Tech’s good intentions and why Satoshi’s new ‘social order’ foundered

All revolutions have their dogmas, and the cryptocurrency/blockchain insurgency is no different. It’s an article of faith among crypto adherents that decentralization will solve many of society’s ills, including the problem of governance. 

Vili Lehdonvirta — an Oxford University social scientist, book author, and former software developer — disagrees.

“The underlying technology will change and it’s already changing,” he told Cointelegraph last week. “It’s becoming less blockchain-like, less like the original idea of a trustless system,” especially after the Ethereum Merge, where corporate-like ‘staking’ entities will be needed to “uphold the integrity of the chain,” in his view.

Indeed, crypto networks generally could be moving in the direction of centralized digital platforms, “maintained by a bunch of people whom you have to trust, but hopefully you can also hold to account if they turn out to be untrustworthy.”

Lehdonvirta’s new book, Cloud Empires, published by MIT Press, is in part a meditation on the perishability of ideology and/or good intentions. Its subjects are the 21st century’s massive digital platforms like Amazon, Uber and eBay, among others.

Many follow a similar life cycle: Charismatic founders who set out to change the world, guide their enterprises on a dazzling growth path but then crash against a hard wall of reality. They survive this collision, but not always for the better.

Subtitled “How digital platforms are overtaking the State and how we can regain control,” the book has an illuminating chapter on Satoshi Nakamoto and the blockchain technology he created: Its origins, adoption, metamorphosis and ultimate realization that cryptographically secured digital networks couldn’t entirely replace “untrustworthy” human authorities on matters of governance.

There’s Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “once hailed as a hero who created an ideal business environment for countless independent merchants,” but who eventually transforms into a digital monopolist, turning on merchants, indeed, “extracting extortionate fees and outright stealing lucrative business lines from them.”

Appearing, too, is Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, initially as a “fierce advocate of free-market solutions,” but he’s later seen fixing fares and regulating the number of cars on the streets. There’s Pierre Omidyar, creator of “the world’s first online reputation system,” who realizes in time that a “bad…