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Introduction to Blockchain Research Skills

Research Use Case: Community Research (STS)

Primary Focus: How do communities around emerging technologies behave?

Proximal Disciplines: Sociology, Anthrolopology, Cultural Theory, Psychology, Science and Technology Studies

Example Research Questions:

  • How do cryptocurrency users conceptualize the notion of ‘trust’?
  • What are the major ideological divides between Bitcoiners and Ethereans?
  • What attitude do Bitcoin early adopters express about the increasing acceptance of cryptocurrency by centralized banks?

Major Concepts in Play: Trustlessness, Decentralists, Cypherpunks, ‘Toxic Maximalism’

Risks to Consider:

  • Highest risk of personal harm to research subjects (individualized focus)
  • Difficult to gain trust/’insider status’ in these communities
  • Quickly changing culture is hard for academic research cycles to keep up with

Example Project: Artemij Voskobojnikov’s UBC-based research in this space, on the conceptualizations and self-perceptions of different “generations” of cryptocurrency market entrants

Research Use Case: Law and Public Policy

Primary Focus: How do we adjust law and policy to best fit these new technologies?

Proximal Disciplines: Law, Public Policy, Accounting, Economics, History, Sociology

Example Research Questions:

  • Do blockchain developers hold fiduciary responsibility?
  • Should cryptocurrency be regulated as a currency, an asset, a security, or something elsea?

Major Concepts in Play: Sovereignty, Governance, Permissionlessness, Smart Contracts

Risks to Consider:

  • Can be challenging to map slow-moving law and policy sectors to the “move fast and break things” speed of disruptive technology
  • Participants in this ecosystem are often inherently suspicious of law and policy collaborators

Example Project: This recent Open Access paper analyzes and lays out the potential requirements for Non-Fungible Tokens utilized in relation to a genomic data platform to meet the privacy standards of the GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act.

Research Use Case: Advocacy and Ethics

Primary Focus: How can we prevent the potential exploitation of these technologies to control, track, or otherwise harm populations?

Proximal Disciplines: Public Policy, Social Work, Philosophy, Non-Profit Management, Humanities

Example Research Questions:

  • What are the mechanisms for transparency and accountability amongst the major public blockchains?
  • What grounding principles should smart contract developers keep in mind when writing self-executing code?

Major Concepts in Play: Game Theory, Governance, Trustlessness

Risks to Consider:

  • Difficult to identify what is “the path of least harm,” especially when you are new to these complex intersecting domains
  • As someone deeply engaged in this facet of research myself: it runs the highest risk of ending up in vain :/

Example Project: Jaya Klara Brekke’s Satoshi’s Oath for Developers