Blockchain and the “Smart-Ification” of Governance
Brendan Markey‐Towler · 2022
In this chapter, we discuss how blockchain provides the “last” building block necessary to enable an almost fully decentralised, distributed and automated smart economy to emerge. To see this, we first introduce an evolutionary-institutional perspective on the economy as a complex evolving network of rules for production, exchange and governance. We then introduce the argument that pre-existing smart technologies – robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and platforms – have the effect of decentralising, distributing and automating this network structure primarily at the levels of production and exchange. We then introduce blockchain as an institutional technology that enables a new kind of governance for internet-based socioeconomic platforms. We discuss how this provides the last “building block” that allows for the near-complete decentralisation, distribution and automation of economic systems through the application of smart technologies by enabling smart governance. We conclude by discussing how a new kind of economics must emerge to understand such systems, one that integrates institutional cryptoeconomics into the core of an evolutionary-institutional perspective on economies as complex evolving networks of rules.