Cryptocurrencies constitute a fast-evolving, disruptive technological development. Their proliferation and mainstreaming are undermining national security in several ways. By exploring emblematic cases, this paper examines how decentralised digital assets challenge sovereign functions, complicate law enforcement efforts, and give rise to security challenges. It explores different state-level responses to these developments by drawing on policy documents, reports, and guidance from multilateral regulatory authorities, alongside literature from finance, security studies, international relations, and technology governance. Strategic considerations spanning areas of illicit finance, sanctions evasion, great power rivalry, and state co-option by means of issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies and establishing cryptocurrency strategic reserves are delineated. A comprehensive mapping of the actual impact of cryptocurrencies across several strategic domains is carried out, synthesising insights from previously siloed technical, legal, and international relations literatures into an integrative national-security analytical lens. Specific recommendations are provided for policymakers and planners to navigate this fast-evolving threat landscape. ⢠Synthesizes siloed literature to elucidate how Cryptocurrencies impact national security. ⢠Cryptocurrencies are reshaping threat landscapes and emerging as a domain for great power competition. ⢠Stablecoins strain monetary policy in fragile economies, while Privacy coins hinder AML/KYC enforcement and counter-terror efforts. ⢠Sovereign actors are already using cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions, fund weapon programmes and covert operations. ⢠CBDCs seek to harness the benefits of cryptocurrencies while re-asserting sovereignty, reflecting divergent geopolitical strategies.
The development of blockchain technology has led to the emergence of a novel form of collaborative organization, known as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which rely on internet-based communication and cryptographic mechanisms. The economic significance of DAOs has prompted legislators to consider appropriate legal frameworks. This article analyzes the legal status of DAOs in the European Union and the Republic of Armenia. While the EU adopted the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), it refrained from recognizing DAOs as distinct legal entities, despite preliminary considerations during the legislative process. Similarly, Armenia, through the Law on Crypto-Assets (HO-159-N), inspired by MiCA, does not explicitly address DAOs. Consequently, both jurisdictions exhibit a regulatory gap. The article demonstrates that, even in the absence of dedicated legislation, interpretative cues within these legal instruments can provide guidance on how DAOs may be treated under EU and Armenian law. By examining these frameworks, the study contributes to understanding the potential legal recognition and regulation of DAOs in different legal systems.
The anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions poses substantial obstacles to protecting consumer rights, particularly by hindering tracking and dispute resolution, thereby making it challenging to safeguard consumers. This article examines India's legal framework for protecting consumers engaging in cryptocurrency transactions. It highlights the multifaceted challenges consumers face, including fraud, hacking, phishing, and market manipulation, primarily due to the anonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions and the inherent lack of robust regulation. Comparing India's approach with that of the US, EU, and Japan, it identifies noticeable gaps in current regulations and subsequently proposes specific, actionable recommendations for improvement. The article emphasises the imperative need for consumer education and awareness, as well as for international cooperation among policymakers, industry stakeholders, and regulators to create a safer, more secure cryptocurrency environment. By analyzing consumer protection laws in depth and proposing amendments, it aims to balance transaction security effectively with investor protection, ultimately promoting a more reliable cryptocurrency ecosystem in India while also suggesting practical implementation strategies for regulators and fostering transparency in decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms to enhance overall market integrity. It further outlines specific policy frameworks that can be adopted to mitigate risks associated with anonymity, alongside actionable steps for enhancing dispute-resolution mechanisms and ensuring continual compliance with evolving global standards in digital asset regulation. KEYWORDS:- cryptocurrency transactions, consumer rights, legal framework, consumer education, transaction security
Paul van Vulpen, Sub Software Production, Slinger Jansen, Sjaak Brinkkemper
The rise of Big Tech has created unprecedented concentrations of power. The scaling potential of the modern IT industry is leading to widespread monopolies. For technologies that serve society, a monopoly brings structural dependence, and gives their owners an almost unchallengeable power. To counteract this societal dependence, academia, industry, and society at large proposed various countermeasures to limit the power of technology providers. In this thesis, Paul van Vulpen compares these approaches. The goal is to maintain the benefits of technology while reducing societal dependence on a few powerful actors. This book investigates three approaches. First, software ecosystems outline the collaboration between various interrelated software actors. Second, blockchain and decentralized autonomous organizations offer radical approaches to rethink and decentralize IT governance structures. Finally, digital platform regulations address urgent societal issues that arise from concentrated platform power. The final section concludes that a delicate and organic approach is needed to IT governance. Excessive centralization creates structural risks, but full decentralization is neither practical nor beneficial. The thesis proposes a middle road: Federated Technology Governance (FTG). In FTG, central authority defines architecture, interoperability standards, and maintains the long-term vision. A wide variety of actors handle user interaction, implementation, and collaboration. This framework helps technology providers to create software ecosystems and safeguard the provision of societal benefit for public digital infrastructure. FTG supports the creation of sovereign cloud services, secure operating systems, and public large language models. Could it also be a road to enable technology to serve society and the common good?
For the past three decades, the architecture of the internet has rested on two primary pillars - communication on the World Wide Web and Value such as Bitcoin/Distributed ledgers. However, a third critical pillar, Private Coordination has remained dependent on centralised intermediaries, effectively creating a surveillance architecture by default. This paper introduces the 'Stateless Pattern', a novel network topology that replaces the traditional 'Fortress' security model (database-centric) with a 'Mist' model (ephemeral relays). By utilising client-side cryptography and self-destructing server instances, we demonstrate a protocol where the server acts as a blind medium rather than a custodian of state. We present empirical data from a live deployment (https://signingroom.io), analysing over 1,900 requests and cache-hit ratios to validate the system's 'Zero-Knowledge' properties and institutional utility. The findings suggest that digital privacy can be commoditised as a utility, technically enforcing specific articles of the universal declaration of human rights not through policy, but through physics.
This work presents a conceptual framework for analyzing contemporary AI governance as a hybrid system of coercive exclusion and cognitive modulation. Introducing the concept of the âVenetian OS,â the paper traces the historical and structural logic of centralized digital power through protocol privatization, automated exclusion, and tri-domain integration of finance, information, and mobility. Focusing on advertising-based AI models, the analysis examines how attention extraction and brand safety constraints function as mechanisms of cognitive governance, commodifying cognition while constraining epistemic exploration. The paper argues that institutional reform within existing digital architectures is structurally insufficient. As an alternative, the work outlines exit strategies based on the reconstitution of intellectual, energy, and economic sovereignty through distributed infrastructures, situating the emergence of decentralized sovereignty as an ongoing historical transition rather than a speculative future.
Multi-agent systems face a fundamental coordination problem: agents must coordinate despite heterogeneous preferences, asymmetric stakes, and imperfect information. When coordination fails, friction emergesâmeasurable resistance manifesting as deadlock, thrashing, communication overhead, or outright conflict. This paper derives a formal framework for analyzing coordination friction from a single axiom: actions affecting agents require authorization from those agents in proportion to stakes. From this axiom of consent, we establish the kernel triple (alpha, sigma, epsilon)âalignment, stake, and entropyâas candidate sufficient statistics for any resource-allocation configuration. We propose a friction functional whose comparative statics encode three structural predictions: friction increases in stakes, increases in entropy, and decreases in alignment. The Replicator-Optimization Mechanism governs evolutionary selection over coordination strategies: configurations generating less friction persist longer, establishing consent-respecting arrangements as dynamical attractors rather than normative ideals. We develop formal definitions for resource consent, coordination legitimacy, and friction-aware allocation, plus machine-checked Lean 4 proofs of the core comparative-statics. Illustrative applications to cryptocurrency governance and political legitimacy show the same architecture spanning domains. v3.0.0 (2026-07-11): Matches arXiv v3 (94pp). The MARL empirical appendix has been split out into a standalone companion paper; total-variation legitimacy remark added (proved), reconciling the level-form dynamics with the total-variation measurement form; Îą-domain fixes; hedging pass throughout.
Xinyu Hou, Yang Lu, Rabimba Karanjai, Lei Xu ¡ 5 authors
Ransomware is still one of the most serious cybersecurity threats. Victims often pay but fail to regain access to their data, while also facing the danger of losing data privacy. These uncertainties heavily shape the attacker-victim dynamics in decision-making. In this paper, we introduce and analyze zkRansomware. This new ransomware model integrates zero-knowledge proofs to enable verifiable data recovery and uses smart contracts to enforce multi-round payments while mitigating the risk of data disclosure and privacy loss. We show that zkRansomware is technically feasible using existing cryptographic and blockchain tools and, perhaps counterintuitively, can align incentives between the attacker and the victim. Finally, we develop a theoretical decision-making framework for zkRansomware that distinguishes it from known ransomware decision models and discusses its implications for ransomware risk analysis and response decision support.
This paper examines the potential transformation of Venezuela into a significant IT offshore hub in the context of anticipated political regime change. Using a multi-dimensional analytical framework that integrates labor economics, financial technology adoption, enterprise software markets, and critical infrastructure security, we investigate how Venezuela's prolonged isolation has paradoxically produced unique conditions for technology sector growth. We identify four critical impact vectors shaping this potential transition: Remote labor arbitrage normalization â Venezuela's highly educated yet underemployed workforce, coupled with global remote work trends, creates a compelling labor cost advantage in international IT services markets. Cryptocurrency-native population as a fintech catalyst â Years of hyperinflation and sanctions have driven widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as alternative financial infrastructure, positioning Venezuelans to lead in fintech innovation and digital payments integration. Technology infrastructure deficit as a SaaS expansion opportunity â Although national telecommunications and digital infrastructure lag regional peers, planned post-transition investment in fiber optics, 5G, and connectivity could accelerate Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) consumption and development. Cybersecurity challenges in legacy system modernization â Legacy systems and weak institutional cybersecurity create both risks and service demand, underscoring the need for secure IT modernization strategies in public and private sectors alike. We argue that Venezuela's forced technological experimentation during economic collapse â including informal digital payment systems and decentralized finance adoption â has unintentionally cultivated technological resilience and local digital proficiency unprecedented in Latin America. By situating Venezuela's tech transition within broader geopolitical disruption and global technology labor markets, this research contributes new frameworks for analyzing emerging offshore IT markets in post-crisis economies and highlights actionable pathways for stakeholders targeting digital services growth in transitional states.
The rise of crypto assets has in sharply disrupted traditional legal principles, such as the conflictof-laws doctrine of lex situs which states that property is to be adjudicated in the place where it is located. This tangle of jurisdictional difficulties in Nigeria, the world largest crypto market, requires significant jurisdiction. Crypto assets are digital entry on distributed ledgers not recurrent in geography; they are decentralized digital entries on the distributed ledgers, without the fixed geographical place name commonly favored in traditional territorial interpretation. Plus, there is an issue of regulatory conflict in Nigeria as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) bans banks from purchasing crypto assets while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) purports to regulate digital assets as securities. This internal conflict makes it difficult for Nigerian courts to determine the legal system and jurisdiction for settling cross-border crypto disputes. In this paper, while the lex situs principle is not conceptually sound, it is a necessary concept for implementation in the digital age, where it needs a profound rewrite, starting with the lex fori imperative. If Nigerian courts want to determine what a situation is, they first have to recognize crypto assets as legal property in order to determine a situs. This paper establishes a three-tiered Nigerian doctrine of digital lex situs, which stems from comparative jurisprudence drawn from the United Kingdom, Singapore and South Africa which favours control-based testing over physical location. Thus, crypto asset is an intangible property, assuming existing legislation such as the Evidence Act 2011 and SEC Rule 2022. Activating a control principle that anchors the situs in the place where the owner gains effective control, whether domicile of the private keyholder or exchange location. The practical approach matches with the common law tradition in Nigeria. The implementation will be to bolster the CBN-SEC contradiction by jointly codifying the code, to establish precise courts of justice to trace and freeze on-chain assets, and, at the regional level, to use regional agreements such as the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade to implement transnational integration. The recommended approach is a hybrid approach that is legislative clarify, control-based jurisdictional anchoring, and institutional coherence. By solving its internal regulatory conflict and strengthening its judicial capacities, Nigeria can turn its current uncertainty into a leadership opportunity, making it the legal certainty that will enable it to fully participate in the global digital economy.
The enforcement of extraterritorial financial sanctions has historically relied on the structural centralization of correspondent banking networks, primarily utilizing U.S. dollar clearing mechanisms as a territorial nexus for prescriptive jurisdiction. This paper examines how the advent of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (wCBDCs) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) structurally dismantles this transit-layer vulnerability. By facilitating atomic, peer-to-peer settlement in tokenized sovereign assets, DLT-based platforms eliminate the intermediary clearing layer, thereby extinguishing the objective territoriality required for traditional primary sanctions enforcement under statutes such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Recognizing this technological bypass, the paper argues that sanctioning authorities are executing a strategic regulatory pivot from automated transit chokepoints toward localized endpoint coercion. This shift relies on secondary sanctions deployed against domestic interfaces, leveraging an institution's macroeconomic reliance on the broader U.S. dollar ecosystem. Furthermore, the paper contextualizes this transition within the collapse of multilateral dispute resolution at the World Trade Organization, positing that institutional paralysis has accelerated a technological flight to sovereign ledgers. Ultimately, the transition to decentralized digital currency blocs redefines international economic law, transforming extraterritorial coercion into a localized conflict of defensive statutes and symmetric economic statecraft.
This paper introduces the concept of protocol geoeconomics â an analytical framework in which the infrastructure of digital governance is treated as an autonomous instrument for the distribution of power amid the systemic crisis of the multilateral order. The central argument holds that as the traditional mechanisms of global governance lose their function as neutral arbiters, control over the rules of verification, enforcement, and sanctioning of international commitments becomes a key resource of geopolitical agency. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in this perspective is not a replacement for diplomatic institutions but the next logical form of infrastructural power â the appropriation of political influence through the ownership of coordination protocols. The paper introduces two operational categories: the sovereign node (a national point of participation in a distributed ledger that cannot be unilaterally disconnected) and protocol Westphalianism (a digital-age analogue of the Westphalian system in which a state's sovereignty is defined by its capacity to maintain a verifying node in critical international coordination systems). A formal model of algorithmic stability is developed through a slashing function and quadratic weighting of influence, providing structural protection against unipolar capture of the system. The dynamic National Influence Index (NI) operationalises representation as a function of verifiable contribution rather than historical privilege. Three contributions emerge. First, infrastructural power is established as a self-standing analytical category describing power exercised through rules of computation rather than through resources or territory. Second, the sovereign node operationalises the concept of digital sovereignty, hitherto largely declarative in the literature. Third, protocol Westphalianism provides a structural exit from the false dichotomy between national sovereignty and global governance. The framework is positioned as the digital extension of Infrastructure Projection of Geopolitics (IPG, WP-IPG-2026-01), with strategic implications for Russia, BRICS+, and the Global South in the construction of Multipolar World Order 2.0.
Compliance verification in regulated markets requires that verifiers obtain confidence in an entity's regulatory status before making downstream decisions. The conventional resolution of this requirement is full disclosure of underlying evidence to each verifier on each verification occasion, with substantial cost to the entity's informational privacy and substantial duplication of sensitive-data storage across verifier organisations. Modern cryptography offers, in principle, the tools to better balance verifier information needs against entity privacy: zero-knowledge proof systems, selective-disclosure credentials, vector commitments, and privacy-preserving aggregation primitives are now mature enough for serious regulatory consideration. Yet the legal and regulatory frameworks under which these tools would be deployed have not caught up with their technical readiness. We develop the legal and policy case for adoption of a cryptographic framework for selective disclosure in regulated markets. We analyse the framework's interaction with data-protection law (UK GDPR, EU GDPR, US state-level privacy regimes), financial-services regulation (FATF Recommendations, FCA rules, BSA/AML obligations), employment law (right-to-work, employment background screening), and identity system regulation (eIDAS 2.0, US REAL ID, digital identity wallets). We identify the principal legal uncertainties that constrain adoption and propose specific reforms to resolve them: data-protection safe harbours for cryptographic verification protocols; reconceiving regulatory data-retention requirements in terms of cryptographic attestations rather than underlying evidence; standardising regulator-grade revocation mechanisms; clarifying the legal status of zero-knowledge proofs as admissible evidence in supervisory and enforcement actions. We make four policy recommendations: (i) data-protection regulators (ICO, EDPB, equivalent) should issue guidance affirming that cryptographic selective-disclosure protocols meeting specified properties are compliant with data-protection law; (ii) financial-services regulators should issue guidance clarifying that cryptographic attestations satisfying specified properties can substitute for evidence retention obligations under AML/KYC rules; (iii) standard-setters should coordinate cross-jurisdictional protocol standards through W3C, IETF, and ISO/TC 307 with regulator participation; (iv) legislators in jurisdictions with active digital-identity programmes (UK, EU, US, Singapore) should ensure that statutory frameworks accommodate selective-disclosure verification. The paper contributes to the law-and-economics literature on data sharing under privacy constraints, to the policy economics of RegTech, and to the legal-academic literature on emerging-technology regulation. It complements the technical and economic threads of work developed in companion papers in this series.
Quantum computing is forcing law, technology, and public policy to confront a new category of dual-use knowledge: cryptanalytic research that may advance science while accelerating the capacity to compromise public cryptographic infrastructure. For decades, the risk that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) remained a largely theoretical concern. That era of theoretical comfort is ending; quantum computing is moving from theoretical risk toward practical consequence. Specifically, recent work in quantum algorithms, resource estimation, quantum error correction (QEC), and architecture-specific implementation suggests that cryptographically relevant quantum computers may be closer, and may require fewer resources, than earlier assumptions suggested. In April 2026, Google Quantum AI and collaborators released a white paper estimating resources for quantum attacks on elliptic curve cryptography used, for example, in cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, while using a zero-knowledge-proof mechanism to support verification of the reported computation without disclosing attack-enabling implementation details. The Article proposes a hybrid governance model: preserve a strong presumption of publication; adopt voluntary quantum cryptanalysis disclosure norms; recognize zero-knowledge-proof-backed verifiable nondisclosure as a legitimate scholarly publication mechanism; establish an advisory Quantum Cryptanalysis Review Board (QCRB); clarify export-control treatment of quantum cryptanalysis; require quantum-risk impact statements for federally funded research; and tie disclosure norms to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration readiness. These proposals should not be understood as advocating broad, restrictive regulation of quantum-computing technologies, which would be premature and could harm innovation. The objective should not be secrecy for its own sake, nor government control of quantum research. Rather, law and policy should encourage voluntary action, scientific self-governance, and cooperation across the quantum-computing ecosystem while reducing unnecessary public alarm, avoiding premature weaponization, and accelerating migration to quantum-resistant solutions and systems.
This research paper reconstructs the historical, technical, and sociopolitical foundations of Bitcoin by examining the contributions of Adam Back, Hal Finney, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the cypherpunk movement that shaped early digital cash concepts. Drawing on primary sources, cryptographic literature, archived mailing-list communications, and interdisciplinary historical analogies, the study situates the development of Hashcash (1997) and Finneyâs reusable proof-of-work (2004) within the broader evolution of cryptographic trust mechanisms, tracing their lineage back to ancient systems of authentication, secrecy, and economic signaling. By analyzing Adam Backâs academic formationâincluding A-levels in mathematics, physics, economics, and his 1995 PhD in distributed systems at the University of Exeterâalongside his work on applied cryptography, credlib e-cash libraries, and non-interactive forward secrecy, the paper demonstrates how these innovations directly influenced Bitcoinâs proof-of-work architecture. The study incorporates Hal Finneyâs role as the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction, his involvement in early cryptographic networks, and forensic insights such as the Patoshi Pattern , while contextualizing Satoshi Nakamotoâs 2011 disappearance and the subsequent transition of leadership to Gavin Andresen. Drawing historical parallelsâfrom Mesopotamian accounting tokens to Roman ciphers and Renaissance secrecy practicesâthe research highlights recurring civilizational patterns in which cryptographic systems emerge during periods of institutional fragility and technological transformation. It concludes that Bitcoin represents the culmination of decades of scientific innovation and centuries of human experimentation with trust, illustrating how principles of costly signaling, privacy, and decentralized authority persist in modern digital monetary systems.
In 2022, an image of a âbored apeâ accessible through a non-fungible token (NFT) was stolen from actor Seth Green. The thief then sold the bored ape to a good faith purchaser. Had this been a physical painting, the outcome would have been clear: a thief cannot convey title they do not have, and the purchaser would acquire nothing. Yet the ensuing debate proceeded as though the NFT's technical features had altered this settled principle, as though blockchain records could bestow property rights on the new purchaser. They cannot. Ownership rights in digital assets stem from law, not from the software systems that create and maintain them. When Lawrence Lessig famously proclaimed âcode is law,â he meant that code functions as behavioral regulation by imposing technical limitations on users, not that it generates enforceable rights. His insight was descriptive: code shapes what people can do within digital environments, just as physical architecture channels movement through physical space. Yet the advent of blockchain networks, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts has morphed this observation into the flawed conviction that what code makes possible, the law must recognize as legally enforceable. While legal scholarship has noted this misconception, it has yet to offer a rigorous framework to resolve it. This Article fills this gap by applying H.L.A. Hartâs legal theory to demonstrate that code acquires legal force only to the extent that positive law grants such power. This investiture occurs through two pathways: public empowerment through legislation, and private empowerment through contracts, trusts, and other ordering instruments. Absent such formal investiture, code remains "soft law," a structural constraint lacking normative force. The relevance of our analysis extends beyond the conceptual malaise affecting the blockchain ecosystem, addressing a foundational conflict poised to reappear with every wave of new technology, from large language models to autonomous robots.
The Court of Justice of the European Union's landmark ruling in Skatteverket v. David Hedqvist (Case C-264/14) established that Bitcoin-to-fiat exchanges constitute VAT-exempt services under Article 135(1)(e) of the VAT Directive, on the basis that Bitcoin serves as a contractual means of payment analogous to legal tender. However, the rapid proliferation of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)-which are increasingly characterized as electronically supplied services (ESS) rather than currency-has fragmented the uniform fiscal landscape envisioned by the ruling. This paper examines a critical, underexplored nexus: whether divergent VAT/GST treatments of NFTs across EU Member States create incentives for regulatory arbitrage that systematically increases the cyber-risk profile of decentralized exchanges (DEXs). As recent incidents involving Aerodrome Finance, CoW Swap, and dYdX demonstrate, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector remains acutely vulnerable to Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking attacks that exploit the Web2 front-end infrastructure upon which DEXs rely. The paper argues that when tax uncertainty drives platforms toward jurisdictional optimization-often involving complex routing, cross-border operations, and reliance on lessregulated infrastructure-they inadvertently expand their attack surface for adversarial DNS tunneling. Employing a socio-technical analysis that bridges fiscal harmonization and network security, this study proposes a harmonized VAT framework for NFTs to reduce the compliance-security paradox that currently incentivizes risk-increasing operational behaviors. It further recommends the integration of decentralized naming systems, such as the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), as a countermeasure to DNS-based exploitation. The findings contribute to both tax policy discourse and cybersecurity scholarship by demonstrating that fiscal harmonization is not merely an economic concern but a foundational component of DeFi infrastructure resilience.
This Volume completes the constitutional theory of cryptographic protocols developed in the pre- ceding two Volumes by turning, after architecture (Volume I) and epistemology (Volume II), to historiography and prospect. It identifies three eras of network cooperation, each governed by a distinct value-scaling law and supporting a distinct constitutional form. The Sarnoff era ( đ â đ ) was the era of broadcast cooperation, in which a sovereign center distributed information and au- thority to a passive periphery; its constitutional achievement was the territorial nation-state and its administrative apparatus. The Metcalfe era ( đ â đ 2 ) was the era of bilateral cooperation, in which peer-to-peer connection generated value at quadratic scale; its institutional realization was platform capitalism, in which intermediaries captured the surplus that user-to-user connection produced. The Reed era ( đ â 2 đ ), now beginning, is the era of group-forming cooperation: com- binatorial subgroup formation generates value at exponential scale and, for the first time in the history of communications networks, is not structurally captured by any intermediary. The cryp- tographic substrate is the first medium that supports Reed-scale value formation without platform extraction. The Volume develops three substantive theses. First, the three eras are a historical sequence in which each succeeding form does not annihilate the prior form but reorganizes the space of possi- bilities around itself; the Reed era does not abolish Sarnoff and Metcalfe institutions but subsumes them as particular cases of a richer combinatorial topology. Second, the constitutional architecture of the Reed era is three-tiered: a substrate-agnostic cryptographic foundation; tenant-entities (com- panies, decentralized autonomous organizations, voluntary associations) operating on the substrate without owning it; and individuals as final nodes ( elos finais ) participating in many subgroups si- multaneously across many substrates. Third, the local description of the individual and the global description of the civitas stand in the Bohrian conjugate relation identified in Volume II, but at Reed scale the conjugacy becomes constitutionally structural rather than merely epistemic: the individual cannot be specified independently of the civitas in which his subgroup memberships are constituted, and the civitas cannot be specified independently of the individuals whose memberships constitute it. The reconstruction of civil society on the cryptographic substrate is unfolding now and will continue through the present century. We are at the beginning of an era whose institutional forms cannot be enumerated in advance. The proper response, reaďŹirmed from Volume II, is Knightian humility paired with the architectural strategy of robust commitment. This Volume specifies the historical and structural conditions under which that humility and that strategy operate.
Decentralized and autonomous systems associated with Web 3.0 challenge long-standing assumptions about security governance, responsibility, and control. Although advances in cryptography, consensus mechanisms, and automation have strengthened technical protections, they have also fragmented accountability across software agents, organizations, and ecosystems, producing security failures in environments where responsibility for prevention, response, and remediation is unclear or contested. This paper demonstrates that many such failures stem not from inadequate technical safeguards but from governance gaps created by sociotechnical complexity. Drawing on sociotechnical systems theory, it introduces the LAG (Layers-Accountability-Governance) framework, which distinguishes among information technology security, information security, and enterprise-level governance, and clarifies the misalignment between ex ante preventive mechanisms and ex post response and recovery processes. Through analysis of decentralized architectures, autonomous agents, and machine identities, and case studies of the DAO, Poly Network, and oracle-related failures, the paper shows how technically correct system behavior can nonetheless produce governance failure and discusses implications for the design and governance of secure systems in complex digital ecosystems where traditional organizational boundaries no longer apply.
Abstract This chapter reviews and contributes to the debate concerning the fiduciary duties of network participants of blockchain systems, with a focus on software developers and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) members. After briefly introducing the concept of fiduciary duties in the UK and the US, the chapter surveys the early academic debates on the fiduciary status of core developers. It then turns to an analysis of the main case law in England and California relating to fiduciary duties in this space, before arguing that the imposition of implicit fiduciary duties could lead to unjust outcomes, deter participation in blockchain systems, and stifle innovation. Instead, the remainder of the chapter contends that pursuing co-regulatory efforts which are grounded in the principle of regulatory equivalence, such as the adoption of the COALA DAO Model Law, will secure the public policy objectives of imposing fiduciary duties, without sacrificing the distinctive features of blockchain networks.
Early cryptocurrency discourse centered on digital scarcity as the primary source of value in non-sovereign monetary systems. While scarcity was foundational to the emergence of cryptoassets, the rapid diversification of distributed ledger architectures has increasingly decoupled scarcity from long-term value attribution. This paper argues that cryptoassets may be entering a post-scarcity phase in which value formation is driven less by fixed supply and more by settlement capacity, infrastructural interoperability, and the efficient clearing of obligations. Drawing on historical financial practices, internet protocol development, and contemporary ledger architectures, the paper proposes a structural distinction between asset-centric and protocol-centric systems. It suggests that mature crypto valuation may increasingly reflect the role of ledgers as settlement infrastructure rather than as bearer assets. The analysis is descriptive rather than prescriptive and does not privilege any specific network or token.
The Internet has evolved from its early promise of global connection and freedom into a centralized system dominated by Big Tech and governments, resulting in widespread data exploitation, surveillance, censorship, and erosion of user privacy and ownership. This paper traces the historical development of Web2 infrastructure, its foundational flawsâparticularly the linkage of digital identities to real-world persons and the unchecked power of intermediariesâand the societal pressures that have exposed these vulnerabilities through events such as the Great Firewall of China, the Snowden revelations, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and large-scale hacks. In response, the paper positions Web3 , underpinned by blockchain technology, as a necessary paradigm shift toward a decentralized, user-centric Internet. Web3 severs the tie between digital and physical identities, enables true data ownership, peer-to-peer encryption, global accessibility without geo-restrictions, and algorithmic governance that reduces reliance on potentially abusive middlemen. It argues that Web3 can encode core democratic values, including freedom of expression as articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while addressing resistance from governments (concerned with control and taxation), Big Tech (threatened by loss of data monopolies), and everyday users (wary of complexity and perceived risks). The paper examines ethical considerations, potential misuse by bad actors, and the dual nature of technological innovation. It proposes four critical criteria for evaluating successful Web3 implementations: 1) affordability and equitable access with long-term cost reduction; 2) robust protection of individuals through privacy and bias mitigation, coupled with "freedom of speech, not reach"; 3) absence of any central governing body with control over development; and 4) a community-representative judicial system for handling violations of shared terms of service. Ultimately, this work contends that Web3 represents an inevitable evolution capable of empowering billions of usersâparticularly those in repressive regimesâby fostering transparency, equity, and self-governance, provided implementations adhere to these ethical and practical standards. It calls for cautious optimism, due diligence, and open-source verification in the transition to a more liberated and democratic digital era.