Blockchain Papers

Kabiru Uba Ibrahim, Muhammad Samir Tahir, Dr. Auwal Salisu

No abstract is available for this record.

Mohammad Modabber Chaharborj

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Web3 ecosystems represent an emergent field of digital religion where decentralized infrastructures—spanning smart contracts, token economies, and symbolic interfaces—actively generate novel forms of ritual life. These rituals, deeply embedded in algorithmic processes and economic incentives, cultivate collective identities, symbolic hierarchies, and affective economies marked by hope and betrayal. To interpret these dynamics, this article proposes Distributed Rituals Analysis (DRA), a comprehensive framework synthesizing Lived Religion, Ritualization Theory, and Actor-Network Theory. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic engagement across diverse Web3 communities —including NFTs, DAOs, and staking protocols—I illustrate how decentralized practices become ritualized through temporal orchestration, symbolic differentiation, and distributed agency. Reflexive participation further reveals the researcher’s complex positionality as both observer and participant. DRA offers conceptual and methodological clarity for exploring emergent rituals in decentralized environments, illuminating how digital infrastructures reconfigure sacredness and collective meaning-making. This framework also lays the groundwork for future comparative inquiries into ritual forms across decentralized and hybrid spaces.

Ilana Khanin

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are not only blockchain-based digital assets; they are theatrical practices taking shape between social bodies. Understanding the theatricality of NFTs provides a way to account for the criticism directed at them. NFT critiques often purport to focus on underlying politico-economic ideologies but, in actuality, reveal deep-seated antitheatrical anxieties recontextualized for the digital realm.

Julia Ebner

The transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is likely to leverage the latest technological advances including AI, machine learning and blockchain technology.This might not only bring about a new interplay of the physical, virtual and augmented reality but could also fundamentally change the ways in which corporate entities, social communities and political move ments organise themselves.Decentralisation is a key property of the Metaverse.Policies, legal con tracts and financial transactions that were traditionally the domain of governments, courts and banks might be replaced with smart contracts and financial transactions in blockchain.Cryptocurrencies can be used as a new medium of exchange outside of established banking systems, while non-fungible token (NFT) might serve as unique digital identifiers to certify ownership and authenticity.Taken together, these new forms of self-governance could lead to the explosion of so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) in the Metaverse.Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) are digital entities that are collaboratively governed without central leadership and operate based on blockchain (Jentzsch, 2016).As such, DAOs allow internet users to establish their own organisational structures, which no longer require the involvement of a third party in financial transactions and rulemaking.DAOs allow online communities to simplify their transactions and use a community-based approach to establish rules (World Economic Forum, 2023).However, as this study will explore, they might also give rise to new threats emerging from decentralised extremist mobilisation, pose a risk to minority rights, challenge the rule of law, and disrupt institutions that are currently considered fundamental pillars of our democratic systems.

Angga Avila

With a number of churches racing towards the metaverse, this paper offers a preliminary response to the phenomenon of the meta-church from the context of Indonesian churches. Churches that adopt and participate in the metaverse ought to do so not simply to be another institution that holds worship or preaches there. Churches that enter the metaverse follow strategies that are driven by followers, likes, and viewers (Joas Adiprasetya) as digital equivalents for measuring attendance, building, and cash (Chloe Lynch) without a proper understanding of the nature of the metaverse and a lack of contextual awareness may unconsciously endorse and even underwrite a system that fosters injustice and inequality. To kindle such an awareness, in this article I wish to consider Belle, a 2021 Japanese animated movie that depicts a metaverse, which features Sponsors who capitalize on its resources and thereby abuse the metaverse by perpetuating deep inequities. The film illuminates the potential condition of a metaverse that promises unlimited possibility and purports to be impartial to everyone, insofar as it connects people and removes for many the barriers of time and distance. While I argue that Indonesian churches must learn from the prophetic character of Bitcoin, they must also stay vigilant against the inherent inequities brought to bear with the advent of the NFT (non-fungible token). Leveraging Joshua Nunzianto’s interpretation of an Augustinian economy of sacrifice, I re-evaluate the very concept of a metaversal economy based on notions of scarcity and proprietary ownership. Then, with reference to Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination and Jürgen Moltmann’s The Spirit of Hope, I construct an ecclesiology of prophetic communities that sing the melody of hope.

Usman W. Chohan

No abstract is available for this record.