Blockchain Technology and its Applications A Promise Theory view-V 0 . 11 ∗

Blockchain amounts to a form of public voting on the acceptance of transactions, submitted to some kind of ledger, in such a way that an official record, based on a majority decision, is kept permanently for all voluntary participants to see. We are assembling these notes to discuss blockchains and cryptocurrency applications from the perspective of Promise Theory. The aim is to discuss and document salient issues about blockchain technology in a semi-formal way, and with a minimum level of technical rigour (perhaps to offer some sobriety to the more unbridled claims). We place a special emphasis on the role of trust, particularly in light of claims that blockchain is a trust-free technology, run by democratic and transparent principles rather, than elite opaque institutions. We also seem to arrive at a tentative view that what might be valuable about blockchains today could turn into future liabilities. Our notes are still quite rough, and are best read in conjunction with an overview of the state of the field, e.g. see [1].

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