Читать книгу The Handbook of Peer Production - Группа авторов - Страница 29

Pablo Velasco González & Nathaniel Tkacz

This chapter provides an overview on blockchain technology in its relation with peer production. Blockchain refers to an open yet secure distributed ledger that secures a robust workflow, authenticated by mass collaboration. As such, the principles and technologies of blockchain have inspired a range of aspirations and implementation in close relation to the principles of peer production. The chapter locates the emergence of the peer‐production model in relation to the organizational models of hierarchies and markets, and discusses the role and potential of blockchain technology to generate “common good” within a fair distribution of production, while also participating as an extractive model. An overview of different projects, interrogated under the light of modes of production, is offered in the second part of the chapter. These projects distinguish four aspects of blockchain initiatives that offer different readings of what may be a peer within blockchain configurations: peer production, peer‐development, peer‐governance, and peer‐exchange. The hybridity of blockchain‐based projects fluctuates the degree and roles of participation, and complicates a narrow definition of a common. While these and other blockchain‐based projects can then be understood as instances of peer production, they are primarily an opportunity to rethink the emergence of this mode of production and reflect on what it can become.