Blockchain for the Greater Good

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The emergence of blockchain enables the development of novel tools for social innovation. The application of these evolving tools to increase the greater good is an area of growing interest. Frontiers, the world’s leading peer-reviewed open-access journal, has launched Frontiers in Blockchain with a section on Blockchain for Good to promote scholarship in this exciting and important area of work. For the inaugural issue, we invite you to submit manuscripts for review on the topic of Inclusive Stakeholding.

We live in a time when virtually every aspect of the status quo is being questioned. All of our prevailing social, political, and economic institutions—and the assumptions behind these experiments—are being reexamined. Humans are wired to pursue self-interest, but in the context of evolutionary dislocations, asymmetries, and irrationalities among actors, the pursuit of self-interest translates to a reality other than a great society. Indeed, as Harvard evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich notes in The Secret of Our Success, all prosocial institutions over time collapse at the hands of self-interest.

Submitted works should envision blockchain-based token economic models that embody inclusive stakeholding, integrating the pursuit of self-interest with a contractually defined vested interest in the success of other stakeholders. Discussed features should include how the model instantiates alignment of interests and goal congruence among stakeholders while minimizing conflicts of interest and perverse incentives.

Each paper should pick a specific case of a system that behaves dysfunctionally due to perverse incentives or significant misalignment of interests among stakeholders . The paper should discuss how a blockchain-based solution using vested interest in the success of other stakeholders and goal congruence can optimize system behaviors. The papers should also specifically describe how stakeholders benefit, including those who don’t hold the token. By re-imagining incentive systems such that an individual’s success is a function of the success of others, innate pursuit of self-interest could yield win-win outcomes for individuals while promoting greater good.