Ethics Hot Topics Series-Polycentric Blockchain Governance – A Solution To Enhance Trust?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X20303067

The article “Blockchain as a confidence machine: The problem of trust & challenges of governance” highlights one of the key elements of success for large scale blockchain technology adoption: trust. Trust is one of the foundational elements in our society and essential in building a global ethical blockchain ecosystem.

Metaphorically blockchain technology is described as a “ confidence machine” and the article describes the key requirements for maintaining trust and confidence, such as robust data governance for all stakeholders. It also identifies the main drivers of confidence such as distributed consensus, deterministic computation and cryptographic primitives.

In addition to the complex sociological and philosophical arguments, the authors also provide a concise overview of existing literature on trust and direct us to examine various governance models. Essential concepts related to constitutional and polycentric governance theory are discussed with all their associated challenges.

Not only is this article very well organized, it provides a wealth of resources and is extremely timely given that numerous international organizations are engaged in establishing framework that can enhance trust and build a robust data governance within the global blockchain ethics ecosystem ( “Shaping the Future of Technology Governance; Blockchain and Digital Assets “World Economic Forum).

 

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