Blockchain Papers

Kelsie Nabben, Ellie Rennie

This paper examines the role of hardware security as the basis for order in the decentralised metaverse. It does this by considering the infrastructural tools and governance practices at the heart of KONG Land, an example of a blockchain-based decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) and decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project. KONG Land manufactures open-source microchips to create verifiable hardware that anyone can use or integrate into their own application. KONG Land’s focus on the materiality of infrastructure led them to pursue a governance model as a digital-physical, politically decentralised polity. By foregrounding the physicality and affordances of decentralised efforts to manufacture microchips, this paper shows how rematerialising digital domains leads back to questions of statehood and its purpose and provides an explanation for emerging sovereignties. Building on Olson’s (1993. Dictatorship, democracy, and development. American Political Science Review , 87 (3), 567–576) theory of the stationary bandit, the paper positions projects like KONG Land as an attempt to create a ‘better bandit’ – one that sets out to provide its citizens with a superior level of security than that offered by either nation states or the corporate metaverse, with the intention of creating the conditions for Web3 production and expansion.

Derrick Darby

A central idea in John Rawls's theory of justice as fairness is that basic political liberties should be afforded fair value in a just liberal democratic society.1 In this article, I argue that an important guideline for guaranteeing the fair value of voting rights, that is, the usefulness to citizens of their right to vote, is to make it easier not harder to exercise this basic political liberty.2 This entails that just societies with a constitutional commitment to equal protection, and the value of equality more broadly, have a duty to secure unencumbered access to the ballot absent narrowly tailored compelling state interests for restricting it (hereafter Unencumbered Access). Where there are such interests—and this is important—the burden imposed on voting must accord with the basic priority of voting rights. This argument shifts the burden of justification from liberals to present sufficient evidence of voter suppression to conservatives, who are currently pushing restrictive voter ID and other laws, to produce compelling evidence supporting their reasons for doing so (chief of which is fraud prevention and deterrence). They must also demonstrate that these laws are carefully crafted to remedy the alleged problem. Because these conditions have not been met these laws are unjustified.3 John Rawls affirms the importance of political liberties as a normative ideal in the abstract by including them on the list of equal basic liberties along with the liberties of thought, conscience, association, and those associated with the rule of law in his liberal egalitarian conception of justice as fairness. However, less abstractly, the principle of equal political liberty is also identified with the principle of equal participation within the constitutionally defined political process of a just democratic society. Rawls has been criticized for not being entirely clear about why political liberties are included on this list,4 and for failing to offer a detailed argument for their special status and a proposal for how it can be captured institutionally.5 Yet there is no question that the liberty to political participation on equal terms is meant to carry the abstract normative commitment to equality modeled in the original position—where parties are selecting common principles from a position of equality—to the constitutional stage where they collectively participate in “the highest-order system of social rules for making rules” by participating in the vital political process of lawmaking.6 Taking the constitution to be foundational, as the highest-order system of rules regulating and controlling all other institutions of society's basic structure, Rawls concludes that satisfying the principle of equal participation in practice affords all persons with access to the political process “common status of equal citizens.”7 Having affirmed the importance of equality within an institutional context, Rawls further contends that a just constitutional democracy should endeavor to “enhance the value of the equal rights of participation for all members of society.”8 Such participation can take different forms: serving as an elected representative of the people, making financial contributions to political campaigns, participating in public debate about the issues and the candidates for office, and casting a vote for government representatives and for ballot measures. These are all ways of determining the results of the constitutionally proscribed means of making the laws that bind us and shape our lives from cradle to grave. The appeal to equal participation to ground a normative defense of voting rights trades, in part, on the intrinsic or noninstrumental value of equal political liberties, which are, in many ways, a good for citizens. As Rawls puts it: “These freedoms strengthen men's sense of their own worth, enlarge their intellectual and moral sensibilities, and lay the basis for a sense of duty and obligation upon which the stability of just institutions depends.”9 But in addition to this, Rawls offers an instrumental justification of equal political liberties that is also germane.10 It proceeds as follows. Other basic liberties, for example, speech, association, and thought (which some may take to be more fundamental), are protected by the principle of equal participation, and lose their value when citizens do not have meaningful opportunity to determine outcomes of the political process in an appropriate fashion.11 The haves, that is, citizens with more income, wealth, and other resources, can leverage these resource inequalities to be better informed about issues, to more accurately assess policy proposals and how they bear on their interests, and to more effectively add ones to the political agenda that advance these interests and their conception of public welfare. All of this will result in the resource-rich having disproportionate influence over lawmaking and settling social issues.12 It is patently unfair for the equal basic liberty to political participation to be of greater usefulness to the resource-rich than to the resource-challenged. While resource disparities in income and wealth may be justified and tolerated on grounds that they maximize the primary goods enjoyed by the least advantaged, if indeed they do, we reject the prospect that such disparities should affect the usefulness of citizens' political liberties, which explains why Rawls rightly insist upon securing their fair value. This normative imperative requires that their worth be sufficiently equal to allow all citizens a fair opportunity to influence outcomes of the political process. Specifying how exactly a just constitutional democracy might enhance the fair value of political participation is, as Rawls admits, a complex matter that goes beyond the scope of philosophy. And this is true whether we are focused on free speech or on voting which are distinct ways of influencing political outcomes. Settling upon the necessary arrangements and regulations requires, among other things, the requisite historical experience and knowledge. But philosophy is not altogether useless for this pursuit. It can offer, endorse, and defend possibilities that seem compatible with the normative principle of equal participation.13 Rawls, as we know, was particularly interested in the adverse effects of private money and wealth disparities on equal political participation in a private-property democracy.14 So, he proposed as a guideline for guaranteeing the fair value of political liberties, and as compensating steps to offset resource disparities that make them less useful to the resource-challenged, that political parties in a constitutional democracy operate as independently as possible of large concentrations of private economic interests. He also called for adequate government funding of public elections to prevent candidates from having to rely on private money and thereby risk being beholden to their private benefactors when making laws.15 Failure to take such steps will, Rawls argues, not only diminish the worth of political liberty for the have nots thus depriving them of fair opportunity for political influence; moreover, it will risk alienating them and facilitating their complete withdrawal from the political process due to apathy and resentment. And though he does not make this point, it can be added that a withdrawal of the resource-challenged from the political process would also diminish the character of American democracy. To be sure, this proposal seems quite impractical now in view of how expensive running for office has become. Still, these are plausible suggestions for the kind of reforms needed to bring the United States more in line with the principle of equal participation given a certain form that it might take.16 What about the right to vote? This is arguably the most recognizable and coveted form of democratic participation. What concrete guideline might ensure its fair value to citizens?17 Separating big money from politics and campaign finance reform do not directly speak to what might be done to enhance the usefulness of equal participation made possible by the exercise of this basic political liberty. One general prescription for realizing the fair value of the political liberty to vote, namely, Unencumbered Access, is to ensure that social arrangements and legal regulations governing voting should as much as possible and subject to certain constraints aim for maximal citizen participation in determining political process outcomes. Hence, a constitutional democracy committed to the principle of equal participation and to ensuring its worth to citizens should make access to the ballot easier not harder in the absence of compelling reasons for doing otherwise. For the United States, which is a paradigm exemplar of a constitutional democracy on paper, if not always in practice,18 Unencumbered Access imposes a prima facie duty upon the government to take meaningful steps to ensure that all citizens irrespective of their allotment of income and wealth and other basic goods, for example, education, are able to participate on equal terms in the democratic project of voting. This normative principle of participation imposes on society a duty to make sure that the political liberty to vote is thus substantively and not merely formally guaranteed.19 Of course, this principle does not require that citizens vote, nor does it entitle them to equal results at the ballot box. They may vote and their preferred candidate may not win. What is at stake, however, is the fair opportunity to have a shot at influencing political outcomes rather than having particular voting outcomes secured. Hence, fair equality of opportunity to determine the political outcomes at the ballot box necessitates that income, wealth, and education among other basic goods unevenly distributed across the population of citizens are neither obstacles nor facilitators to the meaningful exercise of the right to vote. In a well-ordered society where there is compliance with the principles of justice, we might be justified in restricting our philosophical attention only to the ways in which disparities in income and wealth might interact with the exercise of voting rights to generate injustice. But under less favorable conditions, of the sort that have endured throughout United States history, we must also attend to the ways in which other basic goods like education as well as features of persons such as their race and gender might also bear on their fair opportunity to participate on equal terms in affecting the political process.20 Calling for the separation of money from politics, as Rawls does, and proposing restrictions on corporate speech in public elections and for campaign finance reform presumes that political mischief will result in their absence. Likewise, calling for unencumbered access to the ballot, as I do here, presumes that political mischief is at work when access is made more difficult. This is not a matter of idle and uninformed philosophical speculation. We can consider the infamous history of black voting rights in America. Historically, as Rawls notes, “one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty.”21 This has unquestionably been a profound failure in America. The United States has not been well-ordered: race has long played a role, directly and indirectly, in determining participation in the political process through voting. Some states have historically made it excessively burdensome for black Americans to vote.22 For example, after the Civil War many more blacks than whites were illiterate and some southern states exploited this to negate the fair value of black voting rights. For example, in 1882, the South Carolina general assembly adopted an “eight-box” ballot law. Voters were required to put the correct ballot in each of eight boxes, one for each office up for election. The boxes were then continuously shuffled so that election officials could not assist illiterate voters. This indirect literacy test—which exploited racial disparities in education to diminish the worth of blacks' right to vote—was a precursor to more direct ones like requiring citizens to read or recite a section of the constitution before they could register to vote. Such tests were among the many cunning ways some states curtailed the fair value of black citizens to influence the political process and to influence democratic governance on equal terms with whites. Other methods included poll taxes, moral character standards, and property requirements.23 At the time, some critics complained that each method had the shortcoming of targeting poor and illiterate whites, and not just blacks. So, in response, states such as Oklahoma, Louisiana, Virginia, and Georgia addressed this complication with grandfather clauses that deemed citizens qualified to vote only if they, their father, or grandfather were eligible to vote before 1866.24 It is no surprise that during these times, and long after them, substantial racial disparities in political influence prevailed and that the basic political liberty to vote was of little or no worth to black citizens. They had a constitutionally recognized right to vote (thus their right was formally guaranteed) but their enjoyment of it was seriously constrained by social institutions and practices (thus it was not substantively guaranteed). From the post-Reconstruction period well into the 20th century, southern states—sometimes without but mostly with the support of the courts—found crafty ways to diminish the worth of the black vote in local, state, and federal Hence, it is that states have different with the and of to voting to black citizens of their liberty to vote along with a fair opportunity to influence the of the political process. The of our historical experience in the United States and our of where voting rights have not been their usefulness for philosophical about what it would take to the fair value of voting rights on the historical of and the intrinsic and instrumental importance of the right to vote, Unencumbered Access is an for maximal citizen participation in the political process is the of Unencumbered Access, there are important constitutional and that the right to vote. rights have a special status in constitutional law. that on them To this a law must a compelling state and must be narrowly or to advance this It should as no surprise that over the historical importance of liberty interests in the United States and so over which liberties rights. no of law this than the voting rights the most is in which the a affirmed a not to to an law requiring to present at the in the and called for a in which on the right to vote are state interests so that the the burden the the interests must and the the 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