Abstract
The humanitarian sector has emerged as a powerful mechanism of legitimation for blockchain technology. Platform developers in the aid sector have been eager to showcase the promise of decentralization and encrypted blockchain data as the inheritance of the world’s poor and developing nations. This article claims that humanitarian blockchain projects are inextricably linked to the politics of the crypto-economy, proprietary platforms, and a class of solutionists championing Silicon Valley’s cultural values. Blockchain humanitarianism has emerged through a private-public partnership (PPP) model in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector that embraces tech disruption and innovation. Ethically sound blockchain humanitarian projects are precluded by the inherent obscurantism of the technology, the inability to transpose blockchain’s governance logic in the social realm, and inextricable ties to the political economy of cryptocurrencies. Projects in the developing world have thus embodied a colonial logic of techno-experimentation for platform developers and imbricate the NGO sector into the PR logic of blockchain solutionism.
A critical political economy approach to new technologies is key to discerning suitable use cases from highly ideological projects. This perspective considers the emergence of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the aid sector. The ability of blockchain enthusiasts to experiment with governance and payment platforms in the developing world is a result of the ascendant private-public partnership (PPP) model in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, which has increasingly aligned itself with Silicon Valley’s cultural values. This overview of flagship blockchain projects finds end-user solutions and outcomes that principally serve a public-relations (PR) function for the broader crypto-economy and extend colonial legacies of experimentation in the developing world. This paper argues that blockchain humanitarianism is inseparable from crypto-colonialism as the developers, platforms, and rhetoric are interchangeable. A minimal requirement for an ethically sound blockchain humanitarian project would involve acknowledging the risk and ideological extremism of crypto, the importance of developing world sovereignty, and the legacies of colonialism through technological abstraction. The ethical failings of the PPP model in this case should be read alongside the scholarship of Madianou and Nothias and point to the need for developing world platform self-determination analogous to the Non-Aligned Movement’s call for a New World Information and Communication Order.
This paper examines the ability of blockchain developers to use the developing world for experimentation as a result of the public-private partnership model. There is evidence of a revolving door between the NGO sector and the start-up space. Blockchain humanitarian projects have thus been central to the PR hype around crypto and are an indispensable form of legitimation. A lack of proper ethical boundaries is evident in blockchain humanitarian projects that exist alongside some of the most dubious elements of the crypto-economy.