Can Blockchains Go Rogue?

From miner rewards, to transaction fee-setting mechanisms, to token curated registries, to prediction markets, incentives are everywhere in blockchain platforms.

In traditional firms, the incentives between users, employees, and owners are often not clearly aligned. When a token on a global blockchain is the business model, incentives are no longer muddled by legal entities, jurisdictions, and business models that conflict with the best interest of the users.

Blockchains are an alternative system for promise enforcement, fundamentally different from any system human history has seen before. Promises in blockchain systems are enforced by miners, who — in reasonably competitive mining markets — have limited ability, and weak incentives, to do anything other than execute others' promises roughly according ... See more