Building the blockchain world: Technological commonwealth or just more of the same?

• Author: Sarah Manski
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2151
• Published date: 01 September 2017

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Strategic Change. 2017;26(5):511–522. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 511

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2151

Abstract

Blockchain technologies are reconguring the global economy, though oen in contradictory

ways. Blockchain technologies are disrupng key economic and nancial sectors. Some block-

chain applicaons allow for democrazaon of nance, services, agriculture, and governance,

yet they may also deepen inequality and weaken democracy. We need new understandings of

the countervailing tendencies of blockchain technologies and the conngencies that shape their

deployment.

1 

|

 INTRODUCTION

The contradictory futures of a blockchain world are beginning to come

into view. The decentralized structures of blockchain technologies

tend toward democracy and, therefore, one possible blockchain future

features a great global expansion of cooperave forms of ownership

and management of wealth. The development and adopon of block-

chains by cooperave enterprises demonstrates how “new technolo-

gies in combinaon with the conscious and determined exercise of

polical agency can create another, beer world for all of the world’s

people” (Block, 2008). Yet the development and deployment of block-

chain technologies is also subject to a range of countervailing tenden-

cies, which could instead produce greater inequality and corporate

consolidaon.

This arcle examines the deployment of blockchain technology

by instuons of the cooperave economy as well as tradional state

actors in laying the foundaons for a global technological common-

wealth. The work specically considers emergent uses of blockchains

in the nance and currency, healthcare and identy management,

food and farming, governance, services, and supply chain manage-

ment sectors. Consideraon is also given to negave tendencies of

blockchain technologies, the consequences of which might include

acceleraon of current economic trends by weakening democracy

and increasing wealth inequality, privileging the technologically

skilled, speeding automaon that leads to greater unemployment,

weakening the state’s regulatory power, and the technologizaon of

granng legal rights and responsibilies enjoyed by natural persons

to corporaons.

2 

|

 THE EMERGING BLOCKCHAIN

ECONOMY

It is already evident that the transformave potenals of blockchain

technologies, however implemented, are generang signicant inter-

est. US federal agencies, including the NSF, DARPA, and DHS, have

awarded over $8 million to small businesses and universies for

blockchain‐based research. Venture capitalists have invested $1.2

billion in blockchain startups (Hileman, 2016). At the January 2016

World Economic Forum, sessions on technology‐enabled automaon,

including blockchain, were tagged with the phrase Fourth Industrial

Revoluon, describing the economic fusion of technologies blurring

the disncons between the physical, digital, and biological spheres

(Schwab, 2016).

Major powers such as China, Russia, Japan, and the United States,

and small countries like Uruguay, Slovenia, and Kenya, are all jockeying

for comparave strategic advantage in the development and deploy-

ment of blockchain technologies (Tapsco & Tapsco, 2016). For

instance, the US state of Delaware is working with developers at Sym-

biont to archive, catalog, and cryptographically secure government

records on a blockchain for the Delaware Public Archives. Delaware

ocials are also exploring modicaons to Delaware corporate law to

enable the authorizaon of distributed ledger shares by Delaware cor-

poraons (Dworkin, 2016). Execuves at the Naonal Bank of Canada,

in collaboraon with the country’s largest banks, are using blockchain

Building the blockchain world: Technological

commonwealth or just more of the same?*

Sarah Manski

University of California, Santa Barbara

California

Correspondence

Department of Global Studies, Social

Sciences & Media Studies, 2nd Floor UC

Santa Barbara 93106-7065

Email: sarah@manski.org

* JEL classicaon code: O33.