Blockchain Technology: Toward a Decentralized Governance of Digital Platforms?

Abstract

Despite its promise to establish a more decentralized society with a novel economic order,5 many of the blockchain-based networks or applications implemented thus far ultimately rely on market dynamics and economic incentives for distributed coordination. Indeed, consensus, in a large majority of existing blockchain-based networks, is established — at the protocol level — through a combination of code-based rules and game theoretical mechanisms that ultimately replicate the current economic order. This type of governance by the infrastructure has already shown its shortcomings, especially when it comes to promoting or preserving decentralization, mostly due to its inability to account for external political and economic forces that exist outside of a blockchain-based platform. We claim that, in order to ensure that these platforms cannot be co-opted by these external forces, a more comprehensive governance model must be elaborated — one that extends beyond the realm of pure algorithmically verifiable actions, and that supports or facilitates the governance of the infrastructure.

Keywords: blockchain, governance, commons, markets, decentralisation