DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2151 RESEARCH ARTICLE 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 Abstract Blockchain technologies are reconiguring the global economy, though oten in contradictory ways. Blockchain technologies are disruping key economic and inancial sectors. Some blockchain applicaions allow for democraizaion of inance, 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 coningencies that shape their deployment. 1 | INTRODUCTION graning legal rights and responsibiliies enjoyed by natural persons to corporaions. 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 cooperaive forms of ownership and management of wealth. The development and adopion of blockchains by cooperaive enterprises demonstrates how “new technologies in combinaion with the conscious and determined exercise of poliical agency can create another, beter world for all of the world’s people” (Block, 2008). Yet the development and deployment of blockchain technologies is also subject to a range of countervailing tendencies, which could instead produce greater inequality and corporate consolidaion. This aricle examines the deployment of blockchain technology by insituions of the cooperaive economy as well as tradiional state actors in laying the foundaions for a global technological commonwealth. The work speciically considers emergent uses of blockchains in the inance and currency, healthcare and idenity management, food and farming, governance, services, and supply chain management sectors. Consideraion is also given to negaive tendencies of blockchain technologies, the consequences of which might include acceleraion of current economic trends by weakening democracy and increasing wealth inequality, privileging the technologically skilled, speeding automaion that leads to greater unemployment, weakening the state’s regulatory power, and the technologizaion of 2 | THE EMERGING BLOCKCHAIN ECONOMY It is already evident that the transformaive potenials of blockchain technologies, however implemented, are generaing signiicant interest. US federal agencies, including the NSF, DARPA, and DHS, have awarded over $8 million to small businesses and universiies 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 automaion, including blockchain, were tagged with the phrase Fourth Industrial Revoluion, describing the economic fusion of technologies blurring the disincions 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 comparaive strategic advantage in the development and deployment of blockchain technologies (Tapscot & Tapscot, 2016). For instance, the US state of Delaware is working with developers at Symbiont to archive, catalog, and cryptographically secure government records on a blockchain for the Delaware Public Archives. Delaware oicials are also exploring modiicaions to Delaware corporate law to enable the authorizaion of distributed ledger shares by Delaware corporaions (Dworkin, 2016). Execuives at the Naional Bank of Canada, * JEL classiicaion code: O33. Strategic Change. 2017;26(5):511–522. in collaboraion with the country’s largest banks, are using blockchain wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 511 512 MANSKI technology to develop an electronic version of the Canadian dollar and authorizaion, eliminaing the need for centralized veriicaion (Staford, 2016). The Tunisian government is partnering with Monetas (Tapscot & Tapscot, 2016). Thus, blockchain users do not need to and DigitUs to replace its self‐created eDinar digital currency with a know each other in order to rely on the validity of their transacions. blockchain‐based version allowing La Poste Tunisienne customers to This process, according to the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto issue remitances, instant money transfers, and purchases in‐store and (2008), works because the blockchain uses a consensus mechanism to online via QR codes (Cafyn, 2015). Japanese banks are planning the ensure the integrity of the chain, whereby muliple nodes indepen- creaion of a blockchain currency exchange (Higgins, 2016). dently verify transacions between individuals. Just as major inancial insituions, government economic plan- Blockchain technology is in its infancy and there are signiicant ners, and venture capitalists are moivated by the new possibiliies hurdles to commercial adopion. These can be seen with the irst and to maximize insituional advantage using blockchains, so too are a most widely used applicaion of blockchain distributed ledger tech- growing movement of social entrepreneurs, cooperaives, and aciv- nology, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (Tapscot & Tapscot, 2016). In its ists who are using blockchain technologies in pursuit of cooperaive irst years, Bitcoin is facing technological challenges because there ownership and management of wealth, or a technological common- has been a signiicant increase in mining costs, the average block size, wealth. The purpose of a commonwealth is to develop “community median conirmaion ime, mempool transacion count, and user fees. economic insituions which are egalitarian and equitable in the tra- Currently, the validaion of Bitcoin transacions is extremely expen- diional socialist sense and controlling producive resources for the sive in terms of aggregate energy costs of miners. The total energy beneit of all, but which can prevent centralizaion, and, which over consumpion of Bitcoin mining is comparable with Ireland’s total elec- ime can permit new social relaions capable of sustaining an ethic of tricity usage, and this amount is projected to vastly increase when individual responsibility and group cooperaion which a larger vision Bitcoin scales up (O’Dwyer & Malone, 2014). Addiionally, increasing must ulimately involve” (Alperovitz, 1972). Thus, a commonwealth usership is causing blocks to reach their current maximum size limit might be thought of as an economic project that aggregates, distrib- of 1 megabyte with more frequency (Torpey, 2017). Furthermore, utes, and governs capital at muliple levels and on a cooperaive basis. the ime and memory it takes to conirm transacions is increasing. A technological commonwealth is a commonwealth enacted through It takes approximately 10 minutes to conirm a Bitcoin transacion, the use of advanced exchange, communicaion, and decision‐making and this conirmaion ime will expand as more users enter the net- technologies. work (Torpey, 2017). Over the past six months, the average fee to This aricle shows how various early innovators of blockchain have a transacion included in the next six blocks is $0.51, higher technologies are using them to expand economic democracy and in so than many card processors’ fees (BitcoinFees, 2017). There are many doing, build the foundaions for a technological commonwealth. Cer- coders working on technological ixes to the validaion problems of tain tendencies of blockchain technologies that may exhibit counter- increasing ime and energy consumpion, such as the eliminaion vailing efects, including the strengthening of hierarchies, centralizing of transacion malleability and the entrance of two‐layer soluions of power, and exacerbaing of inequaliies, are also considered. Fred (Young, 2017). Block (2008) has argued that with conscious efort and atenion, new Despite current technological challenges, developers have built technologies can be used to create a beter future. In these irst years an array of applicaions on blockchains. Some of these applicaions of a blockchain world, a criical task of scholars of technology and soci- exhibit tendencies that lead toward a technological commonwealth ety is the ideniicaion and evaluaion of the variety of tendencies and some toward a centralizaion of power and increasing inequality, that blockchain technologies may exhibit. In doing so, we can begin to whilst other tendencies are unclear as to which possible future they crat policies that guide toward desirable outcomes. suggest. Those tendencies that suggest the emergence of a technological commonwealth include disintermediaion, trustless exchange, increased user control of informaion and transacions, maintenance 3 | A DECENTRALIZING TECHNOLOGY of high‐quality accurate data, durable decentralized networks that are diicult to hack, transparency, immutability, faster and less costly The tendency toward decentralizaion resides in the essence of transacions (see Table 1). But other tendencies of blockchain technol- blockchain technology. A blockchain is a distributed ledger database. ogy either fail to suggest or actually contravene the construcion of Blockchains use cryptography to provide a decentralized muli‐ver- a technological commonwealth. These tendencies include unresolved sion consensus control mechanism to secure transacions in compet- technical challenges, an unsetled regulatory environment, cyber secu- ing environments, without trusted third paries (Tapscot & Tapscot, rity and privacy concerns, challenges to widespread user adopion, 2016). Blockchains are diferent from tradiional online database job loss due to automaion, and decreased corporate accountability technology, wherein a central database is sited in a single locaion (see Table 2). All of these are discussed in further detail below, begin- and accessed by a network of users. Instead, blockchains reverse ning with an examinaion of blockchain applicaions that tend toward this relaionship. Each blockchain is a decentralized database distrib- the construcion of a technological commonwealth in the inancial, uted across a network of users. In material terms, this means that healthcare, idenity, agriculture, governance, service, and supply chain each blockchain is simultaneously stored on computers throughout sectors, and then turning to a consideraion of blockchain tendencies the network. Each transacion contains its own proofs of validity countervailing against commonwealth. 513 MANSKI TABLE 1 Key tendencies of blockchain technology leading towards a technological commonwealth Disintermediaion Trustless exchange Increased user control of informaion Durable, secure decentralized networks Transparency and immutability Maintenance of high‐quality, accurate data Increasing ability to moneize personal informaion, service improvement, and potenial circumvenion of centralized global inancial capital Increasing ability to cooperaively share value across borders Issuance of data directly to members and improved ability to moneize personal data Reducion in hacking thet or direct expropriaion Potenial for the reducion of corrupion and increasing incenives for ethical supply chain pracices Reducion of waste and product loss and improved uilizaion of equipment and inventory tracking TABLE 2 Key tendencies of blockchain technology leading away from a technological commonwealth Unresolved technical challenges Unsetled regulatory environment Cybersecurity and privacy concerns Challenges to widespread adopion Job loss due to automaion Decreased corporate accountability Increasing mining costs, energy usage, average block size, median conirmaion ime, mempool transacion count, and user fees Reducion in investment in new technologies While blockchains themselves are very diicult to hack, the intermediary services are vulnerable Limited userfriendliness and superior technical experise required are acing as barriers to adopion Many middle and lower-income workers in the areas of accounting, veriicaion, banking, and others may lose their livelihood Companies may exploit the lack of regulaion to engage in undesirable behavior and future DAOs may be diicult to control 4 | AN EMERGENT TECHNOLOGICAL COMMONWEALTH the co‐operaive movement by working together through local, Blockchain technologies are paricularly useful for the cooperaive working across boundaries and cultures, the capacity of blockchains to movement in its long‐term ambiions for a global commonwealth. For avoid hosile intermediaries and to solve trust issues in the exchange two centuries, the cooperaive movement has been antagonisic to of value between geographically disparate users is criical. The use of both corporate capitalism and state socialism on the basis that both blockchains enables muliple organizaions to conidently and securely systems rely on the concentraion of economic and poliical power, transfer value electronically without an intermediary such as a commer- and are as a result undemocraic, ineicient, and in the long run, cial bank. This is important because intermediaries may prevent eniies unsustainable (Alperovitz, 1972; Curl, 2010). The desire to build an with whom they disagree or are in compeiion from using their services. naional, regional and internaional structures” (ICA, 2017). As cooperaives seek soluions to the problems associated with alternaive to state‐centered and corporate capitalist economic mod- For instance, in India, the operaions of 370 district central cooperaive els has been a primary driver of the cooperaive movement from its banks and 93,000 primary agricultural credit socieies were severely beginnings in the early nineteenth century (Krimerman, 1992; Ness impacted when commercial banks refused to provide currency sup- & Azzellini, 2011). Historically, cooperaives and associated labor, port following the demoneizaion of Indian bank notes by the Reserve farmer, consumer, and democracy movements have sought to build Bank of India (Mathew, 2016). These kinds of problems have led the commonwealth projects. Among the more notable of these projects Internaional Cooperaive Alliance (ICA) to explore ways to use tech- were those associated with European utopian socialism (Marx, 1864; nology to expand the cooperaive movement on a global scale to bring Thompson, 2011), North American progressive populism (Humphrey, the “core and backbone of the co‐operaive model into our digital and 1891), Iberian syndicalism (Whyte & Whyte, 1991), and the Israeli kib- virtual age” (ICA, 2017). The ICA and other transnaional cooperaive butzim (Kurland, 1947). organizaions make use of muliple technologies, including blockchains, The cooperaive movement today includes consumer and worker to further democracy in every economic sector they are present, includ- cooperaives, employee‐owned companies, credit unions, community ing insurance, housing, health, isheries, consumer banking, agriculture, development loan funds, service credit systems, and local barter and and much more (Alperovitz, 2012, 2013; Curl, 2009; Wright, 2014). service exchange networks (Lewis & Conaty, 2012). Globally, coop- Certain sectors of the global economy are predicted to be eraives comprise hundreds of millions of users, are valued in the impacted more quickly than others by the introducion of blockchain trillions of dollars, and move products in almost every sector across technology, paricularly those industries that beneit from less cen- global supply chains (DG Report, 2014). Cooperaives and the coop- tralized and more accelerated interconnecivity between diferent eraive sector are deeply invested in strengthening their transnaional systems irrespecive of geographical and physical space (Simonite, ies and developing greater control over their global supply chains 2016). These sectors include inance and currency, healthcare, iden- (Della Porta, 2006). Since 1966, the charter of the internaional ity management, government services, security, and supply chain cooperaive movement, the Rochdale Principles, has asserted that management. This aricle provides an examinaion of the uses of “Co‐operaives serve their members most efecively and strengthen blockchain to strengthen cooperaive management and ownership in 514 MANSKI these sectors, and the use of blockchains in the food and agricultural related sectors of healthcare and idenity management, blockchain sectors, because agriculture has historically played a paricularly sig- applicaions are serving to improve paient care and allowing users niicant role in the cooperaive movement. of online technologies to exercise greater control over their personal informaion. Blockchain technology ofers paients and healthcare 4.1 | Finance and currency insituions the ability to securely share paient idenity and healthcare data across plaforms. Being able to quickly and efecively diagnose In the inancial sector, blockchain applicaions allow users to circumvent paients should lead to more efecive and cost‐eicient treatments global inancial capital and to self‐organize on a cooperaive basis. Block- (Prisco, 2016). For instance, the startup company Gem is using a pri- chain inance applicaions ofer users increased paricipaion in control- vate blockchain‐enabled Ethereum plaform to build the Gem Health ling currency exchange, banking, land itle rights, sustainability, and Network: development. One example is the blockchain applicaion Abra (meaning “open”), designed to reduce the fees paid by users sending remitances. We imagine a future where every paient holds the keys to Blockchain applicaions like Abra are expressly intended to disrupt the their healthcare passport, bridging paient care among muli- $600 billion remitance industry. Abra charges users no transfer fees, ple providers and across borders. We imagine hospitals hiring and 2% to add and withdraw money instead of the tradiional 10%. more doctors and nurses on a budget recovered from wasted Users access the applicaion on a smartphone. Addiionally, money sent reconciliaion expenses. We imagine labs, wearables, shop- via blockchain applicaion can take minutes instead of the days or even ping lists, and healthcare apps working together to inform a weeks that tradiional banks may take to clear an internaional exchange. healthier populaion. We imagine beter quality of care for The vision statement of Abra’s developers makes their purpose clear: every paient, and easier, smarter systems for the providers To realize our vision of a free peer‐to‐peer money transfer network, we’ve been building a global ecosystem for person to person payments that works on any smartphone in any country in the world. While tradiional remitance providers look at the world in terms of “corridors,” we see the world as one big connected global network. Our blockchain based plaform helps us realize that vision. (Buninx, 2016b) Another example of blockchains used as a decentralizing force in the inancial sector is the Bitcoin alternaive called Faircoin. Members of Fair.coop, a transnaional cooperaive, used blockchain technology to build Faircoin as an alternaive to naional currencies. Similar to Bitcoin, Faircoin makes inancial transacions less costly for users by eliminaing the need for central processing insituions like banks. Faircoin also lowers money transfer fees, currency exchange fees, and credit card fees. Fair.coop cooperaive members work to fulill the mission statement “the Earth cooperaive for a fair economy.” In this way, Fair.coop members rely on a blockchain technology to create a system of globally coordinated networks that link local commonwealth insituions (Fair.coop, 2016). Blockchain technology’s decentralizing atributes ofer members of the cooperaive movement tools to circumvent the power and authority of central banks and large inancial insituions. The blockchain applicaions they are building—such as Abra and Faircoin, among others—are part of the co‐construcion of a technological commonwealth. Despite the beneits evident in these applicaions, there are challenges which are addressed later in this aricle, paricularly with regard to how large inancial insituions and governments are using blockchain technology to extend their power in the global economy. that care for them. (Vergel de Dios, 2016) Another company, BlockchainHealth, is building a blockchain‐ enabled applicaion that will allow users to share their health data with researchers while maintaining control of their sensiive personal health data (BlockchainHealth, 2017). Blockchain applicaions could, in the future, streamline the insurance claim process by automaically verifying and authorizing (or denying) treatment and coverage (Molteni, 2017). The idenity management tools ofered by blockchain, which allow people to determine what and how much idenity informaion they share, can be applied outside of the healthcare ield as well. Service aggregators like Facebook collect signiicant quaniies of personal data and resell this informaion. Corporaions like Alphabet (Google) and Facebook already collect and moneize users’ personal data, including consumer preferences, purchase history, friendships, travels, and more. Individual users are required to accept the terms of service and allow wide access to their personal data if they want to use many oferings (Havens, 2013). The central concentraion of idenity data collected by large corporaions and governments atracts the atenion of hackers, who seek to steal this data and sell it or hold the owners to ransom. In exchange for the use of their services, corporaions collect the personal data of users, which, in turn, they oten sell to adverisers. Proits from the sale of personal informaion are not shared with the community of users providing this informaion, and some have argued for an expansion of the right of “publicity,” which is a term used to describe the common-law right to control the commercial exploitaion of one’s personal idenity (Wassom, 2016). A related set of issues involves the use of blockchains by health insurance eniies to enforce payment responsibiliies or by states to monitor the spending of social service monies. For instance, following an 4.2 | Healthcare and idenity management announcement by the United Kingdom that it intended to engage in a trial use of blockchains to distribute public assistance, concerns have In Idenity is the new money, David Birch (2014) writes that every dis- emerged about the possibility of government audiing of all individual cussion about the blockchain boils down to idenity issues. In the expenditures (Cellan‐Jones, 2016). 515 MANSKI The cooperaive movement is beginning to respond to these This is a shared risk structure. FarmShare community members receive emergent idenity issues, seeking to wrest control of personal data FarmShare tokens created and distributed by each paricipaing CSA. from major corporaions and governments and to provide privacy pro- These tokens represent shares of the harvested crop and can be used tecion to individuals. Over the 1990s and 2000s, proponents of a to purchase produce. FarmShare developers’ goals include establishing democraic Internet developed plaforms such as igc.org, Indymedia, community engagement as a peer‐to‐peer network (FarmShare, 2016). and drupal that were intended to provide an online commons free of Technology innovators in the cooperaive agricultural sector corporate and government control and surveillance (Emerson, 2005). imagine further steps on the road to commonwealth producion. Today, enterprises such as uPort are creaing blockchain applicaions One visionary model involves the decentralizaion of farming to the that allow individuals to know what data is being collected about household level through the uilizaion of blockchain‐enabled smart- them, and to choose which idenity informaion they want to share grids (Swan, 2015a). An example of a blockchain smartgrid in food pro- and moneize (ConsenSys, 2015). Similarly, ShoCard and Crypid use ducion would be a community of individuals growing food at homes blockchain technology to store personal ideniicaion cards on an and businesses networked via a blockchain applicaion. Each mem- encrypted global network (ShoCard, 2017). From Locke and Rousseau ber in a blockchain farm smartgrid would use a portable hydroponic to Dewey and Moufe, democraic theory has long insisted that a func- unit to grow food for both their own and community consumpion. A ioning democracy is a beter guarantor of individual rights, includ- map would allow users to ind local hydroponic units with fresh pro- ing privacy rights, than autocraic government (Locke, 1689; Moufe, duce in an on‐demand real‐ime updaing reservaion‐taking system. 2000; Rousseau, 1968; Westbrook, 1993). While iniiaives like uPort Consumers would own shares or tokens supporing local food coop- and ShoCard are not formally a part of the cooperaive movement, eraives. They could purchase these tokens directly or receive them they operate in a similar spirit and show a way forward. The integra- through volunteer or educaional acivity (Rodriguez, 2015). Filament ion of such blockchain‐based universal logins with democraic open‐ is a company producing low‐power hardware GPS nodes, which con- source plaforms such as drupal could allow for the construcion of nect farm machinery and industrial infrastructure to the blockchain a cooperaively managed idenity infrastructure that provides greater network. The company claims that farmers will be able to reduce costs privacy protecions than those ofered by major corporaions and by using the blockchain‐enabled GPS nodes to keep tabs on the loca- state agencies. ion of mobile equipment and the funcioning of ixed machinery, even in remote areas (Filament, 2017). 4.3 | Food and farming Members of the cooperaive movement see food not merely as a 4.4 | Governance commodity but as a muli‐dimensional expression of culture and com- Blockchains are increasingly being used to democraize funcions and munity, which should be cooperaively managed and owned (Hudson governance processes of the state, as well as, in some cases, to relo- & Fridell, 2013; Patel, 2012). Former President of Costa Rica, Laura cate tradiional state funcions into the cooperaive (as opposed to Chinchilla, praised cooperaives in a speech at the Food Agriculture private) sector. Speciic innovaions range from collaboraive gover- Organizaion (FAO) for the UN, “[cooperaives] free people from hun- nance voing systems and public inancing crowdfunding systems to ger and poverty in a globalized world in which crises, including climate transparent tracking of state spending and voter‐based monitoring of change, touch everyone” (Barker, 2012). elecion integrity (Swan, 2015b). FollowMyVote is one example of a Blockchains assist in the expansion of cooperaive agriculture by blockchain‐enabled secure voing system. Developers claim that “Vot- reducing collaboraion and administraion costs, including the collab- ers can follow their vote into the ballot box to independently verify that oraive design of which crops to grow, what land to plant, and what their vote was cast as intended and counted as cast” (FollowMyVote, prices to set. In paricular, smart property transacions through the use 2017). In Ukraine, government oicials are conducing tests of block- of blockchain smart contracts enable the shared use of farm equip- chain‐based elecion plaforms for peiions and advisory votes at the ment, tools, and transportaion, and recurring purchases or automaic municipal level (Abouzeid, 2016). Furthermore, candidates for oice orders once a set price is met (Bodell, 2016). An example is AgriLedger, are increasingly including blockchains in their plaforms. For instance, a blockchain applicaion designed to help farmers retain a bigger share in recent London municipal elecions, muliple candidates discussed of their crop value by creaing the world’s largest communicaion net- the democraizing potenial of blockchains (Williams‐Grut, 2015), work of small farmers and cooperaives (AgriLedger, 2017). arguing alongside the Green Party’s Gulnar Hasnain that the technol- FarmShare is a promising applicaion of blockchain technology ogy ofers “more decentralized power, smaller government, a need for that facilitates token‐based equity shares, distributed consensus, a shit in the concentraion of power in the banking system and a more and automated governance to foster greater community‐to‐farm‐to‐ inclusive society” (Perez, 2015). community engagement while eliminaing some of the managerial bur- Few funcions are as central to state legiimacy as the allocaion dens and business risks from farmers involved in a Community Sup- of property rights, but even here we see a growing adopion of block- ported Agriculture (CSA) farm (Bodell, 2015). Tradiional CSA farms are chain by state authoriies to regulate land itles. Government oicials structured so that subscribers pay a set fee at the beginning of the in the Republic of Georgia are partnering with BitFury to design and growing season in exchange for regular delivery of a porion of produce. pilot a blockchain land itling project that would place ownership rights 516 MANSKI on an encrypted public database, thereby allowing users to maintain because ethical producion and exchange are essenial norms in coop- a valid itle to their land, enabling them to borrow against it, and plan eraive economics; second, because supply chain transparency per- for the future (Shin, 2016). Similarly, the Swedish government began forms important funcions in achieving those ecological, labor, human tesing their land registry in March 2017. They are working with block- rights, and other ethical goals. The supply chain management irm chain startup ChromaWay and two banks that specialize in mortgages, Provenance describes the problem as follows: Landshypotek and SBAB (Rizzo, 2017). Some blockchain applicaions have been built with the purpose of supplaning naion states enirely. Bitnaion is a blockchain project designed to decentralize insituional governance power on a global scale by eliminaing geographic limitaions to ciizenship (Bitnaion, 2017). Bitnaion is structured as a holacracy (Bitnaion, 2017), a cooperaive organizaional form that removes power from central management and distributes it across members of self‐organizing teams (Robinson, 2015). Thus, Bitnaion aspires to provide much of the poliical–legal infrastructure required in the construcion of the poliical economy of a technological commonwealth. Bitnaion’s iniial projects include ofering blockchain IDs and Bitcoin Visa debit cards to refugees to receive funds from family in the absence of a bank account. In December 2015, the Estonian government partnered with Bitnaion to ofer a blockchain public notary to e‐residents, enabling the notarizaion of their marriages, birth ceriicates, land itles, and business contracts on the blockchain (Allison, 2016). Opaque supply chains are devastaing environments and compromising the wellbeing of people, animals and communiies. Every product and business is diferent, but rarely do we have the informaion we need to make posiive choices about what to buy. (Provenance, 2016) Developers at Provenance are using blockchain technology to document the authenicity and origin of materials and ingredients in consumer products, arguing that their applicaion “can disrupt how we track the atributes and journey of every material thing – powering a system everyone in the supply chain can be part of” (Provenance, 2016). Similarly, developers at Skuchain are building a system of material ideniiers in the structure of both barcodes and RFID tags to digitally enable the transfer of goods across the enire global economy (Skuchain, 2016). Producers that engage in socially responsible and beneicial environmental and labor economic pracices gain data that allows them to determine the extent to which they are indeed invesing in people and the planet. Correspondingly, consumers gain 4.5 | Services and supply chains The use of blockchains to achieve the disintermediaion of service aggregators is an increasingly common feature of the service sector, paricularly in the area of supply chain management. The widespread adopion of the Internet has facilitated the rise of large‐scale service aggregators like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, and eBay. These corporaions make it their pracice to maximize value capture of transacions, and thus proit. But blockchains enable communiies of producers to take over service aggregaion themselves. Blockchains allow for the disintermediaion of service aggregators by handling the search, contract, reputaion, and payment systems for much less informaion that allows them to evaluate the legiimacy of claims and pricing of ethical products (Skuchain, 2016). Increased producer control of distribuion, exchange, and therefore supply chains is fundamental to the construcion of any commonwealth. In the late nineteenth and early twenieth centuries, cooperaively managed storage, transportaion, and wire services allowed for the construcion of commonwealths across the North American plains and Great Lakes regions, in Spain, Palesine, and other regions. In the twenty‐irst century, blockchain technologies are being used to democraize service aggregaion and to manage and reveal supply chains on a global scale. expense. This translates into greater retenion of value by producers, as opposed to middlemen, something that has been a longime goal 5 | COUNTERVAILING TENDENCIES of the cooperaive movement. Used in this manner, blockchain applicaions democraize wealth creaion, engage more people directly Gathering in physical seings such as the Blockchain Summit (Vavilov, in economic decision‐making, and thus laten power structures. For 2016) and in online communiies such as Fair.coop, a growing move- example, Mycelia is a blockchain proof‐of‐ownership applicaion for ment is using blockchain technology to lay the foundaions for a arists. Developers at Mycelia state their mission is to “empower a fair, technological commonwealth. Yet cooperaives and the cooperaive sustainable and vibrant music industry ecosystem involving all online movement are not the only social forces involved in blockchain deploy- music interacion services” (Mycelia, 2017). The Mycelia blockchain ment. Depending on the applicaions and condiions under which applicaion ataches a smart contract and a digital wallet to each they are introduced, blockchain technologies may have contradictory song, enabling money to low directly to the arist. Similar blockchain efects, strengthening hierarchies, centralizing power, and exacerbat- applicaions could be used to protect all types of intellectual producer ing inequality. It is too early in the history of the blockchain world content, including academic journal aricles, artwork, invenions, and to reasonably evaluate and reach conclusions about every signiicant movies. coningency, but we can and should at least begin the research pro- Disintermediaion in the area of supply chain management is of cess by idenifying emergent and someimes contradictory tenden- importance to cooperaives generally, and in paricular to the expan- cies, recognizing that exising social relaions inluence technology sion of cooperaive exchange mechanisms via the construcion of a deployment. The digital world and social world shape and condiion technological commonwealth. This is so for several reasons: irst, each other (Latham & Sassen, 2005; Sassen, 2007). 517 MANSKI Despite the general characterizaion of blockchain technolo- Blockchains require specialized knowledge for their creaion. An gies as tending toward decentralizaion, incumbent and new indus- addiional level of experise is required to include smart contracts tries are emerging that are using blockchain technology to reinforce within the database’s funcionality. As is currently the case in the established posiions. Venture capitalists, global accouning irms, big ield of law and contracts, those most familiar with legal processes banks, and tradiional state actors are already engaging in some block- and insituions oten prove more easily able to navigate the poliical chain pracices that tend toward exclusivity, straiicaion, deregula- and inancial universe (Galanter, 1974; Rosenberg, 2008). The smart ion, and corporate sovereignty. One example of these pracices is the contracts coded by developers are supposed to accurately relect the development of private blockchains that only publish limited amounts negoiated terms between two (or more) paries, but the paries will of data to speciic users in inancial services such as R3 (Rizzo, 2016). need a way to verify that the smart contract is error‐free. Such dispari- This kind of implementaion is described by decentralist blockchain ies of the law in acion may become more salient as the permanent innovators such as Eugene Lopin, CEO of CHEX, “as a counter‐pro- and immutable nature of data on the blockchain could make the sever- ducive grab to maintain centralized control” (O’Connell, 2016). Other ing of contracts increasingly diicult. New statutes, rules, and proce- such examples include the rush to secure exclusive blockchain patents dures will need to be developed to address issues of equity in smart on open‐source code (Kharif, 2016), banks that lobby governments to contracts. For instance, smart contracts could be tested on a simula- restrict FinTech compeiion (Arnold, 2017), and expanded state con- tor to see how they perform in response to unexpected and expected trol over how social welfare recipients use public aid (Cellan‐Jones, messages from users and other contracts (Mlynar & Schaefer, 2016). 2016). Thus, blockchain technologies are already being used in ways that tend against the kind of democraic governance and ownership essenial to the construcion of a technological commonwealth. Spe- 5.2 | Automaion and straiicaion ciically, some blockchain applicaions tend toward the widening of the Historically, most jobs lost to automaion have been replaced with technological divide, an increase in automaion and straiicaion, new lower‐paying, repeiive, and menial labor (Autor & Dorn, 2013). forms of deregulaion, and the emergence of corporate sovereignty. Blockchain technology is helping to make exising systems more eicient, and Ethereum smart contract technology allows developers to 5.1 | The technological divide build applicaions to create businesses that run themselves with distributed and decentralized proit margins, management, and services. A very advanced level of technological experise is required to build These independent decentralized autonomous organizaions (DAOs) blockchains. This puts the creaion of blockchain applicaions outside or decentralized autonomous corporaions (DACs), built with block- the ability of the average user and centralizes the power to decide chain technology, eliminate the lawyers, accountants, and bureaucrats what type of blockchain applicaions developers create. It has been whose job it is to conirm the trustworthiness and legal standing of said by Steve Jobs as well as others that to facilitate user adopion, contracts between paries (Dew, 2015). The widespread replacement technology should either be invisible or beauiful. Current blockchain of tradiional corporate organizaional forms with DAOs will almost technology is neither, but the creaion of user‐friendly interfaces will certainly mean signiicant layofs. A DAO could funcion to automai- develop and blockchain applicaions will likely be widely adopted cally leverage muliple smart contracts with muliple stakeholders. An within the next 10 years (Tapscot & Tapscot, 2016). As has occurred example is Colony, which is tesing a decentralized plaform for work in prior technological revoluions, blockchain applicaions may dif- collaboraion (Colony, 2017). And while the collaboraion enabled by ferenially reward the technologically adept, in this case those most DAOs could beneit the cooperaive movement, automaion will very skilled in coding, contracts, inance, and online applicaions. These likely cost many people their jobs. The Economic Report of the Presi- Technorai—those who are most skilled in the uses of high technol- dent (2016) suggests that blockchain and other technology will elimi- ogy (Wikionary)—may use blockchains to enrich and empower them- nate jobs paying below $20 per hour and reduce by one‐third those in selves or to limit the freedom of acion of subaltern groups. the $20 to $40 range. We are seeing an emergence of a blockchain technological elite, The company Slock.it uses smart contracts, distributed ledgers, in whom blockchain users must place their trust. Facilitaing such and the Internet of Things (IoT) to automate a smart lock system which trust will require the creaion of mechanisms of regulaion ensuring facilitates the automaic rening of assets (Slock.it, 2017). Slock.it’s blockchains’ legality, code security, and probity. While blockchains founders argue that their technology is necessary for “producers to themselves hold the potenial to be un‐hackable, the applicaions address decentralizaion or risk being disintermediated” (Tual, 2017). built around them may contain vulnerabiliies. Codes are subject to The lending and insurance agreements are processed by a DAO on error, and a law in the code of the Ethereum‐based contract system the Ethereum blockchain. Addiionally, the largest private employer allowed a hacker to steal approximately $50 million (Maras, 2016a). in the United States, Walmart, plans to use the Hyperledger block- Individuals who lack the necessary experise to assess the level of chain plaform developed by IBM to manage its pork supply chain in security surrounding a blockchain applicaion will be more vulnerable China (Hyperledger, 2017). This blockchain technology will automate to inancial loss. Perhaps this is one reason why several elite business the recording of food storage temperatures, expiraion dates, farm schools have begun to integrate blockchain studies into their curricula originaion details, batch numbers, and more (Redman, 2016). In these (Murry, 2016). examples, self‐execuing smart contracts will potenially dramaically 518 MANSKI decrease the cost of management, enforcing contracts, or making personhood via its rulings in Ciizens United and Hobby Lobby. As self‐ payments, which could mean millions of employees would lose their directed corporate code, and compared with earlier corporate forms, jobs. The social costs of unemployment, including decreased health DAOs operaing on blockchains have the potenial to exercise sig- and quality of life, are borne not only by individual workers, but also niicant autonomy from both regulatory oversight and direct human by their families and communiies (Liem & Rayman, 1982). Jobs made control, and thus a form of corporate sovereignty. In these respects, redundant by blockchain technology will likely be replaced with vir- DAOs might be thought of as one of the next evoluionary branches tual labor created to automate knowledge‐based tasks (Rikin, 2014). of the corporaion. Under a cooperaive system, jobs replaced by automaion would lead The essence of the corporaion throughout its history can be to greater leisure ime (Gourevitch, 2014). However, under the cur- understood as an expression of the relaion of self‐organized people rent system of global capitalism, increases in automaion would then and the state (Manski, 2006). In Western socieies, contests over follow the historical path of necessitaing even further producivity the forms, duies, and powers of corporate oicers and corporaions gains or corporate entrance into larger markets to maintain the same themselves have been criical in the trajectories of expansionist soci- levels of proit (Marx, 1904). Neither capitalist scenario would lead to eies, from the colegium and pater familia of Ancient Rome, through the an improvement in people’s lives. Notably, both producivity gains and growth of the Roman Catholic Church, the European conquests and market expansion are becoming increasingly diicult to access under colonizaion of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and resistance to the contemporary global capitalism, suggesing that systemic change Briish East India Company in the early days of the American Revolu- of the kind sought by the cooperaive movement may be necessary ion. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and developing through (Moore, 2015). the late twenieth and early twenty‐irst centuries, public concern over corporate personhood and corporate power has grown, to the 5.3 | Deregulaion The movement of assets involved in blockchain transacions could point that in the United States, a majority of the populaion lives in jurisdicions that have voted that “corporaions are not people and money is not speech” (Manski, 2017). allow individuals and corporaions to evade state regulaions as well As interest in the creaion of DAOs coninues (Herig, 2017), as non‐state social review processes such as eco‐ceriicaion. Major we face the possibility that DAO irms will exercise state protecion corporaions and other eniies involved in inance and informaion in the form of both consituional and global trade rights. Therefore, technologies—including IBM, Wells Fargo, London Stock Exchange serious quesions should arise about the relaion of DAOs to people Group plc, the European Central Bank, Accenture, Cisco, NASDAQ, and the state. For example, today many corporaions hire paramilitary Fujitsu, Intel, and Mitsubishi—have invested heavily in developing new groups to protect resource extracion, producion, and transportaion blockchain applicaions (Maras, 2016b). As these eniies, as well as sites (O’Connell, 2016). Chiquita Brands Internaional paid a $25 mil- future DAOs, channel ever more economic acivity through unregu- lion ine ater admiing it hired terrorists in Colombia from 1997 to lated and/or private blockchains, public oversight may become increas- 2004 (AP, 2007). Which individuals will be held responsible when a ingly diicult. In contrast, businesses that have a physical locaion, a DAO smart contract engages in similar behavior? Another case is that readily ideniiable CEO, and a board of directors are currently more of money in poliics. Campaign inance laws intended to preserve elec- accessible to regulaion than decentralized peer‐to‐peer networks. For ions as a forum open to the many members of a paricular polity are instance, distributed economy plaforms such as Airbnb pose enforce- not equipped to deal with DAO intervenions; indeed, the US Federal ment challenges, with at least half of all short‐term rentals in New Elecion Commission is only beginning to come to terms with the exis- York City in violaion of New York State law (Clampet, 2013). Thus, tence of Bitcoin. A third set of problems involves the absence of human policy makers face new challenges in designing regulatory frameworks relexivity in self‐execuing smart contracts. A DAO may be useful in that are capable of dealing with the constantly changing, dislocated, achieving paricular pre‐determined outcomes, but individual DAOs and highly mobile economic actors of the twenty‐irst century. This do not have the same interests as their creators, never mind others. is doubly true of non‐state cooperaives and companies concerned To paraphrase Jusice Stevens of the US Supreme Court, corporaions with supply chain transparency, ethical producion, and democraic “have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires… management. At the same ime that cooperaives deploy blockchains [and] are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for to increase regulatory accountability, blockchain applicaions by major whom our Consituion was established” (Ciizens United v. FEC, 2010). corporaions may in the future redirect value lows away from regulatory oversight (Buninx, 2016a). 5.4 | Corporate sovereignty 6 | CONCLUSION: TOWARD A TECHNOLOGICAL COMMONWEALTH? Blockchain technologies generally, and DAOs speciically, promise an Karl Polanyi wrote in 1944 of a great transformaion that drove the enormous expansion of corporate agency. This is especially relevant logic of markets into social life and created condiions that permit- in a period in which the United States is sill coming to terms with ted the rise both of fascisms and social democracies (Polanyi, 1944). the US Supreme Court’s direct embrace of corporate consituional We are now in another period of global transformaion, in which 519 MANSKI blockchain technologies are an emerging force (Tapscot & Tapscot, 2016). Over 80% of bankers expect to adopt blockchains by the year 2020 (Connolly, 2017). This transiion in turn is expected to fundamentally reorder the governance of producion, which will have widespread insituional consequences for the global economy (MacDonald, Pots, & Allen, 2016). Yet blockchains, like other technologies, exhibit tendencies that pursue diferent future trajectories depending on the condiions under which they are enacted. We need new understandings of the countervailing tendencies of blockchain technologies as well as of the coningencies that shape their deployment. The study of blockchains and cooperaives involves historical forces that possess disinct origins. Yet, as discussed in this aricle, there are economic sectors wherein blockchain technology is being used to further cooperaive goals. Blockchain technology could enable the construcion of a technological commonwealth wherein advanced exchange, communicaion, and decision‐making technologies are used to aggregate, distribute, and govern capital at muliple levels and on a cooperaive basis. The essenial structure of blockchain technology grants the potenial to greatly advance sustainability, eiciencies, working condiions, transparency, and democracy in the global economy. A countervailing set of tendencies portend deepening inequality and democraic decay caused by technological straiicaion, the reducion of large secions of the populaion into disposability, the weakening of regulatory oversight, and the technologizaion of corporate personhood. Thus, while the primary tendency of blockchain technology is toward greater distribuion, decentralizaion, and from htp://www.ibimes.co.uk/bitnaion‐estonian‐government‐start‐ spreading‐sovereign‐jurisdicion‐blockchain‐1530923 Alperovitz, G. (1972). The capitalist system. A radical analysis of American society. Englewood Clifs, NJ: Prenice‐Hall. Alperovitz, G. (2012). The pluralist commonwealth. Truthout Magazine, September 13. Alperovitz, G. (2013). What then must we do?: Straight talk about the next American revoluion. 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