Prospects of blockchain governance

What is it about?

The advance of blockchain governance in various sectors of economy provides a promising playground to test how the concept could be realized for various purposes in the public sector, first of all, in introducing the principles of decentralization, transparency and irreversibility to the digital governance concept, e.g. in promoting more robust and innovative e-government and e-voting solutions. Such manifestations could be quite diverse, regardless of whether they are related to the decentralization of decision making processes or promotion of the collaborative control in a wide range of public policy initiatives and innovations, increasing transparency of operational processes and verification of their results by peers or harnessing irreversible nature of the contractual obligations. This could be beneficial for all the members of the blockchain governance network in many ways. In this regard, this article provides a conceptual perspective to understand public values of the blockchain technology to transform governance in a more collaborative manner and elaborate on potential areas where the technology could be realized and benefit various actors: public, private or civic ones. In addition, the paper also discusses a wide range of challenges and barriers in adopting blockchain-driven solutions in governance, proposing a number of policy recommendations for e-government stakeholders and policy regulators in the area.

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Why is it important?

This work relies on the analysis of rich empirical data that has been collected as a result of semi-structured interviews with blockchain developers from around the world and aims to provide an intrinsically holistic perspective to the realm of the blockchain governance concept, explaining what is the essence of the idea, how it is intended to be realized by design and implemented and, more importantly, what public values could be harnessed in building better governance and society and what challenges key stakeholders are facing in the industry when advancing the concept in public, private and civic sectors of economy. In this regard, the research results could be a valuable source of information for academia in their future research endeavors in the area.

Perspectives