About this Research Topic
The developing world has become a key staging ground for blockchain governance applications and bitcoin maximalist policies. This process has been advanced by a contradictory assortment of crypto evangelists, NGOs and foreign developers declaring the revolutionary potential of blockchain. Developing world governments have been flattered with claims that they will drive this global transformation and technologically leapfrog into web3. The legacies of neoliberal structural adjustment and the weakness of developing world states has created a regulatory environment, and a desire for tech-led economic growth, that has opened these societies up for speculation. Projects have ranged from digital identity and national blockchain registries, the adoption of crypto as legal tender, aid distribution, supply chains and the tokenization of carbon markets.
This collection of Frontiers in Blockchain will critically assess these developments and evaluate the ‘blockchain for good’ paradigm with an understanding of colonial and extractive legacies. Promises of economic and governance alternatives have largely resulted in Western financial escapism and the use of fragile developing world societies as an open space for escapist fantasies. Projects have made the developing world dependent upon crypto nomads, the vagaries of the crypto economy and threaten to put vital resources on the blockchain and outside the purview of the developing world state. The problematic of blockchain colonialism necessitates a multidisciplinary approach from critical geography, cultural studies, law, communications, anthropology, science and technology studies. This political concern and critique can address questions of power in blockchain architectures, the political economy of developing world tech and the cultural imperialist power of blockchain solutionist rhetoric. In centering critiques of colonialism, whether economic, cultural or technological, it is hoped that this intervention will inform the ethical calculus of ‘blockchain for good’ and evaluate whether blockchain projects are fit for purpose in the developing world.
Contributions will cover but are not limited to the following topics:
• Regulatory environments and national case studies
• Distributed ledgers and aid
• Green tokens and green-washing crypto
• Uses and abuses of indigenous metaphors
• Blockchain nomads and escapism
• Emerging digital markets
• Self-Sovereign Identity and Digital ID
• Cyber-libertarianism and settler colonialism
• Alternative economies, indigenous knowledge and blockchain
• Techno-solutionism and innovation in the NGO sector
• Digital diasporas and blockchain nations
• Blockchain education and advocacy in the developing world
• Supranational institutions, foreign governments and the geopolitics of blockchain development
• Island innovation, open space and web3 fantasies
• Supply-chains and global trade
• Remittances, the US Dollar and sanctions
• Algorithmic Governance, code as law and the blockchain commons
This collection of Frontiers in Blockchain will critically assess these developments and evaluate the ‘blockchain for good’ paradigm with an understanding of colonial and extractive legacies. Promises of economic and governance alternatives have largely resulted in Western financial escapism and the use of fragile developing world societies as an open space for escapist fantasies. Projects have made the developing world dependent upon crypto nomads, the vagaries of the crypto economy and threaten to put vital resources on the blockchain and outside the purview of the developing world state. The problematic of blockchain colonialism necessitates a multidisciplinary approach from critical geography, cultural studies, law, communications, anthropology, science and technology studies. This political concern and critique can address questions of power in blockchain architectures, the political economy of developing world tech and the cultural imperialist power of blockchain solutionist rhetoric. In centering critiques of colonialism, whether economic, cultural or technological, it is hoped that this intervention will inform the ethical calculus of ‘blockchain for good’ and evaluate whether blockchain projects are fit for purpose in the developing world.
Contributions will cover but are not limited to the following topics:
• Regulatory environments and national case studies
• Distributed ledgers and aid
• Green tokens and green-washing crypto
• Uses and abuses of indigenous metaphors
• Blockchain nomads and escapism
• Emerging digital markets
• Self-Sovereign Identity and Digital ID
• Cyber-libertarianism and settler colonialism
• Alternative economies, indigenous knowledge and blockchain
• Techno-solutionism and innovation in the NGO sector
• Digital diasporas and blockchain nations
• Blockchain education and advocacy in the developing world
• Supranational institutions, foreign governments and the geopolitics of blockchain development
• Island innovation, open space and web3 fantasies
• Supply-chains and global trade
• Remittances, the US Dollar and sanctions
• Algorithmic Governance, code as law and the blockchain commons
Keywords: ICT4D, Techno-Solutionism, Cyber-Libertarianism, Blockchain Imperialism, Platform Studies, Critical Geography
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
