicity, enactment, and risk theory discussed in relation to blockchain and its relevance to governance. Following this, I reintroduce the idea of prefigurative politics and political space, and the case for a potentially gradual absorption of some state function. Finally, I include a short slice of the continued conversations in the space centered around governance, to attempt to illuminate where some future possibilities are being explored.

I previously discussed aspects of the intersection between blockchain, politics, and the multiple groups that may or may not be partially ideologically motivated that exist and act within the blockchain space. I came to several conclusions and further points for discussion, and implored academics from all areas to start examining the area and how it might relate to or strengthen areas of their work. This special edition is one such example of work being done to examine the technology with a social lens, and examine the potential implications for societies across the globe. I will note that I am hopeful that this technology stands to fundamentally shift the ways we interact with each other and organize on multiple levels, and that further work in this stream continues.

2. Decentralization as a new branch of liberalism – Liberal Radicalism and movement building

As the most recent hype cycle around blockchain receded in 2018 along with it the moonshot valuations of coins such as bitcoin, ether, ripple, amongst many others, the conversation around decentralizing many aspects of current society has prevailed in many areas. It follows that we should be asking what decentralization means in political context, and what that might look like in practice. My master’s thesis took an initial look at developer and crypto communities and political ideology, and proposed a complex theoretical framework for exploring the space using a combination of Actor-Network Theory, multiplicity and prefigurative politics. Since then, several social and political projects and movements have continued or begun, including but not limited to Democracy.Earth, Bail Bloc, Etherean.org, and RadicalxChange.org, Opolis, and many Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAO’s. Many of these projects have embraced aspects of decentralization as well as inclusivity, and include concepts such as personal liberty and autonomy of classical liberalism that cut across most major political party lines, particularly in Canada. This may be explained given the discussion around decentralization as a new branch of liberalism, along with the fact that most current mainstream parties in Canada and in many liberal democracies globally, operate under a largely liberal or neoliberal democratic paradigm with several built-in divisions of power. I suggest that the emergence of this new branch has been greatly influenced by technology, and may approach an authentic politics of technology, which in part hopes to utilize advances in technology globally in a broadly emancipatory way. While still in their infancy, these projects and movements have in large part grown out of or at least integrated many parts of the blockchain community, and signals integration with and potential to change society and both political structure and function using the technology. This would be a much higher potential significance to society than a continued boom and bust hype cycle around getting rich and the preoccupation with market caps, initial coin offerings, and specific digital asset pricing that comes with it. It also signals the continued need for more social theorization around the blockchain space and its effect on and potential for disruption of a variety of political spaces and traditional institutions, in order to make informed changes that facilitate stronger human collaboration into the future while avoiding a digital big-brother state of perpetual surveillance.

The RadicalxChange sociopolitical movement and the ethos of the blockchain space and particularly that of the Ethereum ecosystem seem to have pockets, if not large swathes of overlap. The movement began out of Glen Weyl and Eric Posner’s book Radical Markets (2018), which caught the attention of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. The pair teamed up with Zoe Hitzig to produce the paper Liberal Radicalism: Formal Rules for a Society Neutral among Communities (2018). This attempt to combine economic, political, social theory and philosophy is an essential interdisciplinary approach toward studying and understanding blockchain technology and its potential implications. As a member of the conference planning team for RadicalxChange, I was able to gauge the interest of my previous contacts in the blockchain space in the movement. Many expressed interest, later became involved, or told me that this was the direction that they observed the space moving into as well. While it certainly doesn’t apply to all of the ideologies and communities operating in the space, there are definite alignments with some widely ranging swathes of both political and technological thought.

3. Tokens, coins, money, and experimentation

The work of Karl Marx and subsequent Marxist thinking has some relevance to the blockchain, particularly through the Ethereum system, and specifically for considering how these systems are affecting the future of work as well as conceptions of money or currency. In Marxist terms, the concept of money is displaced labour power, that can then be used to purchase goods or services from others’ labour power. This is drawn from a number of sources, including Marx’s Das Kapital, which itself draws on Hume’s essay on money (1867; 1758). Marx discusses the idea of abstracted labour power at length suggesting that labour is crystallized into an article, whether that physical article be considered a commodity or money (1867). Hume’s take is that “It is indeed evident, that money is nothing but the representation of labour and commodities, and serves only as a method of rating or estimating them” (1758). Hume’s discussion holds another interesting aspect that is relevant to the consideration of digital currency or assets, as he notes how with physical material wealth used as money, it is actually disadvantageous to amass large amounts of it, given the associated difficulty of dealing with moving or using large quantities of physical items, even though it is advantageous to have them because of their value (Hume, 1758). This disadvantage is partially dealt with by the change to paper bills and the banking system instead of using gold, but could be further eased in a movement to digital currencies or assets. This is an important discussion to have because of the vast differences in opinion of whether or not these cryptocurrencies or digital tokens are a currency, token, point system, asset, commodity, or something else. This discussion is occurring throughout the space, both with enthusiasts trying to come to grips with how to best describe them, as well as within state regulation bodies as they determine which current regulations exist that should apply to specific cases of blockchain technology, and where new regulation development is viewed as a necessity for the state.

How might we view this sociologically? Ruckenstein has produced some fascinating research on children’s conceptions of money from a young age (2010). The study explores the ways in which children conceptualize, use, discuss, and transform money into social relations as they explore the concept of money as a new concept (Ruckenstein, 2010). In many ways, this study mirrors the interactions with the blockchain area in terms of discussion around tokens, digital assets and coins, what exactly they are, and what they can be used for or transformed into through exchange. When this article was assigned in an undergraduate Consumer Culture course for which I was a Teaching Assistant, I took the opportunity to ask the students what they thought about Bitcoin. The students came up with multiple answers, including an unstable currency, a speculative financial tool, an investment, and a novel toy-like concept. This varied conception of Bitcoin and other digital assets or tokens is observed throughout the blockchain space, in informal conversations, in blogs and forums, in publications, and in regulatory body discussions, which were all observed through my ethnographic research and subsequent interaction within the blockchain space. According to Ruckenstein’s analysis, this is not a strange or remarkable process, but simply people coming to grips with and deciding different rules around a new tool that allows them to trade in different ways while also continuing to reinforce ideas of consumer culture.

In the Ethereum network, there is the Ether (ETH) token that functions in some ways like a currency, where ETH must be spent in order to interact with a smart contract or to transfer funds, but this token is also simply displaced computing power in a more abstract form. This is because the miners in the system are incentivized by a compensation in the form of ETH for running the computations and continuing the blockchain – in short, for contributing computing power. This may change as Ethereum moves toward proof-of-stake and away from proof-of-work in Ethereum 2.0. There are other platforms in the blockchain space that utilize a similar token/computing power relationship – tokens such as Bitcoin are simply scarce tokens with a fixed total supply, while the computing power in that system is used to secure the blockchain and compete for the privilege to add the next block in the chain. This may also change as rootstock, or RSK is added to the Bitcoin network to facilitate smart contracts.

If we look at the abstraction of ETH or other tokens into displaced computing power to interact with the system in a Proof of Work context, it also brings us back to Marx’s Grundrisse (1867) and offers another insight of the ways in which labour power is moving inside the machine and away from human labour. Combining this with Marx’s idea of where revolution within the mode of production would begin, noting that “in modern industry, it begins with the instruments of labour”, a movement of labour into the machine meets all of these conceptualizations (1867). Again, this conceptualization may not hold in the future as projects like ETH2.0 move toward Proof of Stake, but holds true for early crypto history and particularly for Proof of Work chains.

In his book, The Structure of World History, Kojin Karatani (2014) discusses the development and understanding of money as a significant factor in the development of the bureaucracy and the modern state apparatus. Money is required to run the bureaucratic state using things like salary to incentivize and proliferate the state’s work, and the state has traditionally been required in the function of money to facilitate and enforce commodity exchange. Again, we can see that this conception is a location of potential disruption for both the contemporary bureaucratic state, as well as the ideas of money and commodity trade using new digital tools. If we can consider that this would be a potential disruptor of both the state and capital in this single area, it points to a potential inflection point or shift to Karatani’s mode of exchange D, which is a higher level of trade and economic relations. Karatani best describes it here, saying mode of exchange D:

represents not only the rejection of the state that was generated through mode of exchange B but also a transcending of the class divisions produced in mode of exchange C; we might think of mode of exchange D as representing the return of mode of exchange A in a higher dimension. It is a mode of exchange that is simultaneously free and mutual. Unlike the other three modes, mode of exchange D does not exist in actuality. It is the imaginary return of the moment of reciprocity that has been repressed under modes of exchange B and C. Accordingly, it originally appeared in the form of religious movements. (p. 7)

Karatani then follows this explanation that the “unique domain of the political must originate in the economic base, broadly defined.” (2014, p. 8). Here we also see very close ties to concepts of political emancipation and concepts of cryptoseccession and non-territorial internal exit theorized by MacDonald (2015). By combining the two, we may theorize that the development of more complex crypto-economies through experimentation could very well result in the absorption of some state function by blockchain technologies, and that as a result, are also being examined as a form of commons and in relation to avoiding the associated free rider problems, which again brings us back to governance questions (Buterin et al., 2018). Cryptoseccession also mirrors many aspects of prefigurative politics, which is brought in the Prefigurative Politics and Prefigurative Political Space section. Both Karatani and prefigurative politics are more fully explained there.

In many ways, we are still exploring the possibilities of token economies in the blockchain system. Many connections between users, tokens, exchanges, institutions and businesses are still being formed, broken and reformed in a consistently evolving way. Even since the defence of my thesis, many major players within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space have emerged, including Maker’s Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) platform allowing users to lock ETH and receive loans in the stable token DAI, Dharma and Compound which allow users to lock up and loan DAI and earn interest on these loans through smart contracts, and Uniswap, an exchange that allows for trading of tokens without requiring standard trading pairs established at traditional exchanges, amongst many others. There are massive implications to traditional institutions here, particularly in government taxation and industry regulation. These vary wildly by jurisdiction, are often in a state of development or flux, at least at the current stage. We may start to see resistance or integration from traditional sectors that start to realize disruption through the use of blockchain technology, and in some areas this has already begun. The most likely recent analogous case in North America has been the resistance and lobbying of the taxi industry against Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare services - in many cases delaying service adoption and lobbying for similar requirements and regulations. One noted example is the blockchain regulations that have been set up in Wyoming after exhaustive study by a task force. Wyoming decided to create new regulation that recognizes the issues and incompatibilities between traditional institutional usage and the technical realities of blockchain assets. One specific example is the change to allow institutional investors to control their own assets, as a custodial service in the blockchain space severely weakens security and control (Zmudzinski, 2019; Jiminez, 2019).

Attendance at both ETHDenver and RadicalxChange in February and March of 2019 respectively, clarified for me many of the similarities between the groups, including the social aspects that are beginning to be talked about more often in relation to blockchain technologies. In fact, they were described by Vitalik Buterin in his keynote, with the slide from Fig. 1 accompanying. Vitalik was later quoted in Breaker magazine in David Morris’ article Vitalik Buterin Is Embracing a New Role: Political Theorist (2019):

Figure 1.

A venn diagram presented by vitalik buterin at RadicalxChange in March.

“One of my theses here is that the cypherpunks’ attempts to get into the money business forced them to realize some other things along the way. And [one of those things] is that money is a fundamentally social thing in a much deeper way than, say, two-party encrypted communication, you have to start thinking about governance, social contracts …common shared expectations in this community, how do changes get made, how do we decide how changes get made, how do we discuss things …These are all very political things. To this day, there are people who will disagree with me, people who will say things on Twitter like, ‘Oh, there is no bitcoin community, there are just a bunch of people who use the same cryptocurrency.’ And, as you can tell, I disagree with this attitude.”

In addition to the increased attention being paid to social aspects of both money and technology, there is also a particular continued emphasis in the Ethereum and RadicalxChange movements as well as various other blockchain communities on experimentation, game theory and incentive structures, diversity, parallel institutions or prefigurative politics, horizontalism, and recognition of participation in various distinct social groups that may or may not have diverging values. Some examples include the MolochDAO and its several forked DAOs created as a DAO solution to funding development within the space, DAOstack and their Alchemy engine, which uses the Ethereum blockchain to enable voting on DAO proposals recorded on-chain, and Democracy Earth project that is running various voting tests (including quadratic voting central to many RadicalxChange and Radical Market proposals) using ERC20 tokens. Quadratic voting has also been studied as a method of enabling crypto-seccession through blockchain use as a governance technology and through integration with the voting and electoral process to ultimately create a crypto-democracy (Allen et al., 2017). There are also continued discussions around blockchain interoperability or compatibility, and the Polkadot project that has emerged with an intention of creating a blockchain of blockchains using what they call parachains. All of these aspects point to a significant increase in both the movement toward a multi-chain future of some sort, with potentially mini-economies interconnected, following along with the principles of multiplicity and prefigurative politics. This area is in great need for additional engagement from those with training in traditional fields such as history, anthropology, political science, sociology, surveillance studies and more to design governance and social systems that work as designed and move beyond simply capturing and emulating current institutions with their problems tagging along.

4. Experimentation and proof-of-concept: Economics and governance

The sentiments regarding ideology that were expressed by respondents to my survey relate closely to Gabriella Coleman’s earlier work, particularly Coding Freedom, along with the work of Levy and Wark, and the importance of hacker culture and ideological motivations behind free and open source software development (Levy, 1984; Coleman, 2010, 2013, 2015; Wark, 2004). This is especially relevant for the blockchain space, as it originally emerged completely outside of traditional software development conceptualizations, and has continued and evolved from a single open source hacker project, and into massive numbers of open source projects.

I also believe that this technology would not have emerged from capitalist software development, as it combined several technological concepts that status quo or institutions would have had no interest in, at least in the way they were originally combined – encryption, decentralization, and anonymity were not, and still are not aspects that are seen as valuable in many cases across business and government. This is also a trend that I observed throughout my ethnographic research – a marked divide in the concepts and platforms that are of interest to status quo industry and the startups or ICO projects within the space, as well as their stated motivations for utilization. This ranges from the interest of a CEO within the blockchain space concerned with social development, adoption, growth, and altruism, to an investment firm looking for a quick and profitable investment in the space through an Initial Public Offering (IPO), to national security institutions looking to secure their supply chain data, to businesses interested in deploying smart contracts in a way that reduces their computing or contractual costs. All of these motivations exist within the space, but it seems to fall along lines of institutions and business, juxtaposed with the crypto enthusiasts and blockchain startups.

The two groups are certainly alike in some ways, not the least of which is their interest in the blockchain space generally. However, their motivations for their involvement differ significantly, as well as the ways in which they conceptualize, discuss, and are willing to engage with the space.

The observation regarding blockchain technological development outside of traditional capitalist logic and production cycles is not meant to be a criticism. The observation is more to say that if we understand an economic system to have influence over many aspects of the societies that emerge, there may be similar influence on systems developed outside of prevalent economic systems (specifically relating to the concept of Free and Open Source Software). The emergence of blockchain from outside of traditional capitalist development, combined with the recent hype and institutional interest in adapting and applying the technology into institutional practice demonstrates the value in pursuing knowledge and production both from within and outside of capitalist economic market logic. The development of blockchain emerged from a process most like F/OSS development, but it seems obvious that there is value seen by capitalist firms and institutions in the technology, even if the initial project would likely never have developed using capitalist logic, and even while capitalism remains the dominant or hegemonic economic system.

In fact, using the concepts from Actor-Network Theory of multiplicity and achieved singularity, it is likely that the technology has been resisted, particularly by institutions and business. This is because the addition and acceptance of new asset classes and token economies adds a lot of complexity to the current capitalist system. If we combine this with Callon’s work on overflows, which discusses the concept of economic externalities that are not currently captured or compensated for in an economic system, and are instead classified as leaks or overflows (1998). These can be both beneficial or harmful to those who encounter the leak (for example, a toxic gas produced by some manufacturing process, or an overflow of an appreciated musical genre from a neighbour’s home). In this way, externalities and overflows in economic systems “render the market inefficient, because they are responsible for a gap between private marginal income and marginal social costs” (Callon, 1998: 247). As a result, previous evaluations of costs in production or market forces do not necessarily take into account the necessary externalities to properly evaluate costs, both economic and social. In this case, negative externalities imply social costs that are not properly accounted for, and positive externalities discourage private investment as a result of socializing benefits (Callon, 1998). Using this to apply to the blockchain space, many projects like Steemit or Basic Attention Token are looking to quantify certain overflows that exist online in the pro-sumer model that has risen up with web 2.0, and reward parties involved with tokens or assets for their contribution within the system, where there would otherwise have been unmeasured overflows with no compensation (CreativeCrypto, 2018).

There have also been some interesting cases popping up lately regarding experimentation with novel economic systems. The Proof of Weak Hands (or POWH) smart contract that has been published to the Ethereum virtual machine, is a type of curved token bonded economy that is backed by the Ethereum token, or ETH. The concept of curved token bonding was discussed in detail by Ethereum developer Simon de la Rouviere on Medium, and essentially allows a project to be funded and payout based only on the amount of ETH contributed to the contract, which is regarded as a loose translation from interest and perceived value from investors (2017). As more ETH is deposited, more of the internal token is issued at a higher buy in price, and the worth of all tokens in the system increases. As tokens are sold, they are destroyed, ETH is removed from the contract for the payout, and the overall price of the remainder of the tokens decreases. This in theory allows for organic expansion and contraction within projects that ensures a stable price point for investors. In practice, this tends to look like a form of pyramid scheme where earlier investors are paid out for being involved early, but it is really just a new form of economic framing for projects. In fact, this model cannot be a pyramid scheme as long as the smart contract is not buggy or hacked, as the contract holds all of the ETH and handles all token issuance/dissolving as well as all ETH payouts. All of this is done using smart contracts that are published and can be audited by anyone able to read the contract code in Solidity (Ethereum’s coding language).

The commitment to economic and governance experimentation has also caught on and been strengthened within subgroups of the blockchain space with groups such as the etherean.org forum and democracy.earth projects, as well as within aligned groups outside the blockchain space such as RadicalxChange and the concepts of quadratic voting and using market mechanisms to derive more inclusive democratic processes. Further experimentation, both in practice and theory, has occurred with the bonding curve concepts initially described by Simon de la Rouvierre. Projects that were developed at ETHDenver incorporated aspects of token bonding, articles have been written on using bonded token pools to incentivize charity or funding of public goods projects, while other projects have begun to use aspects of this work such as Civil – applying token curated registries to newsroom legitimacy and integrity.

To further demonstrate the commitment to independence and a willingness to experiment, Austin Griffith and ETHDenver demonstrated a functional pop-up mini-economy using the burner wallet and xDai token. This was used to interact with the food trucks over the weekend, which was converted back to USD or left in xDai at the vendor’s preference. At the conclusion of the conference, 11 food trucks sold 4405 meals, at a transaction cost of $0.000046 USD per meal. The total cost of running the independent network for the weekend was $0.20 USD, with $38,432.56 paid to the food trucks (Griffith, 2019a, 2019b).

This issue of the journal is timely; large discussions of governance have been happening recently throughout the blockchain space. The creation of the EOS platform, further experimentation with hybridized PoW/PoS governance with Decred, continued development of other chains and semi-contentious fork changes – governance on or off chain, what level it should be implemented, and how it should be structured. Many core devs are expressing their frustration as they are not experts in designing such social and political structures, particularly in the ways they would like to see governance handled. Panels and discussions on governance at ETHDenver were some of the more well attended – on par with some of the keynotes. And even Andreas Antonopolous, one of the major keynotes at ETHDenver cautioned the ETH community about how it engages with and formalizes governance within the network. Antonopolous also mentioned that the community to expect resistance from legacy institutions at some point given the areas in which development was continuing (Antonopoulos, 2019). Yet 2019 has seen a marked revival of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO, with MolochDAO, DAOstack, and others who seem unfazed with experimenting with and enabling some forms of on-chain governance.

5. Critical data politics and surveillance

It is important to look at the potential for blockchain technology to be co-opted as a surveillant technology. It is suggested in Blockchain Revolution (2016) that governments and large corporations are going to do everything they can to maintain control and build in surveillance technologies into applications of blockchain, and that the NSA must already be analyzing data coming through the blockchain, which was later confirmed and detailed in the Intercept (D. Tapscott & A. Tapscott, 2016: 274; Biddle, 2018). Certainly large companies and institutions are becoming involved with and developing applications based on blockchain technology. Seeing large players like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, and others entering the field, it becomes apparent that they are not likely to be motivated by anonymity factors or even some of the security benefits associated with users controlling their own data, depending on the application. It is for precisely this reason that it is important to get a feel of where the initial potential, benefits, and technical possibilities of Bitcoin and other blockchain technology are before larger players start to adopt and co-opt the technology into further solidifying the status quo in terms of economic factors and surveillance.

Regardless of the actions that a user takes, some information will be recorded as transactions that occur on the blockchain simply as a result of its function. Some conceptualization of the interface is required here, and can be provided through a number of theorists. Blockchains can typically be interacted with through a variety of interfaces, which can define the possibilities of interaction with the blockchain in ways that may or may not be obvious to the user, before the user is even involved (Bratton, 2015). “…an interface necessarily limits the full range of possible interaction in a specific and arbitrary way. Any interface, because it is a specific summary, must eliminate or make invisible a whole range of other equally valid possible interactions.” (Bratton, 2015: 221). Gane and Beer talk about three different ways to conceptualize interfaces: “they are cultural devices; they mediate everyday experiences in social and physical spaces; and they enable different forms of power and/or surveillance” (Gane and Beer cited in Silva and Frith, 2012: 3). While the first two conceptualizations may not hold immediate obvious relevance to the study of blockchain, the aspect of different forms of power and surveillance is certainly relevant. Nonetheless, the aspects of blockchain interfaces as cultural devices and mediators of experiences are both highly relevant to analysis of the blockchain space. Also, these conceptualizations and perspectives allow us to move beyond a man versus machine binary, and look at each aspect of the interaction as an important part of the interaction as a whole, and having a role in its definition. It takes into account the importance of the interface in defining or limiting the user in particular ways, while also understanding that users themselves also play a role. Again, even though alternative theoretical models can be used to contribute to conceptualization and definitions to understand the implications and importance of blockchain, users, and source code, Actor-Network Theory can be used in conjunction with these as an analytical tool to ensure that the approach to analysis does not become too technologically deterministic or symbolic interactionist in direction. Though interfaces have an important role within the blockchain system, they are simply one actant within the system of association, and implications of user interaction cannot be ignored in favor of an argument that removes all agency from the user.

Data politics in the blockchain space is closely related to previously discussed ideological aspects of the hacker ethic, and what might be characterized as general interest in preservation of personal liberty and autonomy. This perspective often becomes associated with arguments for the preservation of privacy, but there is some differentiation required here as well. While associations with privacy concerns are not without warrant, and in cases of technological utilization as privacy protests wholly justified, in many cases what is actually being discussed is the concept of liberty. This differentiation is teased out by Menand (2018) by examining several court cases in the U.S. that were presumed and sometimes argued on the case of privacy, when what was really at stake was some form of liberty. This is the same motivating factor for Amir Taaki’s development of Dark Wallet software for Bitcoin while living in a European anarchist commune – he was interested in raising the cost of blanket surveillance of populations to a level where it simply is no longer feasible again, even using advanced technology (Bartlett, 2014; Lough, 2017). It is an attempt at reclamation of liberty that has been removed, either real or perceived. The distinction between privacy arguments and those that focus on preservation of liberty are important, as recent research has shown that in many cases as arguments are simply rolled into a wholesale privacy argument, the end results tend to lead to more clandestine partnerships between states and private technology firms in order to retain surveillance features while remaining outside of some regulatory or oversight typically required of the state (Rider, 2017).

The concept of layers of the stack from Bratton (2014, 2015) is particularly relevant in the context of this conversation. For one, blockchains do require some form of communication between each other to create their network, and this is currently done over the open web for many if not all of the major blockchains. In this way, the entire blockchain space is another layer on top of the internet, and could potentially be conceptualized as a web 3.0, given some of the new functions that blockchains enables on top of the social aspects of web 2.0. Bratton is also theoretically important given that his meticulous conceptualization of society as a computational stack of layers that each interact with each other, which is a reimagining of society in the same way that a computational stack is formed, with interacting layers.

In a shorter piece that preceded his larger book The Stack, Bratton also expanded on the concept of the black stack, and of other stacks to come in The Black Stack (2014). In this piece, Bratton seems to mesh concepts of multiplicity and risk theory in order to discuss a number of different future stacks that could come to be. Already in 2014, he talks about platforms beginning to displace some state function, a trend that seems to have continued apace, or even accelerated since publication. These functions may not be officially recognized by the state as legitimate forms of identification and services, but are adopted by individuals and groups because they are simply more functional in everyday life for them.

Bratton talks about current digital surveillance culture as “exhibitionism in bad faith” (2014), in terms of a reverse panoptic effect. It seems logical, particularly post-Cambridge Analytica, and the ensuing faux outrage over data privacy as well as the consequent onslaught of privacy policy revisions after the European Union passed their new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even after the public revelations of how the data from Facebook was obtained and used, almost no one that I spoke to about this was surprised in any way by the data that Facebook or other companies’ had on them, nor that it could or would be used in the ways in which it was shown to have been used. By this, and by continuing to embody this reverse panoptic, bad faith exhibitionism, the black stack that Bratton theorizes becomes closer to reality. Bratton’s discussion on the black stack, or more importantly, the possible future existence of different stacks, is also reminiscent of both multiplicity and risk theory. Multiplicity implies that there exists at any given time, more than a single reality, based on social interactions, enactments, experience, and other factors. At the same time, risk theory assumes also that there will be multiple outcomes in the future, but that they are not known yet – however, we evaluate choices and potential outcomes based on best guesses about what those future outcomes might be in the context of the decision or decisions to be made. Each of these perspectives add novel but interesting conversations about the future, as well as the implications that each of us have on creating future outcomes, stack or otherwise.

One last small but important aspect to consider in the evaluation of blockchain technology is the power of algorithms. Blockchain uses the concept of algorithms in a way that is relatively distinct from the ways algorithms typically function, as it is intended to generate consensus across network nodes and distribute power horizontally through the system as opposed to applications like algorithmic surveillance, sorting, or predictions. At the same time, there are certainly power dynamics related to the use of algorithms within a blockchain system, and may contribute to certain tensions within network decentralization-centralization. In any case, we need to be aware of the existence of algorithms as an actant that has traceable associations and that produce effects through its situatedness within the system in relation to other actants, and not necessarily simply by its existence as an algorithm (Neyland & Möllers, 2017).

6. Responding to surveillance: Multiplicity, enactment, conversations, and risk theory

Do conversations around surveillance, privacy and anonymity play a role in the adoption of alternative currencies or adaptations of blockchain as the technology is emerging? This question is perhaps answered best by looking at the number of different blockchain applications that have emerged in the space and have gained considerable traction based specifically on particular characteristics such as privacy of transactions or user anonymity, amongst a host of other considerations. It is also conceptually useful to consider chain forks as a form of community influenced evolution in specific blockchains.

While it may become obvious later, various ideological aspects are likely to feed into social enactment within the blockchain space, and the quasi-liberalism embodied in hacker culture tends to have a focus on privacy and personal liberty arguments (Coleman, 2013). At the same time, the creation of the RadicalxChange movement has been described as another branch of liberalism that while concerned with preserving liberties, is less focused on the individual. These are important divergent streams to be aware of, as recent publications studying the use of privacy arguments have shown that the push for deregulation as well as a focus on privacy arguments in fact reinforces an institutional ability to surveil populations through secret collaboration of government and tech firms (Rider, 2017). Given that encryption is often, but not always, built into blockchain technologies, I lean toward Rider’s assumption that “if there is any case in which privacy is likely to play a major role in securing rights, encryption appears to be that case” (2017: 5).

The concept of multiplicity was introduced to me through Mol’s The Body Multiple (2002). In engaging with the concept and relating it back to areas in which I had previously worked in government, I also came across work by Law and Singleton on multiplicity and policy, and their concept of ontological politics (Law & Singleton, 2014). The concept of using multiplicity to inform policy is antithetical to the concept of policy, since policy is concerned with universal translation based on a single set of ideas or understanding of reality, and multiplicity involves the acknowledgement and understanding that there can be multiple, complex relations between different realities based on experience and enactment. At the same time, making certain breaks in policy for reasons of anomaly or personal situations already takes the concept of multiplicity into practice, albeit in a minor way. In their discussion of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain, Law and Singleton discuss the changes in policy direction as the emergency of the breakout was happening, particularly the discussion, resistance, and pressure to change the policy solution, even as the current policy direction could have been taking effect (2014). For this reason, the concept of multiplicity and ANT also relates closely to the evaluation of different enacted realities in terms of their perceived effectiveness or lack thereof, as well as their potential risks. This very closely mirrors ideas that have been brought up in another theoretical stream: risk theory.

In a sociological understanding, risk perception and understanding is closely linked to human agency and the ability of individuals to make informed decisions regarding future actions. This is relevant to the study of privacy and anonymity in blockchain applications precisely for the reasons that some actions that users may take while using such technology could expose them to risk depending on their activities, and users may choose to interact with the technology in different ways or for different uses as a result of this awareness. In this way, individual understanding of risk can have a shaping effect on human behavior, and could shape particular uses of blockchain technology in ways that mediate an individual’s risk based on their level of comfort with both the system and the risks associated with their activities. Risk society theory also holds ties to ANT and multiplicity in helpful ways. First, risk society involves the evaluation of potential risks, and not what is immediately occurring in reality. This changes behavior from reacting to immediate realities to behaving based on potential outcomes or realities, very similar to the concept of multiplicity in ANT, as well as the concept of prefigurative politics. Though risks are evaluated and action is taken with the risk in mind, this risk may or may not be fully actualized in reality, though it has still created an effect by existing as a “virtual object” that was avoided (Van Loon, 2002: 60-1). Secondly, both risks and actants gain power through association. This conceptualization frames risk as another potential actant to examine within this framework, both on their own and as they associate with other actants within the network.

As we combine aspects of multiplicity, prefigurative politics, and risk theory with concepts of ideology and technology, we can build an effective, yet complicated theoretical framework to examine social aspects of blockchain. Using this framework, it becomes clearer that blockchain projects can be evaluated on their technical merits and achievements alone, but are also becoming important aspects of future design and in some cases, working to absorb or transcend certain aspects of the market and the state as well. Law and Singleton again bring important perspective here when they say “in ANT realities are done along with representations. And then the crucial point is: since there are lots of practices there are also multiple realities.” (Law & Singleton, 2014: 286).

7. Prefigurative politics and prefigurative political space

The concept of prefigurative political space is key to understanding this analysis. It is a concept that is somewhat politically flexible, having emerged out of revolutionary movements in Europe on the left, especially amongst anarchists and anarcho-communists, but the concept and technique has also been employed by libertarians on the right, and has also been adapted to support forms of participatory democracy. It has been theorized by Leach to be an alternative to revolutionary or structural-reformist change, and often involves a movement toward more participatory forms of governance (2013). Graeber and Maeckelbergh also discuss the concept of prefigurative politics as a new form of anarchism or libertarianism, though it appeals to many across the political spectrum (2009; 2011). It has also been often associated most closely with what Maeckelbergh terms “alterglobalization” movements (2011).

The combination of the ANT concept of multiplicity with prefigurative political spaces forms the core of my political-sociological theoretical approach to the communities evolving around blockchain. As described by Srnicek and Williams in Inventing the Future:

“Rather than wait for a purported revolution, prefigurative politics attempts to instantiate a new world immediately – again relying on an implicit sense that immediacy is inherently superior to more mediated approaches…Direct democracy, prefigurative politics and direct action are not …intrinsically flawed. Rather than being denounced in themselves, their utility needs to be judged relative to particular historical situations and particular strategic objectives – in terms of their ability to exert real power to create genuine lasting transformation. The reality of complex, globalized capitalism is that small interventions consisting of relatively non-scalable actions are highly unlikely to ever be able to reorganize our socioeconomic system” (Srnicek & Williams, 2016: 28-9).

Continuing from various concepts of scalability of successful social projects and the need for global solutions discussed in Inventing the Future, the globalized and borderless attributes of blockchain technology seems to embody this concept. If we are also able to understand the proliferation of different blockchains purpose built for a number of utilities as enactments of possibilities for prefigurative politics, this opens up many doors for social theorists in much the same way that examinations of the internet have opened up areas of social analysis in that realm. Boltanski and Chiapello discuss ideology itself in a way that quite closely resembles the idea of prefigurative politics (2018). They cite Louis Dumont’s idea of ideology as “a set of shared beliefs, inscribed in institutions, bound up with actions, and hence anchored in reality” (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2018: 3). Though the concept of prefigurative politics excludes the passage “inscribed in institutions”, the concept of multiplicity is reflected here where shared beliefs become, or already are, a part of reality as a result of being taken up in the actions of the ideologue. It is perhaps important too, that in this passage, ideology is discussed in this way for the stated purpose of exploring and understanding the ways in which ideologies associated with economic activity shift over time and can be explored using historical examples. There is work in this area currently exploring aspects of decentralized branding and informally engaging with Actor-Network Theory, where branding is enacted by all users, in an experimental piece called Headless Branding. (Shorin et al., 2019) I expect more of this approach to continue to appear alongside large scale adoption of more centralized solutions primarily targeted at enterprise uses. Again, these concepts are emerging out of the community involvement and development of the blockchain space on their own, and are indicative of the types of activity happening throughout the space.

Drawing upon all of these theories together brings us to the attempted task of exploring politics and potential ideology in new technology as it is shifting, through both lived experience and technical design, and through both conforming and non-confoming uses. Using multiple methodological approaches also allow us to take more broad aspects of capitalism, the current dominant global economic system, into account and also discuss where aspects of software or platform development may coincide with trends within the economic system and where they are divergent from status quo capitalist development.

8. Gradual state function absorption and transcendence

In The Structure of World History, Kojin Karatani (2014), attempts to study the progression of world history and development of nation and state in terms of modes of exchange, to give another perspective to study society that differs from Marx’s lens of modes of production. Throughout the book, Karatani argues that there are 4 distinct modes of exchange, which he refers to as modes A, B, C, and D, that characterize different levels in the development of the modern state. Another key aspect of Karatani’s (2014) argument throughout the book is that there are three current structures that are arranged in a Borromean knot in modern society: Nation, State, and Capital. The argument posed by the Borromean knot is that none of these structures can be brought down alone without strengthening aspects of the other two structures.

Karatani (2014) describes necessary preconditions for the creation of the bureaucratic system as well as several defining characteristics of modern bureaucracy. Before the bureaucracy could fully form, there was the required downfall of the absolute monarchy system. As well, fully developed modes of communication and trade were required, though these had been developing for some time and were realized with capitalism and the bureaucracy, what Karatani (2014) calls the modern state – a military power, and a standard and compulsory education (212). The defining characteristics of the system are described as “jurisdictions clearly defined by regulations, a hierarchical system of official ranks, appointment by contracts entered into voluntarily, promotion determined by a regularized system of rules, specialized training, and salaries paid in cash” (Karatani, 2014: 180). This in some ways builds on the Weberian understanding of the boundaries of democratic politics: “Weber’s counterarguments are personified in the image of the political hero or statesman, who must define a new political yet who can never fully overcome or transcend bureaucracy’s limitations in the process of transformation. Bureaucracy is thus the boundary condition of all modern democratic politics as well as a challenge to be overcome” (Maley, 2011: 32).

Combining the concept of the Borromean knot with the preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucratic system according to Karatani (2014), a Weberian understanding of the bureaucracy as a boundary to overcome, as well as the varied ideological involvement between both Gabriela Coleman and Boltanski and Chiapello (2018) brings us probably closest to Everard when he describes states as cultural artefacts that are most visible at its moments of challenge, or at its boundaries (Karatani, 2014; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2018; Everard, 2000). At this moment, blockchain is on its way to absorbing at least some state function in the forms of voting and identification, is potentially becoming both the means of production by machines with the resulting capital being more horizontally distributed through decentralization, and supersedes the nation in some ways by the borderless aspect of the technology (Bratton, 2014). It seems then that blockchain technology could be poised to move society into Karatani’s conceptual mode of exchange D, which we might already understand in some ways as the sharing economy. However, the sharing economy has existed for some time, and in no way transcended either state, nation, or capital – but it has laid the groundwork for mainstream adoption of decentralized principles in local economies through gradual adoption of services such as Uber and Airbnb. Even these are being recreated as blockchain projects that are owned by the users and renters of the system, which is forcing Airbnb and Uber to reconsider their ownership structures and how they distribute value through their platforms. Even some of the issues that have been raised around aspects of employment or contracting and employment benefits is being addressed within or at least adjacent to the blockchain space. Both the Gitcoin and Opolis (Paller et al., 2019) projects are attempting to create functional funding, employment, benefits, and opportunity platforms to foster open source software development. While these focus on software development primarily, their application to employment within the sharing economy to address real problems of insecurity should be apparent. Blockchain technology has emerged from outside of traditional capitalist logic and development, and has been ushered into existence by coders who understand the technology as one built upon and embodying their ideology (and can be shaped to fit many ideologies in the future through open source code adaptation). This leads me to the concept that blockchain systems, at least in some instances and platforms, are an authentic politics of technology, and were created to meet ideological aims of coders involved with the projects as well as those that continue to engage with the space and move it forward. It is for this reason in particular that I find it absolutely imperative that we in the social sciences come to grips with the social and ideological aspects and implications of the technology, especially as it moves toward more mainstream and capitalist adoption and adaptation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Though no monetary assistance has been received to produce this work, the author does own some small amounts of various cryptocurrencies. Also, tickets for attendance at both ETHDenver and RadicalxChange conferences were provided at no personal cost.

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