Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:08:42.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blockchain’s future: can the decentralized blockchain community succeed in creating standards?

Part of: Distributed Ledger Technologies: Papers Arising from Three Australian Symposia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2020

John Flood Open the ORCID record for John Flood [Opens in a new window]  and
Adrian McCullagh
John Flood
Affiliation:
Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Nathan, QLD4111, Australia UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, University College London, Gower Street, Bloomsbury, LondonWC1E 6BT, United Kingdom; e-mail: [email protected]
Adrian McCullagh
Affiliation:
Odmob Lawyers, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Law Futures Centre, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD4111, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Nakamoto proposed a new solution to transact value via the internet. And since 2009, blockchain technology has expanded and diversified. It has, however, proven to be inefficient in the way it achieves its outcomes, especially through the proof of work protocol. Other developers are promoting alternative methods but, as yet, none has superseded proof of work. The competing protocols illuminate a key feature of the blockchain community, namely, its inability to create consensus in a decentralized community. Because of this lack of consensus, the formation of standards is particularly difficult to achieve. At best standards are contested sites, and we examine three such sites where some form of agreement over standards will be essential if blockchain is to evolve successfully. These three sites are blockchain governance, smart contracts, and interoperability of blockchains. We argue that because standards’ formation is a contested and contingent process, the blockchain community will persist in creating difficulties and barriers for itself until it is able to resolve internal conflicts.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 35 , 2020 , e2
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Back, A., Corallo, M., Dashjr, L., Friedenbach, M., Maxwell, G., Miller, A., Poelstra, A., Timón, J. & Wuille, P. 2014. Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1b23/cd2050d5000c05e1da3c9997b308ad5b7903.pdf?_ga=2.172033763.1563462457.1532138662-1341615866.1532138662.Google Scholar
Buterin, V. 2016. Chain Interoperability, R3 Report, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55f73743e4b051cfcc0b02cf/t/5886800ecd0f68de303349b1/1485209617040/Chain+Interoperability.pdf.Google Scholar
Catalini, C. & Gans, J. 2019. Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain. Rotman School of Management Working Paper 2874598), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2874598.Google Scholar
Coase, R. 1960. The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3, 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vries, A. 2018 Bitcoins growing energy problem. Joule 2(5), 801–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dilley, J., Poelstra, A., Wilkins, J., Piekarska, M., Gorlick, B. & Friedenbach, M. 2017. Strong federations: An interoperable blockchain solution to centralised third-party risks. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.05491.pdf.Google Scholar
Edelman, L. B. 1992. Legal ambiguity and symbolic structures: Organizational mediation of civil rights law. American Journal of Sociology 97, 1531–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flood, J. & Robb, L. 2017. Trust, anarcho-capitalism, blockchain and initial coin offerings, Griffith University Law School Research Paper No 17-23. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3074263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gagnon, M. & Stephen, G. 2018. A pragmatic solution to a major interoperability problem: using blockchain for the nationwide patient index. Blockchain in Healthcare Today. https://doi.org/10.30953/bhty.v1.28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haber, S. & Stornetta, W. S. 1991. How to time-stamp a digital document. In Menezes, A. & Vanstone, S. A. (eds), Advances in Cryptography, CRYPTO 90, LNCS 537, 437–455. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardjono, T., Lipton, A. & Pentland, A. 2018. Towards a Design Philosophy for Interoperable Blockchain Systems. MIT Connections. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325168344_Towards_a_Design_Philosophy_for_Interoperable_Blockchain_Systems.Google Scholar
Heller, M. A. 1998 Tragedy of the anti-commons – property in the transition from marx to markets. Harvard Law Review 111(3), 621–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herian, R. 2018 Taking blockchain seriously. Law and Critique 29(2), 163–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hileman, G. & Rauchs, M. 2017. Global blockchain benchmarking study. Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3040224Google Scholar
Hinkes, D, 2016. Legal Analysis of the DAO Exploit and Possible Investor Rights, Bitcoin Magazine, https://www.nasdaq.com/article/a-legal-analysis-of-the-dao-exploit-and-possible-investor-rights-cm638561.Google Scholar
Lampland, M. & Star, S. L. (eds.). 2009 Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Malavolta, G., Moreno-Sanchez, P., Schneidewind, C., Kate, A. & Maffei, M. 2019. Anonymous Multi-Hop Locks for Blockchain Scalability and Interoperability. https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ndss2019_09-4_Malavolta_paper.pdfCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margulies, D., McCallie, D., Elkowitz, A. & Ribitzky, R. 1990. An Integrated Hospital Information System at Children’s Hospital, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2245483/pdf/procascamc00016-0724.pdf.Google Scholar
Marx, K., 1867. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Penguin.Google Scholar
McCullagh, A. 1998. E-commerce – a matter of trust. In Proceedings of the 1998 Information Industry Outlook Conference.Google Scholar
Menezes, A., van Oorschot, P. & Vanstone, S. 1996 A Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press.Google Scholar
Nakamoto, S. 2008. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.Google Scholar
Pepijn, D. 2017. What the fork is Segwit? Everything you need to know about Bitcoin scaling. The Next Web. https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/09/13/fork-segwit-everything-need-know-bitcoin-scaling/.Google Scholar
Ribitzky, R., St. Clair, J., Houlding, D., McFarlane, C., Ahier, B., Gould, M., Flannery, H., Pupo, E. & Clauson, K. 2018. Pragmatic interdisciplinary perspectives on blockchain and distributed ledger technology: paving the future for healthcare. Blockchain in Healthcare Today, https://doi.org/10.30953/bhty.v1.24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risius, M. & Spohrer, K. 2017. A blockchain research framework: what we (don’t) know, where we go from here, and how we will get there. Business & Information Systems Engineering 59(6), 385–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shenhav, Y. 1999. Manufacturing Rationality. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Szabo, N. 1996. Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets. http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_2.html.Google Scholar
Timmermans, S. & Epstein, S. 2010. A world of standards but not a standard world: toward a sociology of standards and standardization. Annual Review of Sociology 36, 69–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N. & Scarfone, K. 2018. Draft NISTIR 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview, January 2018. https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, E. 2018’s Big Question: Can Bitcoin Forks Deliver Value? https://www.coindesk.com/2018s-big-question-can-bitcoin-forks-deliver-value.Google Scholar