Martin Zeilinger

Emerging ownership models on the blockchain

special issue

[posted: 20 December 2020]
>>tags: blockchain, fintech, ownership, intellectual property, creative industries

A special issue for Frontiers in Blockchain, co-edited with Marcus O’Dair, available here (Open Access).

The aim of the special issue was to explore blockchain applications and platforms that facilitate new, alternative, co-operative ownership structures. Included are critical reflections, theoretical contributions, and case studies that consider the following questions:

  • What ideological, technological, social, or legal structures are needed to make alternative ownership models viable on the blockchain?
  • Where will alternative ownership models on the blockchain be situated in relation to the leftist and the libertarian discourse that has so far dominated the debate?
  • Will radically different ownership models be able to withstand co-option into existing commercial structures?
  • What are the roles of artistic experimentation and activist organisation in advancing (or correcting) efforts to instrumentalise the blockchain in the creative industries?
  • What, finally, is the conceptual and practical role of tokens in all of this?