We explored the following domains:
Blockchain and copyright, Digital currencies, Identity management, and Data management.
The summary of our findings is the following.
Blockchain and copyright
Our question in this domain was whether blockchains and smart contracts can disrupt the current way of how music and audiovisual works are registered, licensed, distributed, used and remunerated. We explored this in [1, 19, 36, 39] (numbers refer to the numbers in the publications section of the final report). We found that though it is theoretically possible to map copyrights to a metadata structure on blockchains, in practice this is incredibly complicated. What is more, the need to keep on-chain licensing information in sync with off chain licensing acts requires intermediaries which must keep track of licensing acts in both spaces. This beats the purpose of proposed disintermediation, while adds extra technical complexity. The NFT “revolution” does not serve as a useful case study for copyright related applications, as in most cases NFTs existed outside of the copyright regime, and when intellectual property related issues arose (such as misappropriation, unlicensed use, or other disputes), parties conferred to the protections provided to them by the traditional legal and institutional frameworks.
Digital currencies
We explored how digital currencies fit into the wider system of payment methods and systems in [11, 12, 15, 23, 27, 33, 34, 37]. We compared cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, Central Bank Digital Currencies, and alternative money systems (such as local currencies): their regulatory compliance, use cases, associated risks, social and economic functions. We found that absent of proper regulation cryptocurrencies are purely speculative devices, irrespective of their ideological (libertarian, or communitarian) charge. The incoming MICA regulation, on the other hand, renders such crypto assets just one out of many, technologically complex, and high-risk financial instruments. We identified the platformization of payment infrastructures a much more relevant development for the future of money infrastructures than blockchains/cryptocurrencies.
Self-sovereign identities
We explored in depth whether users can and should be encouraged to keep all their personal data on their own devices, wallets, and exercise self-sovereignty vis-à-vis the state and the giants of surveillance capitalism in [2,6, 9,13, 14, 28, 29, 32, 38, 41]. We found that blockchain based storage/exchange of personal information is incompatible with the current GDPR and EIDAS regulations in the EU. Much touted tools, such as zero-knowledge proofs are unrelated to blockchains, and in any case, state institutions currently in charge of maintaining secure identities for citizens will always be necessary to provide a failsafe in identity management.
Data management
In light of the current European digital strategy, especially the Data and Data Governance Acts, we studied whether blockchains, fundamentally shared databases can serve as the underlying technological infrastructure for secure, safe, and trustworthy data sharing practices, and data intermediary institutions. We explored these questions in [7, 10, 21, 25, 26, 31, 35]. Our finding was that data sharing is first and foremost an organizational/governance question defined slightly differently in each domain it arises (such as health data, or open government data), and the technical properties of the blockchain systems are often antagonistic towards such domain-specific governance questions due to their design properties, such as immutability or anonymity.
Theory
In terms of the overarching theoretical frameworks, we did extensive work on two questions: trust and decentralization. Decentralization, as the underlying principle of blockchain based systems was explored in [3,4,17,20,30,40], where we explored how decentralization as a technological property, as an aspiration, as an ideology, and as an organizational form co-exist and interact with each other in the blockchain space. We also highlighted that technical decentralization efforts may be hindered by political, economic and governance dynamics, which inevitably lead to recentralization in various blockchain applications.
The second theoretical framework we built was around the trustworthiness of centralized vs decentralized techno-social systems, and the nature of trust produced by such systems. We systematically addressed various aspects of this question in [8, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 42]. We found that algorithmic safeguards of technology trustworthiness are in and by themselves insufficient. We also analyzed the nature of trust such systems produce in social, economic, and interpersonal relations, and found that the form of trust (or rather, trustlessness) which blockchains promote can be socially detrimental.
