Another Wild West Web for Critical Information Systems Research: A Sceptical-Empirical Approach to the Ethereum Mainnet

Doctoral thesis (2023)

The early twenty-first century is marked by the 2007 Global Financial Crisis and the 2013 Snowden revelations about online surveillance. This period cursed many, yet it smiled upon developers of financial ... [more ▼]

The early twenty-first century is marked by the 2007 Global Financial Crisis and the 2013 Snowden revelations about online surveillance. This period cursed many, yet it smiled upon developers of financial technologies and blockchain networks. Led by Bitcoin in 2009 and Ethereum in 2015, blockchain networks are treated as potential panaceas for a range of societal ills. For the problem of crisis-riven financial institutions, blockchain developers propose Decentralised Finance. For the problem of online surveillance, they propose Self-Sovereign Identity. In response to Big Tech companies’ exploitation of content creators, they propose NFTs. In response to everyday mundanity and the limits of the physical world, they propose avatar-based role-play and simulated environments – the metaverse. Meanwhile, critics deride blockchain solutions as potentially worse than the status quo – a passage from the World Wide Web, dominated by Big Tech companies, to a new Wild West Web of pseudonymity, hyper-volatility, and “degens” (degenerates). Critical Information Systems researchers are spoilt for choice. This cumulative thesis consists of a dissertation plus six publications. The dissertation conceives the Ethereum Mainnet as an actor-network rather than a cause of empowerment and emancipation. The six publications use sceptical-empirical methods to investigate Ethereum’s close ties with Decentralised Finance, Self-Sovereign Identity, the OpenSea NFT marketplace, and the metaverse. A prescriptive or normative dimension – a moral Cause – is absent from the six publications. The dissertation defends this absence, and it encourages critical Information Systems researchers to set aside ideologies that posit Ethereum as a Cause of individual empowerment or world improvement. Critical researchers should instead follow the network’s transactions and powerful actors. [less ▲]

Digital Identity Wallets and their Semantic Contradictions

in Smethurst, Reilly (Ed.) ECIS 2023 Research Papers (2023, May 11)

In the fight for individual privacy against online surveillance and personal data breaches, blockchain developers often pitch encrypted wallets as solutions. Five examples from 2021 and 2022 involve Big ... [more ▼]

In the fight for individual privacy against online surveillance and personal data breaches, blockchain developers often pitch encrypted wallets as solutions. Five examples from 2021 and 2022 involve Big Tech companies or large European governments. On the private side, Jack Dorsey’s Block company announced the Web5 Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) Service. Meta and Twitter added support for fictional identities – tokenised avatars or profile pictures like Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, registered to Web3 wallets that putatively offer “self-sovereign ownership”. On the public side, the European Commission funded SSI wallet trials for digital diploma credentials. Germany’s federal government launched a mobile driving licence (mDL), stored in a SSI wallet. This one term, “SSI”, is associated with varying sets of technologies and ethical principles. Following complaints that “SSI” generates confusion, I offer a typology that highlights four semantic contradictions as well as a concept map to guide future research. [less ▲]

Decentralised Finance's Unregulated Governance: Minority Rule in the Digital Wild West

E-print/Working paper (2022)

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is a category of unlicensed, unregulated, and non-custodial financial services that utilise public, distributed ledgers like Ethereum. The Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index ... [more ▼]

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is a category of unlicensed, unregulated, and non-custodial financial services that utilise public, distributed ledgers like Ethereum. The Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, launched in August 2021, includes nine Ethereum-based projects – non-custodial exchanges as well as lending and derivatives platforms. Each project is governed, at least in part, by a community of unregistered individuals that hold tradable voting rights tokens (also known as governance tokens). Voting rights tokens allow holders to vote on proposed changes to a DeFi project’s features, parameters, or rules. DeFi’s governance power is thus linked to the distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights. Since DeFi projects are typically not managed by companies or public institutions, not much is known about DeFi’s governance. Regulators and law-makers from the United States recently asked if DeFi’s governance entails a new class of “shadowy” elites. In response, we conducted an exploratory, multiple-case study that focuses on the voting rights tokens issued by the nine projects from Bloomberg’s Galaxy DeFi index. Our mixed methods approach draws on Ethereum-based data about the distribution, trading, and staking of voting rights tokens, as well as project documentation and archival records. Our findings contribute knowledge about the entitlements of DeFi’s voting rights tokens, the initial distribution strategies, and the actual voting and delegation activity. Our principal finding is that DeFi’s voting rights are highly concentrated, and the exercise of these rights is very low. Our theoretical contribution is descriptive: minority rule is the probable consequence of tradable voting rights plus the lack of applicable anti-concentration or anti-monopoly laws. We interpret DeFi’s minority rule as timocratic and acknowledge its possible transition to oligarchy. [less ▲]

Chapter 8: Tokenization and Regulatory Compliance for Art and Collectible Markets: From Regulators' Demands for Transparency to Investors' Demands for Privacy

in Lacity, Mary; Treiblmaier, Horst (Eds.) Blockchains and the Token Economy: Studies in Theory and Practice (2022)

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles, so that claims to these ... [more ▼]

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles, so that claims to these assets can be exchanged digitally without intermediaries. Tokenization offers investors access to a global market plus a digitized paper trail, as well as new options for the fractional ownership of artworks, art-collateralized loans, and yield-bearing art assets. The main challenge for tokenization researchers and platform developers is to simultaneously satisfy regulators’ demands for transparency and auditability as well as art investors’ demands for privacy. New technological solutions are required that enable market participants to disclose the absolute minimum amount of information that is required by regulators. We explore new concepts from distributed ledger technology, cryptography, and digital identity management that can help address this challenge. [less ▲]

O'Dair, Marcus: Distributed Creativity

in Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht (2021), (11),