Articulating the Political Economies of Blockchain Technology

这个博士后奖学金将使我能够巩固我在区块链政治经济方面的博士学位工作，旨在实现三个主要目标：-开发和发表我的博士学位研究成果，以进一步建立我在世界级跨学科，经济和人文地理期刊的三篇论文中的研究记录和个人资料;-开发和准备两个进一步研究的资金申请：Leverhulme Trust早期职业奖学金，重点是发展和扩大我对复杂网络系统及其社会和政治影响分析的理论贡献;和UKRI未来领导者奖学金，重点是扩大我的专业知识范围，研究大型地理传感设备的新兴政治经济学;- 提升我的研究的影响力，维护并进一步建立与区块链/分布式账本技术商业部门和文化产业的关系;并继续介入有关社会、复杂网络技术的政治和道德影响。区块链是一种来自有争议的数字货币比特币的技术，旨在“去中心化”货币、金融、治理和法律，建议用对等网络协议取代任何权威。从网络亚文化的角度来看，区块链首先是对2008年金融危机的政治处理的技术回应，其次是互联网基础设施成为商业和政治目标的监控系统。其目的是清除腐败的当局，发展以权力下放方式运作的制度。人们希望技术分权和互联网的“再分权”将带来经济和政治上的自主权，使其脱离现有的机构和公司当局。然而，去中心化的网络协议本身可以开始作为新的权威形式运作，为少数人提供专业知识和很少的问责制结构。此外，区块链正被这些机构迅速采用，并出于效率和自动化目的而推广。区块链是一个被批评为充斥着欺诈和诈骗，促进非法活动，与右翼经济和货币思想有关的领域，并且在比特币的情况下，不是“真实的货币”。我认为，这个故事还有更多的意义，通过追溯比特币之前的历史，可以恢复一些重要的潜力。因此，我的博士论文对“区块链”采取了一种批判但细致入微的方法，追踪它对不同的参与者和背景意味着什么。在论文中，我阐明了在索赔和愿景与实际实施之间出现的道德，政治和技术问题，同时也指出了通过这种权力下放的驱动力，在改变体制和基础设施经济和治理模式方面仍然可以实现的目标。我的论文有三个主要贡献：首先，它批判性地评估了区块链作为“政治”的技术解决方案的想法，其特定的加密解决方案是权威和去中心化的共识;其次，它通过早期的网络技术的反独裁历史来追溯区块链的破坏性潜力，以拯救和澄清一个独特的政治;最后，讨论了区块链背景下与网络基础设施相关的分散治理的问题。事实上，区块链的政治经济可能意味着什么的问题：“政治”是指新经济政策和基础设施的治理，也是指其中所借鉴的政治多样性和有争议的经济思想。

This postdoctoral fellowship will allow me to consolidate my PhD work on the politic economy of blockchain with an aim to achieve three main objectives: - develop and publish findings from my PhD in order to further establish my research track record and profile in three papers for world class interdisciplinary, economic and human geography journals;- to develop and prepare two funding applications for further research: Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, with a focus on developing and expanding my theoretical contributions to the analyses of complex network systems and their social and political impacts; and the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, focused on expanding the remit of my expertise to study the emerging political economies of large-scale geo-sensing devices;- to advance the impact of my research, maintain and further established relationships with blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology business sector and cultural industries; and continue to intervene in important public debates concerning the social, political and ethical implications of complex network technologies.Blockchain is a technology coming out of the controversial digital currency Bitcoin that aims to "decentralize" money, finance, governance and law, proposing to replace any authority with a peer-to-peer network protocol. From the perspectives of the network subcultures it emerged from, blockchain was a technological response to firstly, the political handling of the 2008 financial crisis, and secondly the ways in which internet infrastructures had become a surveillance system for commercial and political targeting. The intention was to get rid of corruptible authorities and develop systems that would operate in a decentralized manner. The hopes were that technological decentralization, and "redecentralizing" the internet, would bring about economic and political autonomy from existing institutional and corporate authorities. And yet, decentralized network protocols can in themselves begin to operate as new forms of authority, serving a select few in the know-how and with very little accountability structures. Furthermore, blockchain is being rapidly adopted by these very authorities and generalized for efficiency and automation purposes. Blockchain is a field that is critiqued for being rife with fraud and scams, facilitating illicit activities, being affiliated with right wing economic and monetary ideas and, in the case of Bitcoin, not being "real money". I argue that there is significantly more to the story and that some important potentials can be recovered by tracing the technical proposition through its pre-Bitcoin histories. My doctoral thesis therefore takes a critical but nuanced approach to "blockchain", tracing what it means for different actors and contexts. In the thesis I articulate where exactly ethical, political and technical issues arise between the claims and vision and actual implementations, while also drawing out what might still be achieved in terms of transforming institutional and infrastructural economic and governance models through such a drive towards decentralization. My thesis makes three overarching contributions: Firstly, it critically assesses the idea of blockchain as a technical solution to "the political" in its particular cryptographic resolutions to authority and decentralized consensus; secondly, it traces the disruptive potential of blockchain through earlier anti-authoritarian histories of network technologies in order to rescue and clarify a distinct politics; and finally, discusses questions and problems of decentralized governance in relation to network infrastructures in the context of blockchain. Indeed, a question of what a political economy of blockchain might entail: 'Political' in the sense of the governance of new economic policies and infrastructures, but also in the sense of the politically diverse and contested economic ideas that are drawn on in these.