Blockchain and the Common Good Reimagined

TL;DR

This paper explores how blockchain and related technologies can support initiatives for the common good, discussing their social implications and potential benefits beyond financial applications.

Contribution

It highlights blockchain applications aimed at social good and critically examines decentralisation's societal impacts through a thought experiment.

Findings

Blockchain can empower end-users in social initiatives

Decentralisation raises complex social and ethical questions

Blockchain applications support transparency and inclusion

Abstract

Blockchain, Smart Contracts and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) are being touted to revolutionise digital services - through decentralisation. Cryptocurrencies, self-sovereign identities, decentralised certificate registries, and transparent voting systems are but a few applications which promise to empower endusers and provide assurances that neither data nor the associated computational logic have been tampered with. Decentralisation, disintermediation, transparency, verifiability, auditability, openness, inclusion, tamper-proof, immutability are just some of the buzz words that continue to be swung around in the promotion of the benefits brought about by Blockchain-based systems to the users. The rhetoric used creates parallels between the features brought about through blockchains and values that many try to uphold, for example honesty, openness, transparency, teamwork and unchanging truth. In this paper a number of blockchain applications aimed at supporting initiatives for common good are highlighted. This is followed by a discussion on technology de/centralisation and a thought experiment used to raise questions regarding the use of decentralised technology in terms of social implications.