Collective intelligence and the blockchain: Technology, communities and social experiments

TL;DR

This paper explores how collective intelligence influences blockchain ecosystems, highlighting social, legal, and technological challenges and emphasizing the need for new norms and laws to manage these interactions.

Contribution

It provides three case studies demonstrating the impact of collective intelligence on blockchain technology, communities, and social experiments, emphasizing the need for further research and regulation.

Findings

Smart contract immutability can be challenged by collective actions

Code transparency affects community trust and participation

New property forms emerge through collective consensus

Abstract

Blockchains are still perceived chiefly as a new technology. But each blockchain is also a community and a social experiment, built around social consensus. Here I discuss three examples showing how collective intelligence can help, threat or capitalize on blockchain-based ecosystems. They concern the immutability of smart contracts, code transparency and new forms of property. The examples show that more research, new norms and, eventually, laws are needed to manage the interaction between collective behaviour and the blockchain technology. Insights from researchers in collective intelligence can help society rise up to the challenge.