The blockchain conundrum: humans, community regulation and chains

ABSTRACT Blockchain can be used to build a human-centric future. This is a challenge to recent critical literature on blockchain that sees it as another manifestation of digital capitalism that is profoundly antisocial and anti-human. This argument is in three parts. The first part identifies in the hype and critical literatures about blockchain, the blockchain conundrum of the freedom/constraint dyad. While tempting to see these literatures as forming a sealed hermeneutic of over-positive meets over-negative, it is argued that the critical discourse in locating blockchain within digital capitalism provides an insight that could unravel the blockchain conundrum. The critical literature identifies regulation as essential for human blockchain futures. The second part unravels the blockchain conundrum through this focus on regulation–through two accounts of law, technology and society; Lessig’s notion of actors as ‘pathetic dots’ and Brownsword’s reimaging of regulation in technological societies. It is suggested that Brownsword’s emphasis provides a more nuanced way to make human-centric blockchain futures. The final part builds from Brownsword’s resolution of the blockchain conundrum, to examine a particular blockchain application in retail supply (BeefLedger) as representing assemblages including blockchains in building human-centric futures through trusted communities that enable, rather than restrict, meaningful human action.