Is it the blockchain theory, not one of its applications, that matters? Bitcoin is just a spinoff, a byproduct of the so called blockchain technology. Is blockchain a killer application that will make states, bureaucracy, banks just obsolete “mediators” or a “trusted third party” for citizens needs? How could this happen? Cui prodest (Whose profit is it)? The bitcoin supporters say that it is the solution against corruptions and the power of international financial lords, among other wishful outcomes; it could be the way to get rid of a non-reformable “State machine,” a problem shared by most of states worldwide. Old institutions bogged down that make it almost impossible to rule for a weakly-elected political elite. Or is it just a dream, a narrative that hides a big scam, a sort of 4.0 Ponzi scheme - as some detractors suggested - with no practical application to the “state” environment, due to the fact there are no actors who could implement such a revolution without losing power? Either way, some well-known financial institutions like the Bank of America and Bank of England have been studying the bitcoin project, its technology and its applications.
In a white paper published in November 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed the use of a protocol based on a decentralized peer-to-peer network, without the need for a trusted third party. The core technology of the blockchain is widely acknowledged as a major breakthrough in “fault-tolerant distributed computing,” as the experts like to describe it, after decades of research in this field. In short, we can define blockchain as a database that contains all the transactions ever executed in a network. The result is a huge and ultimate public record that suggests institutional roles, because it cannot be “cracked,” according to technology. It consists of a “permanent, distributed, digital ledger, resistant to tampering and carried out collectively by all the nodes of the system.” That is the academic definition at large.
The “formidable” innovation, according to its supporters, introduced by this technology, is that the network is open and participants do not need to know or trust each other to interact: the electronic transactions can be automatically verified and recorded by the nodes of the network through cryptographic algorithms, without human intervention, central authority, point of control or third parties (e.g. governments, banks, financial institutions or other organizations). State roots and seeds of the rule of law borne with the “land private property” concept, low drywalls dividing pastures were the very basic beginning of “rights.” So they were linked to the land in a material concreteness. Then came the need to register and defend those rights, and armies of law guardians were born. This simplistic and non-comprehensive way to describe the origin of Statehood framework explains to what extent the blockchain theory is aimed at modifying our future society, bringing all of our structured sociopolitical relations from “land” to cyberspace. It is going to change the concept of citizenship and of the so called “social pact” to quote J.J. Rousseau.
Even if some nodes are unreliable, dishonest or malicious, the network is able to correctly verify the transactions and protect the ledger from tampering through a mathematical mechanism called proof-of-work, which makes human intervention or controlling authority unnecessary. It sounds like a revamping of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (The Wealth of Nations) that corrects market economy distortions. And we know it didn’t work so properly.
The key point that blockchain-based decentralized governance challenges, to varying degrees, is the traditional mechanisms of the state authority, citizenship and democracy. However, we need to verify to which extent blockchain and decentralized platforms can be considered as hyper-political tools, capable of managing social interactions on a large scale and to dismiss traditional central authorities. A primary American bank is a big funder of the project. Why? In order to control a killer application for the old financial system or to drive changes in its own sector? Or is there a project to reshape our societies to build something better-fitted for global markets, like a prefect consumer? Or, in the best case, a shape “free” citizen, amended by “State serfdom” to use the words of Friedrich Von Hayek (The Road to Serfdom)? We have some doubts about that.
There are risks related to a dominant position of private powers in distributed ecosystems, which may lead to a general disempowerment of citizens and to the emergence of a stateless global society. While technological utopians urge the demise of any centralized institution, even supporters stress the role of the state as a necessary central point of coordination in society, showing that decentralization through algorithm-based consensus is an organizational theory, not a stand-alone political theory.
Under the light of this new perspective, we can better understand some hidden changes that we have witnessed over the past few years. We previously wrote about the end of old parliamentary institutions unfitted for globalization dynamics, with their long liturgies, and of the will to downgrade some pillars of this old system, like independent journalism for instance. Even the iconoclastic fury of U.S. President Donald Trump in attacking the political institutions and media could be the result of the will to prepare the public opinion for a large change - but this could be just an assumption. Instilling people’s hate against politicians is an easy task, so we can predict a constant campaign to delegitimize old institutions, with the purpose to streamline them, to be ready to implant cyber state structures. However, even this idea could be just another assumption or an after-dinner talk for conspiracy theories. Taking for granted that “someone” (leading representative of politics, the economy and of strong interests) has decided that global society needs a change - because there is a real chance that the earth has begun its last tour before extinction - for the implementation of such change, the point of start is that the public opinion should be prepared for it.
Let us make a simple example to explain how communication of change is a key point. Air transportation is ready to get rid of pilots. For the past 20 years, a technology that allows the airline sector to decrease air accidents by 40 percent has been around (airliners like drones). However, people are not ready to board a flight without personnel in uniform with stripes on their sleeves. Such a “revolution” will need a new narrative, where media will have to play a main role. You can imagine how much broader and more complex a sociopolitical and economic “revolution” could be due to blockchain: a historical change.
So forget about the media as a watchdog for society, and welcome it as sled-dog of this large “social” project.
