Research Notes

No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in a Blockchain World | SpringerLink

Posted in anti-censorship, decentralization, governance, papers, Research Notes

The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.

Source: No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in a Blockchain World | SpringerLink

Questioning Centralized Organizations in a Time of Distributed Trust – Marc-David L. Seidel, 2018

Posted in decentralization, papers, Research Notes, trust

Imagine meeting a stranger and entering into a trusted economic exchange without needing a third party to vouch for you. What changes in your theoretical perspective in such a world? That model of interaction is what distributed trust technologies such as blockchain bring. I introduce the basic concept of distributed trust, describe some early instances, and highlight how organizational theories need to be updated to no longer rely upon fundamental assumptions about trust which are becoming outdated. Distributed trust fundamentally transforms boundaries of organizations and challenges assumptions about internalizing organizational functions to overcome market trust coordination issues. Implicit assumptions about the legitimacy and power of central network positions no longer ring true. This is very fertile ground for organizations research as the core tenet of the field—what roles and functions should group together within an organization—is being called into question at the most fundamental

Source: Questioning Centralized Organizations in a Time of Distributed Trust – Marc-David L. Seidel, 2018

Blockchain Technology as an Institution of Property – Ishmaev – 2017 – Metaphilosophy – Wiley Online Library

Posted in blockchain, law, papers, Research Notes

This paper argues that the practical implementation of blockchain technology can be considered an institution of property similar to legal institutions. Invoking Penner’s theory of property and Hegel’s system of property rights, and using the example of bitcoin, it is possible to demonstrate that blockchain effectively implements all necessary and sufficient criteria for property without reliance on legal means. Blockchains eliminate the need for a third‐party authority to enforce exclusion rights, and provide a system of universal access to knowledge and discoverability about the property rights of all participants and how the system functions. The implications of these findings are that traditional property relations in society could be replaced by or supplemented with blockchain models, and implemented in new domains.

Source: Blockchain Technology as an Institution of Property – Ishmaev – 2017 – Metaphilosophy – Wiley Online Library

A curated list of awesome resources for Cryptoeconomics research

Posted in economics, people, Research Notes

Awesome Cryptoeconomics 

A curated list of awesome resources for Cryptoeconomics research

Looking for contributors. Submit a pull request if you have something to add 🙂

Please check the contribution guidelines for info on formatting and writing pull requests.

Table of Contents

Articles

Introductory

  1. Cryptoeconomics for dummies
  2. Cryptoeconomics 101
  3. Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics by Josh Stark
  4. What is Cryptoeconomics What is Cryptoeconomics, a guide by BlockGeeks
  5. How Society Will Be Transformed By Cryptoeconomics
  6. Paving the Future of Blockchain Technology
  7. Vivek Singh’s Cryptoeconomics in context
  8. Cryptoeconomics Definitions Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
  9. The Blockchain Economy: A beginner’s guide to institutional cryptoeconomics by RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub
  10. Cryptoeconomics is Hard Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Aleksandr Bulkin
  11. How to create a cryptoeconomic protocol from scratch by Vlad Zamfir
  12. Behavioural Crypto-Economics the challenge and promise of Blockchain Incentive Design by Elad Verbin
  13. Introduction to Blockchain through Cryptoeconomics by Zubin Koticha
  14. The need for an Incentive scheme in Algorand by Alexis Guaba, Zubin Koticha
  15. Cryptoeconomics.study — An free and open source book & course on Cryptoeconomics

Game Theory

  1. Introduction to Game Theory Part one of a series by Devin Soni
  2. Schelling Point Introduction to the concept of Schelling Point
  3. Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points
  4. The strategy of conflict book The Strategy of Conflict
  5. Mechanism design (deck) Mechanism design theory examples and complexity
  6. Standford’s Algorithmic Game Theory lecture series
  7. Cryptocurrency Game Theory What is Cryptocurrency Game Theory: A Basic introduction
  8. Correlated Equilibria In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium

Mechanism Design

  1. A Crash Course in Mechanism Design for Cryptoeconomic Applications
  2. Mechanism Theory paper by Matthew O. Jackson
  3. Mechanism Design Theory

Cryptographic Primitives

  1. Cryptographic Primitives as described in Wikipedia
  2. A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup
  3. Ethereum: Signing and Validating
  4. Merkling in Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin
  5. Bitcoin’s Academic Pedigree by Arvind Narayanan and Jeremy Clark

Consensus Mechanisms

PoW – Proof of Work

  1. PoW and Blockchains presentation by Prof. Ittay Eyal (IC3)
  2. The PoW concept article by the Nakamoto Institute
  3. ConsensusPedia – An Encylopedia of 29 consensus algorithms article by the Nakamoto Institute) article by Vasa
  4. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake by BlockGeeks
  5. Vulnerability: Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake

PoS – Proof of Stake

  1. Strengths and Weaknesses of PoS Vitalik Buterin’s article on the strengths and weaknesses of staking contrasting to PoW algorithms
  2. PoS Design Philosophy A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy by Vitalik Buterin
  3. Ethereum PoS FAQ
  4. The evolution of PoS Article on the evolution of PoS by Coin Telegraph
  5. Weak Subjectivity in PoS Weak Subjectivity in PoS by Vitalik Buterin
  6. The History of Casper – Chapter 1 Vlad Zamfir’s series on the history of Casper, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5
  7. On Stake and Consensus
  8. Critic on the PoS Philosophy by Tuur Demeester
  9. Extended Summary on Casper by Jon Choi
  10. The Economics of the PoS consensus algorithm
  11. Casper vs Tendermint
  12. Minimal Slashing condition in Ethereum

DPoS – Delegated Proof of Stake

  1. DPoS Introduction Introduction to DPoS by Bitshares
  2. DPoS vs PoW Article by Daniel Larimer from Bitshares
  3. Tendermint BFT vs. EOS dPoS by Tendermint
  4. Seeking Consensus on Consensus Delegated Proof of Stake and the Two Generals’ Problem

dBFT – Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance

  1. Byzantine Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems by Prof. Kenneth Goodwin
  2. dBFT vs PoW and PoS Antshare’s (now NEO) views on consensus
  3. Intro to Ethermint BFT

Network Effects

  1. A Note on Metcalfe’s Law, Externalities and Ecosystem Splits by Vitalik Buterin
  2. Continuous Token Models: Towards a Million Networks of Value by Simon de la Rouviere
  3. Crypto Tokens: A breakthrough in open network design by Chris Dixon
  4. Bitcoin Network Effects
  5. Keepers — Workers that Maintain Blockchain Networks
  6. Smart-Contract Network Effect Fallacy

Governance

  1. The Consensus Series, Part I: The Basics of Collectivity and Addendum by Aleksandr Bulkin
  2. Governance and Network Effects
  3. Notes on Blockchain Governance by Vitalik Buterin
  4. Against On-Chain Governance by Vlad Zamfir
  5. [On Public vs Private Blockchains]https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/08/07/on-public-and-private-blockchains/) by Vitalik Buterin

Cryptoeconomic Security

  1. Intro to Cryptoeconomic security Basic intro to cryptoeconomic security
  2. Anti-fragile Cryptoeconomic systems Anti-fragile cryptoeconomic Systems through game theory
  3. Triangle of harm by Vitalik Buterin
  4. On Inflation, Transaction Fees and Cryptocurrency Monetary Policy Vitalik Buterin’s article on the role of cryptoeconomics in blockchain security
  5. Settlement Finality Vitalik Buterin’s article on the elusive topic of economic finality
  6. Bancor is flawed Bancor’s review by Hacking Distributed
  7. To sink front-runners, send submarines Bancor’s front-running woes by Hacking Distributed
  8. Bitcoin’s security model by Jameson Lopp

Attacks

  1. General article on how attacks work in PoW – Part 1 and Part 2
  2. Long range attacks
  3. Censorship attacks
  4. P + epsilon attack
  5. Coordination problems
  6. The Miners dilemma
  7. Dealing with failure in cryptocurrency Vlad Zamfir’s article on dealing with failure in cryptocurrency
  8. Model of an internal PoW attacker Vlad Zamfir’s article on PoW attackers
  9. Cryptoeconomics and X-Risk researchers should listen to each other more Vitalik Buterin’s article on how cryptoeconomics and existential risk researchers could apply blockchain technology in global coordination challenges Part 2
  10. Presentation on most common attacks in Bitcoin
  11. 51% Attack Bitcoin.it Wiki explanation
  12. Selfish Mining a 25% attack against Bitcoin
  13. Sybil attack as described in Wikipedia
  14. Nothing at Stake and Long-range attacks in PoS
  15. $5 wrench Attack XKCD comic on the cheapest attack on cryptography
  16. An Exploration of Attack Vectors in Proof-of-Stake Mechanism Labs

Token Engineering

  1. The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives
  2. History Is Rhyming: Fitness Functions & Comparing Blockchain Tokens To The Web by Simon de la Rouviere
  3. Introducing Curation Markets: Trade Popularity of Memes & Information by Simon de la Rouviere
  4. Can Blockchains Go Rogue? by Trent McConaghy
  5. Towards a Practice of Token Engineering, with presentation deck here by Trent McConaghy
  6. Token Engineering Case Studies Analysis of Bitcoin, Design of Ocean Protocol by Trent McConaghy

Cryptoeconomic Primitives

  1. The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives by Jacob Horne
  2. Token Curated Registries 1.0 by Mike Goldin
  3. Continuous Token-Curated Registries: The Infinity of Lists by Simon de la Rouviere
  4. Tokens 2.0: Curved Token Bonding in Curation Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  5. Solving Price Discovery Of Non-Rivalrous Goods (with Curved Bonding) by Simon de la Rouviere
  6. Hashtag Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  7. How to Make Bonding Curves for Continuous Token Models
  8. Re-Fungible Token (RFT) by Billy Rennekamp

Tokenomics

  1. Token sales models Token sales models by Vitalik Buterin
  2. A business guide to Tokenomics by William Mougayar
  3. Cryptoasset Valuations by Chris Burniske
  4. Justified Token Value by Adrian Jonklaas
  5. Understanding Token Velocity
  6. On Value, Velocity and Monetary Theory
  7. The Token Classification Framework a multi-dimensional tool for understanding and classifying crypto tokens
  8. MV = PQ isn’t right for crypto a case made by Austere Capital
  9. The quantitative theory of money for tokens a rebuttal of the MV = PQ theory by Warren Weber
  10. NVT – network value to transactions ratio a market to transaction value proposal by Coinmetrics

Stablecoins

  1. Ethereum Madrid’s Cryptoeconomics 101 presentation on Stablecoins by Sandra Becker of Ethereum Madrid
  2. An Overview of stablecoins
  3. Stablecoins: A Holy Grail in digital cryptocurrencies
  4. Volatility and Mass Adoption: 2 reasons we would benefit from a stablecoin
  5. The search for a stable cryptocurrency
  6. An Experiment with Sai, a simple stablecoin by MakedDAO
  7. Maker for Dummies: A Plain English Explanation of the Dai Stablecoin
  8. Designing a price stable currency by Haseeb Qureshi
  9. A skeptic view of stablecoins

State Channels

  1. Compact and very well explained definition
  2. Overview on the Raiden Network
  3. Generalised State Channels on Ethereum
  4. Introducing multi-party state-channels
  5. A state-channels adventure with Counterfactual Rick by SpankChain (SFW!)

Empirical Cryptoeconomics

  1. How manipulation-resistant are Prediction Markets? How manipulation-resistant are Prediction Markets? Our Undertaking in Empirical Cryptoeconomics by Gnosis
  2. Empirical Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin’s post on empirical cryptoeconomics
  3. Testing mechanism design with AI agents Tool for Smart Contract testing with concept paper and intro

Videos

Consensus Protocols

  1. Consensus Consensus Algorithm – Andreas Antonopoulos
  2. Intro to Casper Karl Floersch presenting Ethereum’s Casper PoS
  3. PoS roundtable PoS roundtable with Joseph Poon, Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, Dominic Williams, Zack Hess at Cryptoeconomicon 2015
  4. PoW roundtable PoW roundtable with Tim Swanson, Vitalik Buterin and Peter Todd at Cryptoeconomicon 2015
  5. Proof of Stake – Technion Cyber and Computer Security Summer School and presentation deck
  6. CESC2017 – Casper Proof of Stake
  7. Hangout – Ethereum PoS: Casper FFG In Depth and the presentation
  8. Hangout – Ethereum PoS: Casper & Smart Contract Consensus Overview and the presentation deck

Cryptoeconomics

  1. Game Theory in Bitcoin Game Theory approach behind the motivation for Bitcoin mining
  2. CESC2017 – Cryptoeconomics in Casper
  3. What is Cryptoeconomics Vlad Zamfir introducing Cryptoeconomics
  4. Introduction to Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin introducing Cryptoeconomics. The corresponding presentation deck is available here
  5. Hard problems in Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin discussing hard problems with cryptoeconomics
  6. The Cryptoeconomic way Vitalik Buterin discussing cryptoeconomics.
  7. Cryptoeconomic Protocols In the Context of Wider Society Vitalik Buterin discussing cryptoeconomics. The corresponding presentation deck is available here
  8. The current state of Cryptoeconomics The current state of Cryptoeconomics by Vlad Zamfir
  9. Programmable Incentives by Karl Floersch at Devcon 3
  10. Hard problems in cryptoeconomics by Vitalik Buterin
  11. Cryptoeconomic Primitives
  12. Global Scale Research Networks and Cryptoeconomics
  13. Towards a Practice of Token Engineering by Trent McConaghy
  14. Cryptoeconomic Theory an on-going series by Viktor Makarskyy with part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4

State Channels

  1. The Raiden Network, a technical introduction
  2. Short introduction to the The Raiden Network by Lefteris Karapetsas
  3. State Channels explained in detail by Ameen Soleimani

Cryptoeconomic Security

  1. The costs of hacking Bitcoin Sybil attacks explained
  2. Game theory and Network Attacks- How to destroy Bitcoin by by Max Fang 03/2017
  3. Game theory and Network Attacks- How to destroy Bitcoin by Nadir Akhtar and Aparna Krishnan 11/2017
  4. 51% Attacks: Pools and Game Theory
  5. Nothing at stake Introducing the nothing at stake attack
  6. Security Considerations of the Casper Protocol Vlad Zamfir at Standford’s Blockchain Protocol Analysis and Security Engineering 2017

Cryptography

  1. Cryptography for Cryptocurrency
  2. Bitcoin – Cryptographic hash functions
  3. Hashed based signatures An illustrated primer

Additional

  1. BBC Documentary Adam Curtis’ “Fuck you buddy” BBC documentary

Podcasts

  1. Q&A on Casper Vlad Zamfir answering questions regarding Ethereum’s Casper PoS
  2. PoW attacks Podcast from 2015 on PoW attacks
  3. Cryptoeconomics, Stablecoins, Casper with Vlad Zamfir, and corresponding transcript is available here
  4. Fintech Podcast – Episode 151 Cryptoeconomics as explained by Dr Chris Berg
  5. Cryptoeconomic Primitives by Trent McConaghy

Whitepapers

  1. Bitcoin Whitepaper
  2. Ethereum Whitepaper
  3. Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild
  4. dBFT Whitepaper The Quest for Scalable Blockchain Fabric: Proof-of-Work vs. BFT Replication by IBM Research
  5. Federated Byzantine Agreements by Stellar Development Foundation’s David Mazieres
  6. Research Paper on PoS vs. Pow by Bitfury
  7. Demystifying Incentives in the Consensus Computer
  8. Game Theory approach behind Bitcoin mining
  9. Research Paper on the security model in PoW by ETH Zurich and others
  10. A Note on Limits on Incentive Compatibility and Griefing Factors
  11. Research Paper on eclipse attacks on the Bitcoin Network
  12. Research Paper on eclipse attacks on the Ethereum Network
  13. Research paper on hashrate-based double spend attack
  14. Satoshi Risk Tables
  15. MakerDAO Purple Paper
  16. Sweetbridge Liquidity Protocol
  17. Bancor Protocol
  18. Maker Dai Stablecoin
  19. Curation Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  20. The Economics of BitCoin Price Formation This paper analyses the relationship between BitCoin price and supply-demand fundamentals of Bitcoin
  21. A Cost of Production Model for Bitcoin
  22. The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol Analysis and Applications
  23. Cryptocurrencies without PoW
  24. Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain

Other Resources

  1. Casper PoS Discourse Ethereum Foundation’s Discourse channel on Casper
  2. Evolution of Trust Fun interactive game by Nicky Case showing the evolution of group trust over time
  3. Formal verification on Casper Formal verification on Casper
  4. Ethresear.ch Casper research topic
  5. CECS – CryptoEconomics Security Conference
  6. Reddit subgroup
  7. Telegram Group
  8. RIAT – Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics a research group from Austria
  9. Cryptoeconomics Asia is an independent research firm
  10. Cryptoeconomics at RMIT University a research group of economists in Australia
  11. Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics Vienna University of Economics and Business
  12. MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab MIT’s first cryptoeconomics lab

Blockchain Hacks and Post-mortems

The DAO

  1. The DAO can turn into a naturally arising Ponzi prescient article by Hacking Distributed
  2. Analysis of the DAO Exploit by Hacking Distributed
  3. Thoughts on the DAO hack by Hacking Distributed

Parity MultiSig

  1. Parity’s Post-mortem
  2. Deep dive into the Parity hack

Bancor

  1. Front-running Bancor in 150 lines of Python

King of Ether

  1. King of Ether Post-mortem

Roulette

  1. Attacking a public RNG article by Martin Swende on attacking a smart contract that used a public Random Number Generator

Additional information and related topics

Behavioural Economics

  1. BE Ted Talk Prof. Dan Ariely’s Ted Talk on Behavioural Economics
  2. Predictably Irrational book Predictably Irrational by Prof. Dan Ariely
  3. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Prof. Dan Ariely

Economics

  1. Awesome Economics

Cryptography

  1. Awesome Cryptography

MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab

Posted in people, related_projects, Research Notes

The objective of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab is to push the research frontier in the emerging field of cryptoeconomics.

Cryptoeconomics brings together the fields of economics and computer science to study the decentralized marketplaces and applications that can be built by combining cryptography with economic incentives.

It focuses on individual decision-making and strategic interaction between different participants in a digital ecosystem (e.g. users, providers of key resources, application developers etc.), and uses methodologies from the field of economics – such as game theory, mechanism design and causal inference – to understand how to fund, design, develop, facilitate the operations and encourage the adoption of decentralized marketplaces and related services and digital assets.

The resulting “digital economies” often require the definition of a monetary, fiscal, privacy and innovation policy. Moreover, they need effective governance to ensure that the platform maintainers can upgrade the underlying software protocols over time in response to changes in the environment, technology or market needs.

Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet

Posted in decentralization, discourse, Research Notes

And blockchain will bring those better products?

For me, the most interesting part of blockchain technology is that you can provide much richer and more advanced protocols. They have the best features of Web One in that they’re governed in a decentralized way, and in a way that the rules are fixed and people can build on them and invest in them and know that the rules won’t change. But they have more advanced functionality than protocols of the Web One era.

One way to think of a blockchain is as a community-owned database. In Web One, there were no databases. In computer science terminology, there’s no way to keep state. You just look at Ethereum today, you can store any arbitrary code, any arbitrary names, any arbitrary thing. It’s a very rich kind of database, and so you can build much more powerful services that also have those properties of Web One and Web Two. Some people call it Web Three.

Web Two was don’t be evil. Web Three is can’t be evil. You bake it into the code that you can’t be evil.

Source: Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet

Cryptoeconomics: Can blockchain reinvent justice systems? | Answers On

Posted in applications, blockchain, justice, law, Research Notes

Kleros co-founder and CEO Federico Ast explores the role of blockchain, cryptoeconomics, and collective intelligence in building the future of justice.

Human communities of every era have had to solve the problem of social order. For this, they developed governance and legal systems. They did it with the technologies and systems of belief of their time.

Athenians of the Classical period believed that all citizens had the right to participate in the lawmaking process and as jurors in popular trials. They used a sophisticated piece of civic technology called kleroterion for random selection of jurors and avoiding manipulation of the system. Modern justice systems were created in the 17th and 18th centuries, at a time of consolidation of nation states.

These systems worked fine for many years, providing rule of law for industrial development and economic prosperity. But in early 21st century, they started to reach their complexity limits. The advent of the Internet and the creation of a global, digital, real time economy started to show the cracks in legal systems built in an era of paper contracts, horse transportation and national jurisdictions.

In today’s global economy, a large and increasing number of transactions are conducted online across jurisdictional boundaries. Clients from different countries hire contractors from all over the world for building software and other services. Investors from different countries participate in crowdfunding campaigns from everywhere. In their book Digital Justice (2017), experts Ethan Katsh and Orna Rabinovich-Einy estimate that disputes arise in 3 to 5% of online transactions, totaling over seven hundred million in 2015 alone.

Existing dispute resolution technologies are too slow, too expensive and too unreliable for an online real-time world. Even alternative methods like online dispute resolution (ODR) have failed to address this problem. ODR promised to bring resolution to this new type of disputes, but in the end it just streamlined existing court procedures, without really bringing an innovation.

Cars, not faster horses

Henry Ford famously said (although some people doubt the veracity of this): “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” A better justice system may not come from further streamlining existing processes but from fundamentally rethinking them from a first principles perspective.

In the last decade, we have witnessed how collective intelligence could be leveraged to produce an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, a transport system like Uber, a restaurant rating system like Yelp!, and a hotel system like Airbnb.

These companies innovated by crowdsourcing value creation. Instead of having an in-house team of restaurant critics as the Michelin Guide, Yelp! crowdsourced ratings in users.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention of Bitcoin (and the underlying blockchain technology) may be seen as the next step in the rise of the collaborative economy. The Bitcoin Network proved that, given the right incentives, anonymous users could cooperate in creating and updating a distributed ledger which could act as a monetary system. A nationless system, inherently global, and native to the Internet Age.

Cryptoeconomics is a new field of study that leverages cryptography, computer science and game theory to build secure distributed systems. It is the science that underlies the incentive system of open distributed ledgers. But its potential goes well beyond cryptocurrencies.

Kleros is a dispute resolution system which relies on cryptoeconomics. It uses a system of incentives based on “focal points”, a concept developed by game theorist Thomas Schelling, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2005. Using a clever mechanism design, it seeks to produce a set of incentives for randomly selected users to adjudicate different types of disputes in a fast, affordable and secure way. Users who adjudicate disputes honestly will make money. Users who try to abuse the system will lose money.

Kleros does not seek to compete with governments or traditional arbitration systems, but provide a new method that will leverage the wisdom of the crowd to resolve a large number of disputes of the global digital economy for which existing methods fall short: e-commerce, crowdfunding and many types of small claims are among the early adopters.

Political institutions are the result of trying to solve the practical problems of social coordination. Human communities of all times developed the institutions better suited to their problems, their technologies and beliefs. Athenians of the Classical period built their court system on their belief of citizen participation and the technology of kleroterion for random selection. The founding fathers of the United States built American courts based on the best knowledge of the political theory of their time.

In a time of globalization and digitalization, cryptoeconomics may become the pillar for building the institutions of the Internet Age.

Learn more

This article was written by Federico Ast, co-founder and CEO of Kleros. Kleros is a current member of the Thomson Reuters Incubator, part of Thomson Reuters Labs.