I recently met my friend again, the one he teaches in primary school and with whom I occasionally chat about blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

While we were in the pub, I asked him if his pupils had still asked difficult questions, and he replied that not the kids but his seventeen-year-old nephew: "You know, he does a bit of politics: the school, the assemblies, the movements . Things that really animate the soul at that age.”

Me: "It seems right."

Friend: “Here, with my nephew we ended up talking about blockchain. I offered him your explanation and he contested me saying that I only see the business model and not the political implications of the blockchain. I was dumbfounded."

Me: "Actually your nephew is right, our speech was incomplete."

Friend: “Oh! Let's talk about…"

Me: “Let's start with an example. Last week I had to fix my toilet flush. Before calling a plumber for these services, I always try to do it by myself. Now, technically my toilet is not a common toilet, it is built into the wall and therefore it is a little special, it is a "proprietary technology" covered by a patent. However, it is not forbidden for anyone to show how to disassemble the parts, clean them, put them back into operation or change them if necessary. So I went to YouTube and found that there were dozens of hobbyist videos that would be useful to me. They would have been the knowledge base from which to draw. I studied and, tinkering, I was able to understand the problem and solve it.”

Friend: "Bravo!"

Me: “Now, what if YouTube shuts down, stops, or its governance decides to block those footage? It happens that I lose my knowledge base. Because the model we have for content creation is a distributed system, while content management is a centralized system. This model, with the current internet architecture: client-server, at certain levels of scale is almost essential."

Friend: "Wait, what do you mean by scale levels?"

Me: “I mean that the bigger your organization or business is, the more it will necessarily have to rely on third-party services, which could be vital for its functioning. Let's take an example, you offer an internet service that has a worldwide resonance, at a certain point you will need to replicate the site on at least one server per continent and you will have to rely on one or more providers. Do you understand how fragile the chain is between you and your end user? There are dozens of factors that can shut it down at any time, ranging from individual providers to national governments. This doesn't automatically mean that it's good or bad, it's simply like this because first ARPA and then the INTERNET were conceived in a certain historical moment with precise technological limits."

Friend: “And the blockchain?”

Me: “Blockchain is by its nature a distributed system, indeed, the more it scales the more decentralized it is and the less it is controllable.”

Friend: “Sounds a bit anarchic.”

Me: “Do you see politics is starting to be relevant? Let's say it's not really anarchy even if it might seem so. Let's say that the positions of the most politically engaged "blockchain enthusiasts" range from right-wing anarcho-libertarianism to left-wing socialism. But this is not the political aspect that interests us."

Friend: "And which one?"

Me: “Last time we established that there can be an infinite number of blockchains, linked to one or more services or products. But whoever develops a blockchain creates a real ecosystem where the various nodes must interact with each other, therefore they will define at least one governance model and one business model. Think of the infinite combinations. On the one hand there are examples such as Ripple, a blockchain-based but fully managed project and governed by a committee of financial institutions. You can own one, a hundred or a billion ripple coins, you have no decision-making weight in that ecosystem. At the opposite end we can ideally put the many DAOs that are being born.”

Friend: “DAO?”

Me: "Decentralized autonomous organizations. These are projects that give much weight to horizontal, cooperative participation. For example Aragon, is an initiative that supports the creation of a DAO and provides you with management tools for free, has a manifesto with explicit references to fundamental freedoms and digital freedoms. In turn Aragon is managed as a DAO, there is a token called ANT and those who have at least 1 ANT have the right to vote.”

Friend: "But what can constitute the object of a DAO?"

Me: “Currently there are mostly DAOs for decentralized finance, such as Uniswap. It is a process that was quite natural: the first project, bitcoin, was born with the aim of creating an exchange currency using a blockchain, more or less, all those who came after reproduced this aspect by creating a token (a sort of digital micro-share certificate), as a result of which the first services born have been oriented towards the exchange of cryptocurrencies or to making your capital available to obtaining an interest. But it is still a very limited matter, any service can be decentralized: a network of fishing cooperatives can set up a DAO to share news and information on fishing, a foundation that manages awards and scholarships can use the blockchain to mark its transparency . An academic publishing network can be a DAO where authors and peer reviewers are an active part, small shareholders, of the editorial process.”

Friend: “So, let's say, a militant vision is at least limited. We are making a political speech because the blockchain phenomenon has at least two political consequences: we are faced with something that could modify, or at least creep into, the rules of participation, giving life to horizontal and transnational organizations. Likewise, the institutions must question themselves about the positive and negative consequences, and try to limit the latter. For example, I can create a platform dedicated to sharing knowledge, which runs on a solid blockchain and which does not depend on a particular provider. But a network dedicated to crime can also organize itself in this way.”

Me: “Cheers! You got it. This is why this technology has important repercussions for better or for worse, and in my opinion those who are unable or do not want to see the need to investigate and govern the phenomenon leave the doors open more to evil than to good"

Useful sources and links

Blockchain and cooperatives

https://platform.coop/blog/what-are-blockchain-based-platform-cooperatives/   

https://www.dgen.org/blog/decentralisation-at-work-cooperatives-on-blockchain 

https://www.uk.coop/blog/blockchain-catalyst-cooperative-economy 

Blockchain for funds and scholarships

https://www.amplifund.com/blog/future-of-grants-blockchain

Blockchain and academic publishing  

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00019/full 

https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/can-daos-narrow-the-gap-between-publishers-and-their-audiences/ 

https://www.outofpocket.health/p/decentralizing-journals-and-peer-review-daos  

DAO

https://cointelegraph.com/daos-for-beginners/types-of-daos