Analysis of the Potentials of Blockchain for the Governance of Global Digital Commons

Abstract

In recent years, the increasing need for global coordination has attracted interest in the governance of global-scale commons. In the current context, we observe how online applications are ubiquitous, and how emerging technologies enable new capabilities while reshaping sectors. Thus, it is pertinent to ask: could blockchain technologies facilitate the extension and scaling up of cooperative practices and commons management in this global context? In order to address this question, we propose a focus on the most paradigmatic and widely successful examples of global cooperation: global digital commons. Examples of these are the digital resources maintained by large peer production communities, such as free/libre open source software and Wikipedia. Thus, this article identifies and analyzes the potentialities of blockchain to support the sustainability and management of global digital commons. Our approach draws on Elinor Ostrom’s classic principles for commons governance, although revisiting and adapting these to the more challenging scope of global digital commons. Thus, in this work we identify the affordances which blockchain provides (e.g., tokenization, formalization of rules, transparency or codification of trust) to support the effective management of this type of global commons. As part of our analysis, we provide numerous examples of existing blockchain projects using affordances in line with each principle, as well as potential integrations of such affordances in existing practices of peer production communities. Our analysis shows that, when considering the challenges of managing global commons (e.g., heterogeneity or scale), the potential of blockchain is particularly valuable to explore solutions that: distribute power, facilitate coordination, scale up governance, visibilize traditionally invisible work, monitor and track compliance with rules, define collective agreements, and enable cooperation across communities. These affordances and the subsequent analysis contribute to the emergent debate on blockchain-based forms of governance, first by providing analytical categories for further research, but also by providing a guide for experimentation with the development of blockchain tools to facilitate global cooperation.

Government by Code? Blockchain Applications to Public Sector Governance

“…Blockchains can also be used by organizations as part of their governance, which is the subject of current studies of governance by blockchains. Studies of governance by blockchains consider how self-governing communities, including peer-to-peer communities and self-governing communities seeking to manage commons on a global scale, use blockchains to improve their ability to selforganize and self-manage (Rozas et al, 2021b).…”

The platform belongs to those who work on it! Co-designing worker-centric task distribution models

“…Similarly, these tools to support decision-making could be employed to determine collectively how a model could be parameterised. In doing so, we plan to develop collaborative decisionmaking tools that leverage the affordances [49,50] of distributedledger technologies, such as blockchains, to allow crowdsourcing workers to prioritise parameters within the models which better suit their needs, as well as to decide collectively between the models themselves. In the context of our case study, a blockchain-based solution might enable linguists belonging to different language groups to self-organise in Decentralised Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and resolve task allocation mechanisms that satisfy their requirements 5 .…”

“Governing the urban commons”: DLT, institutions, and citizens in perspective

“…The implication is that on-chain rules are characterized by some inflexibility (Hassan and De Filippi, 2021) which may be incompatible with commoning. Another concern is the fact that not everyone has the ability to translate rules into code (Rozas et al, 2021a(Rozas et al, , 2021b. Therefore, there are times when DLTs may reinforce inequalities and promote dynamics which are counterproductive to commoning.…”

“…This pushes the urban theory and planning theory towards a rather critical discourse surrounding core values of what kind of entity a city should be: issues of identity (collective and individually), self-determination, and rights to the city become essential. Blockchain reduces bureaucratic hurdles, enable transactions and reduce the need for centralized oversight mechanism through automation, and enable transparency and accountability (Gloerich et al, 2020;Rozas et al, 2021aRozas et al, , 2021b.…”

“…The question of how to govern urban commons, and how to govern with, by, and through DLTs has already been taken up in the past (e.g. Foster, 2013; Huron, 2017; Poux et al, 2020; Rozas et al, 2021a, 2021b). This paper contributes to this conversation by considering these two domains in tandem.…”