Doctoral Dissertation Research: Blockchain Infrastructure, Decentralization, and Value

一种新兴的数字会计系统，结合了计算机和金融工程，被称为区块链的分布式账本技术有望改变社会经济关系。它今天的发展与政治和道德欲望以及深远的主张有关，即该技术有能力挑战甚至取代现有的金融体系及其分散的组织和治理的集中机构。在2008/09年金融危机之后的很长一段时间里，b区块链对权力下放的承诺引起了共鸣。但是，如果去中心化的愿景最初是基于计算机系统的分布式网络架构，那么当人们试图将其转化为社会现实时会发生什么呢？什么样的文化、经济和政治概念和情感支撑着b区块链的制作，技术的发展反过来又如何影响人类的行为？该项目调查了一项不透明但日益普及的技术的人性维度，为学者和更广泛的公众制定了关于区块链社会文化和政治经济轮廓的学术和非学术描述和争论。除了提供经费培训一名人类学研究生学习经验、科学数据收集和分析的方法外，该项目还将通过向投资开发更有效的方法向公众传播科学和科学方法的组织广泛传播其研究结果，增进对科学的理解。该研究将在两个已建立的区块链中心进行为期14个月的人种学研究，这两个中心也是活跃的加密社区的所在地。这两个研究地点允许比较跟踪不同的政治、经济、社会和文化状况和话语对bbb发展的影响。该项目探讨了数字原住民或基于互联网的基础设施如何在高度不平衡的经济、地缘政治和文化语言背景下变得有意义，并研究了区块链如何在与其他问题相关的情况下获得吸引力，甚至以牺牲其他问题为代价。在这两个地方，研究将调查区块链开发者、企业家和其他利益相关者如何定义价值，以及他们如何理解区块链是一种识别、创造或操纵价值的技术；(2)是什么吸引他们来b区块链；(3)他们认为区块链将和/或应该如何改变人类关系；(4)他们如何想象与区块链的承诺相关的去中心化。通过在面向区块链的宣传、教育和网络活动、会议和黑客马拉松、在线、社交和新闻媒体上收集的数据，并通过对工程师、企业家和其他利益相关者的采访，调查将产生结果，揭示区块链作为一种有价值的技术的性质及其对经济和社会去中心化的承诺。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An emergent digital accounting system combining computer and financial engineering, the distributed ledger technology known as blockchain promises to transform socioeconomic relations. Its development today is bound up with political and moral desires and far-reaching claims that the technology has the capacity to challenge or even replace the existing financial system and its centralized institutions with decentralized organizations and governance. In the long wake of the 2008/09 financial crisis, blockchain's promise of decentralization has resonated. But if the vision of decentralization is initially based on the distributed networks architecture of computer systems, what happens when people try to translate it into social reality? What cultural, economic and political concepts and sensibilities underpin the making of blockchain, and how does the technology's development in turn influence human behavior? This project investigates the human dimensions of an opaque yet increasingly widespread technology, formulating both academic and non-academic descriptions and arguments about blockchain's sociocultural and political-economic contours for scholars and broader publics. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in developing more effective methods for communicating science and the scientific method to the public.The research will consist of fourteen months of ethnographic study in two established blockchain hubs, which are also home to lively crypto-communities. The two research locations allow for comparative tracking of how distinct political, economic, social, and cultural situations and discourses bear on blockchain development. Asking how a digital native or Internet-based infrastructure becomes meaningful across highly uneven economic, geopolitical, and cultural-linguistic contexts, the project also examines how blockchain gains traction in relation to or even at the expense of other matters of concern. In both locations, research will investigate how blockchain developers, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders (1) define value, and how they understand blockchain as a technology that identifies, makes or manipulates value; (2) what attracts them to blockchain; (3) how they think blockchain will and/or should change human relations; and (4) how they imagine decentralization in relation to blockchain's promise. Through data gathered at blockchain-oriented promotional, educational, and networking events, conferences, and hackathons, from online, social and journalistic media, and through interviews with engineers, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders, the investigation will produce results shedding light on the nature of blockchain as a technology of value and its promise of economic and social decentralization.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.