Socio-Technical Principles of Decentralized Protocol Design
Harry Halpin, Jaya Klara Brekke, Marios Isaakidis · 2023
Work in security within the computer sciences normally focuses on achieving certain technical properties via design. Yet recently there has been a rise in interest in the broader social effects of technology leading to design principles being understood as normative and social. Using work around decentralization, in particular blockchain technology, as our guiding example, we will explicate how socio-technical principles can enable designers of decentralized technical systems to understand the social remit of their design space. We will present a schema for distinguishing between design principles, properties and effects in the area of decentralization to show how socio-technical principles can be systematized in practice.