Firing up „social machine”

This is the first post of the blog accom­pa­ny­ing the „Social Machi­ne” pro­ject. It will be docu­men­ting next two years of rese­ar­ching Polish block­cha­in eco­sys­tem and ana­ly­zing glo­bal trends in distri­bu­ted led­ger tech­no­lo­gies. The goal of the pro­ject is to find out how the block­cha­in solu­tions and insti­tu­tions of the sta­te accom­mo­da­te each other.

Łukasz Jonak, Ana­li­tyk DELab UW

The situ­ation of the block­cha­in sce­ne is now radi­cal­ly dif­fe­rent from what we’ve had 1,5 years ago, when cryp­to­cur­ren­cies whe­re on all time highs and nume­ro­us star­tups were racing ahe­ad, fuel­led by funds raised in ini­tial coin offe­rings and pure hype. Sin­ce then, a lot of money (both in cash and inve­stors» opti­mism) have eva­po­ra­ted from the eco­sys­tem and with it many star­tups una­ble to deli­ver on the­ir busi­ness model fast enough.

But the eco­sys­tem is regro­uping. Deve­lo­per teams of foun­ding pro­jects, actu­al block­cha­ins, con­cen­tra­te on basic infra­struc­tu­re, tac­kling pro­blems of sca­ling and inte­ro­pe­ra­bi­li­ty of dif­fe­rent cha­ins, witho­ut which eco­sys­tem will not grow. The survi­ving pro­jects, built on top of block­cha­in infra­struc­tu­re, revi­se the­ir busi­ness models to make sure they are deli­ve­ring pro­ducts the users will actu­al­ly under­stand (not to men­tion, value).

The esta­bli­shed IT com­pa­nies (your IBMs and Micro­so­fts) did not waste the­ir time sin­ce the burst of the cryp­to­cur­ren­cy bub­ble and sha­ped block­cha­in tech­no­lo­gies so that they match the­ir pro­duct port­fo­lios. Block­cha­in-based solu­tions are aggres­si­ve­ly mar­ke­ted as che­eper and faster ver­sions of lega­cy pro­ducts, with care­ful mes­sa­ges, stres­sing the­ir agi­li­ty witho­ut the nega­ti­ves of ano­ny­mi­ty and revo­lu­tio­na­ry zeal; exac­tly what the hat­ching „Indu­stry 4.0” might want to buy.

Block­cha­in is also on col­lec­ti­ve, insti­tu­tio­nal minds of nation-sta­tes and inter­na­tio­nal orga­ni­sa­tions. A num­ber of govern­ments alre­ady moved some of the­ir infor­ma­tion servi­ces to block­cha­in-realed infra­struc­tu­re, some sta­tes intro­du­ced legi­sla­tions remo­ving obstac­les to the deve­lop­ment of cryp­to­eco­no­my. The reasons may vary – attrac­ting capi­tal and inno­va­tion (Mal­ta, Sin­ga­po­re), impro­ving quali­ty of public servi­ce (Sin­ga­po­re), whi­le off-seting some aspects of in-favo­ura­ble geo­po­li­ti­cal posi­tion (Esto­nia), or augmen­ting tra­di­tio­nal ways of doing inter­nal poli­tics (Swit­zer­land). In Poland, the discus­sion abo­ut the role of distri­bu­ted led­ger tech­no­lo­gies is ongo­ing, howe­ver, it can not be said that we are spe­ar­he­ading the block­cha­in transformation.

It also looks like the Euro­pe­an Com­mis­sion is con­si­de­ring block­cha­in tech­no­lo­gies (just after arti­fi­cial intel­li­gen­ce) as a possi­ble way to coun­ter the domi­nan­ce of tech­no­lo­gi­cal giants from over the oce­an. The re-empo­wer­ment of Euro­pe­an citi­zens is unli­ke­ly to hap­pen by buil­ding a new, Euro­pe­an (and cen­tra­li­sed) ver­sions of Face­bo­ok or Google. The­se tech­no­lo­gies need to be leap-frog­ged, and EC is acti­ve­ly rese­ar­ching how the new Inter­net, new digi­tal eco­sys­tem can look like and how to get mem­ber-sta­tes on board in this transformation.

All of it is extre­me­ly inte­re­sting to a socio­lo­gist. If block­cha­in eco­sys­tem is to take-off in any meaning­ful way (espe­cial­ly the public part of it), it will pro­fo­un­dly chan­ge the way people asso­cia­te, inte­ract with insti­tu­tions, what they know and what they can do. The same will be true abo­ut tra­di­tio­nal insti­tu­tions of sta­te and eco­no­my. Whe­ther it hap­pens or not – and to what extent – is being deci­ded right now, and this blog is inten­ded to ana­ly­ze and docu­ment this process.

Autor pro­jek­tu: Łukasz Jonak

Pro­jekt finan­so­wa­ny ze środ­ków pro­gra­mu „Dia­log” MNiSW