‘An Ethnography of Decentralised Information Infrastructure’: Adopting Cypherpunk Nomenclature To Categorise the Unique Attributes of Decentralised Technologies

Abstract

Describing the attributes and characteristics has an important place in the ethnographic study of information infrastructure. Yet, decentralised information infrastructure does not have a clearly defined “ethnography”, by which to describe its unique attributes. This piece draws on historical research on the ‘cypherpunk mailing list’ archives to form a descriptive basis of the unique attributes of decentralised information infrastructure for ethnographic studies. The unique characteristics of decentralised information infrastructure outlined are: decentralised, autonomous, participatory, permissionless, ad hoc, encrypted, full-stack, modular, migratable, scalable, requires a community, trust gradient, and evolutionary. These characteristics form a basis for further ethnographic enquiry into the opportunities and limitations of decentralised information infrastructure in society.

Keywords: decentralised, information infrastructure, blockchain, ethnography, digital

JEL Classification: D02, D80, O33, O35