Trust, Blockchain-based Technologies, the Public Sector, and the Social Good

• In Event: Equality By Design Vs Design For Appropriation In Digital Resource Sharing - I

Abstract

Decentralized technologies, self-sovereign identity systems, distributed ledgers, and other blockchain based systems are “trust-minimizing” technical infrastructures. Their trustworthiness is based on some technical and design properties, such as decentralization, and strong cryptography, rather than them being regulated, having impeccable governance, or being fully transparent, or accountable. Public institutions generally enjoy high levels of trust, and even if they are not trusted, they are embedded in complex frameworks that ensure their trustworthiness: they are subject to laws, public scrutiny, their decisions can be challenged, etc. The deployment of trust-minimizing technologies in high-trust / high-trustworthiness contexts may contribute to more trustworthy public services, but also threatens to replace such high-trust environments with a trust-minimizing technology of unknown trustworthiness. This contribution focuses on the following questions: How can high-trust public institutions implement trust-minimizing infrastructures? In case of low-trust institutions, what is the preferable way forward: replacing distrusted public entities with trust-minimizing technologies, or improving their trustworthiness? Should we implement a trust-minimizing architecture, or a trust-maximizing one?

Authors

• Balazs Bodo, University of Amsterdam, Instutute for Information Law

• Heleen Janssen, University of Amsterdam