as previously noted the blockchain is as
much in institutional technology as an
information technology it not only
enables us to greatly strengthen the
capacities of peer networks through
automated trust but also by enabling the
recording and exchanges of value it
allows us to directly design incentive
systems in this module we're going to
discuss the implications and
possibilities of blockchain technology
for designing new forms of peer-to-peer
social institutions of course
peer-to-peer network forms of social
organization have always been there from
the earliest days however previously
they've remained the domain of the local
and the personal as they do not scale
well without the support of
communications technology throughout the
modern era formal hierarchical social
structures came to replace informal
communities as the dominant
organizational paradigm within
industrial societies it's only in the
past decades that we've seen the
emergence of new forms of social
structures that reverse this process
what we call social networks with the
rise of web 2.0 technology came a
revolution in the form of social
networks that now connect billions of
people engaging them on a daily basis in
a very personal way today around the
world social media is the forum where
much of public and private discussion
takes place in which people express
their values commenting and sharing
connecting and collaborating in new ways
this leaves a huge mismatch between our
existing formal institutions and these
new forms of social networks between the
worlds of the physical and it's
hierarchies and that of the digital
networked organization with constant
friction between them a social
networking increasingly comes to affect
events in the offline worlds much of
this mismatch remains because we have a
somewhat secure social infrastructure
for enforcing an enabling trust offline
in the form of the nation-states
institutions but to date have not had
this for social networks
remain largely lawless trustless and the
property of private enterprises that
organized them towards extracting data
and creating profit by advertising and
it's this that the blockchain could
change the decentralized web could
provide the secure protocol layers to
enable trust within social networks
trusted identity trusted reputation
trusted value exchange all supported by
a decentralized IT infrastructure became
that we've never had before steam it is
the most popular and best example of a
social network built on the blockchain
which is already scaled to be a
relatively large application with over
half a million users and over 4 million
posts as of 2018 using blockchain in
this way enables rewarding comments and
posts with secure tokens of value user
accounts can upvote posts and comments
and the authors who get uploaded can
receive a monetary reward in Steam
tokens people are also rewarded for
curating post contents curating involves
voting comments and post submissions
steam it has an inbuilt reputation
system where an accounts receivables can
influence its reputation up and down
incentivizing online etiquette and
interaction within the community in the
previous Internet of information online
social networks remained relatively
limited in their capacities largely
confined to the domain of media and
information exchange in a secure
Internet of value these kinds of social
networks could potentially power all of
social organization from how we organize
enterprises and work together to how we
do education and governance this is a
brave new worlds for the past few
hundred years we've fleshed out the
hierarchy and understand very well how
it works we're moving from this world
that the hierarchy to that of the
network requires thinking about many
aspects of what regulates social
organization and makes it work going
from chains of command to feedback
systems from fixed roles to functions
from authority to reputation from
boundaries to open networks means
reconfiguring and redesigning the basics
of social organization as with other
areas the decentralized organization
will be an open network of protocols
that enable people to couple or decouple
from the network on demands contributing
small or large increments of value in
exchange for tokens without centralized
control distributed feedback mechanisms
in the form of reputation systems play a
key part in regulating decentralized
organizations likewise big data and
analytics will play a part in working to
understand the network and its users
dynamically allocating resources and
capabilities according to their specific
capacities and requirements colony is
one such project that is trying to build
a distributed social organization for
collaboration with the employed chain
based social networks built on etherium
conley described itself as the people
layer of the decentralized protocol
stack rather than centralized ownership
and hierarchical management smart
contracts distribute ownership according
to the value each individual contributor
where influence emerges from the bottom
up through systemic he a review of
contributed work each colony has its own
token the represents a share of the
ownership of the organization smart
contracts are programmed its distribute
ownership tokens according to the value
each individual contributors can later
trade their tokens on the open markets
colony also comes with a reputation
system that allows people to review and
great others contributed work in a
peer-to-peer fashion one of the main
applications of the blockchain as an
institutional technology could be an
enabling new forms of political and
governance structures that would be
relevant for an age of connectivity in
globalization over the course of the
modern era the bureaucratic nation-state
formed as the critical infrastructure
organizing and supporting or forms a
social institution from education to
health care and security
however this institutional
infrastructure of the nation-state
I'm a national in scope and capacities
while major economic and technological
changes are increasingly taking us into
some kind of global system of
organization in short we increasingly
live in a very complex globalized
economic system that is the primary
organizational structure for Humanity in
the 21st century where national
governments increasingly have limited
capacity to affect the workings of that
system and this leaves societies around
the worlds without the capacities to
shape their future or even have real
input into decisions that affect them as
communities a number of different
projects are currently trying to build
the next generation of portals
governments based on the decentralized
web including such projects as culture
bit nation and democracy earth bit
nation is a collaborative platform for
do-it-yourself governance built on
blockchain technology according to its
official website bit nation provides the
same services traditional government's
provides from dispute resolutions and
insurance to security and much more but
in a geographically unbounded
decentralized and voluntary way to set
up a political unit with bit nation a
group of people would write their own
legislation put it on to a bit nation
blockchain and everyone who wants to
live by it signs up to give the rules
some weight and force they would write
smart contracts that are tied to the
assets they own blockchain combined with
IOT make it possible to use information
and technology instead of relying on
force and centralized authority in such
a way it's possible to substitute
expensive error-prone intermediary
parties for algorithms that never make
mistakes I incur up table and run
automatically likewise the democracy
earth project from Chile is building a
self sovereign system claiming that with
the rise of open-source software and its
peer networks political intermediation
is no longer necessary they're building
an application called sovereign an
open-source and decentralized democratic
governance protocol for any kind of
organization sovereign is open source
software for
incorruptible blockchain based voting
within institutions full-size
potentially from the most local
involving just two people to the most
global involving all of humanity members
own their own data securely on the
blockchain network vote on issues they
care about or delegate power to those
they already trust while participatory
budgeting is enabled by bitcoins and
smart contracts with secure distributed
networks we could harness token
economies to power political
organization and social engagement in
the management and development of
communities the whole suite of public
services could be provided by
distributed blockchain networks through
the use of social token economies social
functions could be provided by anyone in
return for tokens instead of depending
upon centralized institutions for all
forms of social services they could be
provided by anyone qualified and willing
on demands we engaging and empowering
citizens to take responsibility for
their own communities earning community
tokens for taking care of elderly people
locally for performing acts that support
local security watch schemes for picking
up rubbish or mowing the lawn in the
park and for all the other functions
that currently cost taxpayers lots of
money in this respect public services
would no longer have to be bound to a
particular nation or territory similar
with legal systems they too would no
longer have to be bound by territory a
given community could choose its own
legal system as these projects like
culture bit nation and democracy Earth
aim to implement the full set of legal
services for the creation of legal
contracts their adjudication and
enforcement's