About this Research Topic

Background

For a special issue published in the ‘Blockchain for Good’ series of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Blockchain we are inviting research articles, case studies, critical commentary, and other forms of original research contributions that resonate with the topic overview outlined below.

The aim of this special issue is to explore the emergence of more progressive implementations of blockchain technology, focusing in particular on applications and platforms that facilitate new, alternative, co-operative ownership structures, rather than perpetuating existing models.

Swartz (2017, p. 86) has identifies identified two ways of adopting blockchain technology: incorporative efforts to innovate within the existing system, and radical attempts to bring about a new techno-economic order. Much of the excitement surrounding blockchain technologies relates to incorporative applications: large corporations benefitting from increased efficiency related to transactions, value capture, or data storage. This special issue hopes to explore alternatives The aim of this special issue is to explore the emergence of more progressive implementations of blockchain technology, focusing in particular on applications and platforms that facilitate new, alternative, co-operative ownership structures, rather than perpetuating existing models.that follow the second approach outlined be Swartz.

The successes (and failings) of several projects examples can serve to exemplify such developments: Robin Hood Co-op, an ‘activist investment fund’ dedicated to ‘democratising finance on the blockchain,’ relies relied on a ‘parasitic' algorithm that mimics proprietary trading strategies, and returns profits to its members. The ongoing art project terra0 is a self-owning, self-managing, ‘technologically augmented forest’ launched by a group of developers, theorists and researchers using the Ethereum blockchain; the group has recently issues ‘Flowertokens’ in an attempt to tokenise natural, physical assets inspired by CryptoKitties but applied to plants. Resonate, an ‘ethical music streaming platform,’ runs as a co-op and is built on blockchain technology; members not only share profits, but also vote on features and projects to develop, elect board members, and decide collectively on key policies and appropriate partnerships. A Finallyfinally example is offered by , there is Backfeed, an initiative that uses blockchain technology to encourage massive, open-source collaborations between peers without centralised control, through (transferrable) economic tokens and (non-transferrable) reputation scores. The result could be ‘massive open-source collaboration without any form of centralised coordination’.

Extending the trajectory of decentralised, distributed, and co-operative experiments outlined in these examples, for this special issue we invite critical reflections, theoretical contributions, as well as and case studies that consider the following questions:
• What ideological, technological, social, or legal structures are needed to make alternative ownership models viable on the blockchain?
• Where will alternative ownership models on the blockchain be situated in relation to the leftist and the libertarian discourse that has so far dominated the debate?
• Will radically different ownership models be able to withstand cooption into existing commercial structures?
• What are the roles of artistic experimentation and activist organisation in advancing (or correcting) efforts to instrumentalise the blockchain in the creative industries?
• What, finally, is the conceptual and practical role of tokens in all this?

Articles published within this Research Topic in 2019 are eligible for the $10,000 “Yun Family Frontiers in Blockchain Prize".

For more details, please see our blog post here:

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/12/12/frontiers-in-blockchain-introduces-new-journal-wide-10000-best-paper-prize/



For more details, please see our blog post here:

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/12/12/frontiers-in-blockchain-introduces-new-journal-wide-10000-best-paper-prize/

Image credit: BTCManager

Keywords: Blockchain, propertisation, co-operative structures, tokenisation, creative industries, digital activism, decentralisation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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