Will The Revolution Be Tokenized: Governments, Blockchain, And The Digital Space Race
In 2015 The Economist magazine hailed blockchain as “the trust machine”, capable of replacing governance structures, displacing institutions, and bringing a new level of transparency to transactions and information, with implications across public life.
In the years since, the technology has produced trillion-dollar decentralized financial markets and a slew of innovation over blockchains especially in financial services, with the rise of bitcoin, stabelcoins, decentralized finance or DeFi, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and other industries such as shipping, logistics and supply chains are starting to scale use cases.
OECD research, however, shows little breakthrough in blockchain innovation in government and minimal impact in the public sector — the technology is often described as a solution in search of a problem. While the technology is rapidly maturing, we are starting to see governments take an interest in blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in areas such as tax, standards and certification, digital identity, and data privacy.
For governments, assessing blockchain’s disruptive potential is both a practical challenge and a philosophical one. The raison d’etre of many public institutions is the provision of public goods, and the underwriting of rights and the social contract — functions that blockchain’s pioneers sought to replace with cryptography, networks, and protocols. Whether this technology will be used to displace or complement traditional governance models is an open question, as is its ability to deliver such transformation.
This year’s opening discussion at the OECD’s 4th Annual Blockchain Policy Forum addressed several the main opportunities and challenges at the intersection of technology and governance to disentangle blockchain’s promise from reality and explored the extent to which the technology can and should be guided by governments towards better models of social and economic connection.
Read the full article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencewintermeyer/2021/10/06/will-the-revolution-be-tokenized-governments-blockchain-and-the-digital-space-race/?sh=7f86198a5170
