Scaling the Global Commons Through Distributed Ledgers
* Articles: Challenges and Approaches to Scaling the Global Commons. By Felix Fritsch, Jeff Emmett, Emaline Friedman, Rok Kranjc, Michel Bauwens et al. Front. Blockchain, 01 April 2021 | [1]
URL = https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.578721/full
Contextual Citation
"The emergence of blockchain ushers in a second phase of digital networks: that of an internet of peer-to-peer transactions. If the first wave propelled stigmergic cooperation through mutual signaling, DLTs potentially create shared accounting ledgers around which open collaborative supply networks can organize the production of both material and immaterial goods and services."
- Michel Bauwens et al [2]
Abstract
"The re-emergence of commoning over the last decades is not incidental, but rather indicative of a large-scale transition to a more “generative” organization of society that is oriented toward the planet’s global carrying capacity. Digital commons governance frameworks are of particular importance for a new global paradigm of cooperation, one that can scale the organization of communities around common goals and resources to unprecedented levels of size, complexity and granularity. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as blockchain have lately given new impetus to the emergence of a new generation of authentic “sharing economy,” protected from capture by thorough distribution of power over infrastructure, that spans not only digital but also physical production of common value. The exploration of the frontiers of DLT-based commoning at the heart of this article considers three exemplary cases for this new generation of commons-oriented community frameworks: the Commons Stack, Holochain and the Commons Engine, and the Economic Space Agency. While these projects differ in their scope as well as in their relation to physical common-pool resources (CPRs), they all share the task of redefining markets so as to be more conducive to the production and sustainment of common value(s). After introducing each of them with regards to their specificities and commonalities, we analyze their capacity to foster commons-oriented economies and “money for the commons” that limit speculation, emphasize use-value over exchange-value, favor equity in human relations, and promote responsibility for the preservation of natural habitats. Our findings highlight the strengths of DLTs for a federated scaling of CPR governance frameworks that accommodates rather than obliterates cultural differences and creates webs of fractal belonging among nested communities."
Excerpts
Federated Scaling
Rok Krancj et al.:
"The concept of scale that underlies this vision is distributed – in this paper we propose the concept of “federated scaling.” Instead of either scaling up one central approach, as would be resembled by a UN-mandated global initiative against climate change, or scaling out one “best practice” approach to a coalition of nation states, federated scaling is conceived as a process of integrating heterogeneous forms of collective action into a framework that allows them to collaborate while acknowledging their interrelations and differences, and to formally account for them through shared expressions of value and structures of mutual stake-holding. It shares this inclusivity with the notion of wide and deep scaling (Moore et al., 2015; Olsson et al., 2017), which proposes a shift away from the global dominance of the cultural exports of a handful of U.S. tech companies and toward agnostic protocols that facilitate the peaceful coexistence of heterogeneous cultures and the resolution of conflict through community-based dispute resolution tools. In this light, we position federated scaling as a broader social and political economic transformation project that conceptualizes the commons and their value orientations as an example of counter-hegemonic prefigurative politics. In so doing, it recognizes the questions of scale, scaling and scalability hinting at a much broader range of questions, namely, the assumptions, theories, strategies and mechanisms – in essence, the politics – of and for change." (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.578721/full)