Distributed Organisations

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Discussion

Rachel O'Dwyer:

(in the context of Ethereum and the Blockchain's potential use for the Commons)

"One significant claim is that blockchain-based technologies such as Ethereum can support and scale distributed forms of cooperation on a global scale.

This has been referred to under a few different names: the recent Coin Center report refers to Distributed Collaborative Organisations, while Ethereum’s founding developer Vitalik Buterin speaks elsewhere about Decentralised Autonomous Organisations. As David Bollier recently pointed out, this model resonates with organisations that are interested in fostering commons-based peer-production. Where questions about how to reach consensus, negotiate trust and especially scale interactions beyond the local are pervasive in the commons, the blockchain looks set to be a game changer. In this context, the blockchain is presented as an algorithmic tool to foster trust in the absence of things like social capital, physical colocation or trusted third-party management. These are actually referred to as ‘consensus’ algorithms, and they are the staple of projects such as Ethereum and Ripple. As David Cohen has described it “Trust, rules, identity, reputation and payment choices are embedded at the peer level. Participants arrive already trusted and decentrally acknowledged”. Cohen and Mougayar have dubbed this innovation the “trust web” to describe the new suite of applications that weave network value and consensus into the protocol itself, forgoing the social institutions and relations that were previously mandatory." (https://www.academia.edu/11627298/The_Revolution_Will_not_be_Decentralised_Blockchain-based_Technologies_and_the_Commons)