Blockchain for the political left
*Could blockchain be a useful tool for those on the anti-capitalist political left?
The Blockchain Socialist would say so.
Adam Greenfield is very skeptical:
Given their success in such a wide variety of contexts, it makes sense to ask how easily these principles, and the other structures and practices fundamental to Ostrom’s understanding of commoning, might be encoded in a DAO. And equally, given the immediate applicability to the many local struggles for self-definition now being waged around the planet, it makes sense to ask whether the understanding of the commons reflected in contemporary participatory-democratic movements might be similarly inscribed. And what we learn when we undertake this challenge, even as a thought experiment, is that the DAO—at least as Buterin and his colleagues now describe—it is poorly suited to either context.
It’s unclear how a DAO entrusted with the management of a common-pool resource would handle the entire range of easily foreseeable situations such a community might face—a nonmember allowed temporary access to a common good, but only under supervision, or a short-term and informal exchange of prerogatives among members of two adjacent collectives.
So until some propensity to support collectives, cooperatives and communes is demonstrated, I think those of us who share this set of values are best advised to sit in their skepticism.
DisCOs have some small linkages to blockchain. In Free, Fair and Alive they discuss Holochain and commoning.
Commoning with Blockchain. Free, Fair and Alive | by Will Szal | Regen Networ…
1. Elsewhere
1.1. In my garden
Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).