Abstract
This commentary examines the challenges and trade-offs of using blockchain as a digital infrastructure to facilitate degrowth projects.
A blockchain is simply a distributed database. The technology is used for a wide range of applications related to economic trade and environmental sustainability. Many degrowth specialists totally reject technical solutions for politically induced environmental crises, considering blockchain projects as wasteful and against friendly social relations.
Others point to the potential of technology to facilitate redistributive and regenerative economies, but without much detail. This article argues that if blockchain is ever to prove useful for the degrowth movement, it should overcome challenges in three important areas:
build democratic and (re)distributive economies,
regenerate the environment without commodifying it, and
facilitate international alliances without imposing a particular set of values.
What is certain is that technology alone does not transcend the political struggles waged by degrowth activists. However, under certain conditions, blockchain could make these struggles more effective.
1. Introduction
Blockchain technology provides digital infrastructure for a wide range of applications relevant to environmental sustainability (Howson, 2019). Even so, some critical scholars view these innovations as overexcited and driven primarily by the logic of the "green economy" – the illusion that a system of perpetual global economic growth can be decoupled from environmental decline (Büscher, 2020; Lohmann, 2020). Some researchers confuse the technology with the Bitcoin network and reject blockchain projects altogether on the grounds that they all represent a huge waste (Sullivan, 2018; Lang, 2018). Others suggest that blockchain has the potential to facilitate redistributive and regenerative post-capitalist economies. Raworth (2017: p192), for example, suggests that blockchain is a "game-changing" technology, particularly when it comes to facilitating distributed renewable energy microgrids. Büscher and Fletcher (2020): p180) suggest that, as part of a diverse set of revenue streams, blockchain technologies "can be leveraged in the interest of a broader user-friendly custodial platform." Kerschner et al. (2018: p1633) argue that blockchain applications "urgently need analysis through the prism of degrowth [...] in terms of both their potential and their threats." Blockchain experiences have diverse functions, but all personify their prefigurative politics by design. Each project embodies the politics and power structures that design communities want to enable (Husain et al., 2020). This commentary aims to launch a critical discussion around blockchain projects whose prefigurative incarnations are determined by a degrowth agenda.
Degrowth is an umbrella term for many diverse theories and atheist militant perspectives toward economic growth as the primary measure of human flourishing and critical of apolitical environmentalism.
From the point of view of degrowth, growth is a hegemonic ideology that masks more environmentally friendly and egalitarian alternatives (Kallis, 2018).
The purpose of degrowth is neither to prevent GDP increases, nor the equivalent of a recession in a growth economy. GDP may decline as a result of degrowth policies, but if/when it does, this would be done in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner (Demaria et al., 2019).
The oppositional activism of degrowth concerns the construction of alternatives to growth (Demaria et al., 2013).
'' User-friendly conservation '' (Büscher and Fletcher, 2020),
'' abondance frugale '' (Latouche, 2009),
'' suffisance écoféministe '' (Salleh, 2017)
'prosperity without growth' (Jackson, 2017)
are concepts used by many degrowth specialists and activists to describe what these alternative futures might look like (Demaria et al., 2019). Some of these proponents explicitly support alternatives to growth-oriented futures, but dismiss the label of degrowth as technophobic, too negative, and irrelevant (Drews & Antal, 2016; Raworth, 2017).
This remark does not present degrowth, environmental justice, buen vivir, community economies, re-pooling and other related concepts as opposed to each other. It's not about choosing the right label, it's about creating widely popular policy strategies to combat environmental crises (Barca, 2017). Such strategies will inevitably require "simple living" practices and "low-tech" ideas (Bihouix, 2020). But this remark considers the challenges and trade-offs in building compelling decentralized/distributed technologies that could catalyze interest from the edge of the cliff, towards a sustainable degrowth society.
The following section offers a brief introduction to blockchain for the uninitiated and reviews the important criticisms of the decline of technological innovation more generally. The article then critically examines some of the challenges of using technology to facilitate a transition from degrowth to sustainability, in three important areas:
(re)equitable distribution of resources,
ecological regeneration and,
decolonization.
The paper concludes by recommending further research and development of carefully studied applications.
2. Degrowth and blockchain
Much of the recent literature on degrowth repeats the criticisms of technology made by earlier thinkers, such as Gorz (1980), Ellul (1989) and Marcuse (1964), adapting it to contemporary challenges (Muraca and Neuber, 2018).
Degrowth thinkers such as Charbonneau (1980) have placed the vast degrowth movement in the dialectic of nature and human freedom, understanding that growth-driven technological change destroys both. Echoes of this position resonate in more recent critiques of green innovation; as the main destroyer of terrestrial biodiversity and stable climate (Robbins, 2020) and surveillance capitalism; a main destroyer of human freedom (Zuboff, 2019). Green growth thinking, far from decoupling material consumption from economic growth, has been shown to increase consumption, a phenomenon perfectly illustrated in the Jevons paradox1 (Giampietro and Mayumi, 2018). Surveillance capitalism, far from making our lives easier, intrudes into the most private human experiences that take place in the intimate digital worlds that surround individuals and organizations. The technology monitors and tracks users' thoughts and movements both online and in physical space, via smartphone networks and Internet of Things devices. The collected "behavioral data" is then used in the development of "prediction products," which in turn are used to limit users' freedoms for the benefit of the platform (Zuboff, 2019). This juncture marks an inevitable "counter-productivity threshold" – such complex digital technology systems have not achieved their original purpose. Instead of liberating us, our tools enslaved us (Illich, 1973). To enable a "wise technological future" (Pansera et al., 2019), where digital infrastructures marry with aspirations for degrowth, technologies must support ecologically sustainable and redistributive local economies, while fighting against domination and social disconnection under the digital systems of surveillance capitalism.
While there is a clear tension between more primitivist and techno-optimistic views in degrowth debates (Robbins, 2020), there are multiple useful case studies exploring the so-called "degrowth technology" in action (Kerschner et al., 2018). These include communal bicycle kitchens (Bradley, 2018), composting toilets, small-scale wind turbines, and micropyrolizers (Vetter, 2018). These "appropriate technologies" (see Schumacher, 1974) are important for a shrinking society, but they are rarely understood as central catalytic technologies for degrowth. A toilet does not allow conviviality - "individual freedom achieved in personal interdependence" (Illich, 1973, 24). Decentralized and distributed technologies, such as blockchain, can facilitate and intensify community economies, allowing individuals and groups to connect to each other globally without restrictions imposed by dominant surveillance platforms (Pazaitis et al., 2017).
Manski and Bauwens (2020) suggest that a peer-to-peer (P2P) trajectory—a common process by which people share digital resources outside of market relationships and co-produce technologies—is essential to enable transitions out of capitalism. As a result of such a trajectory, market-oriented modes of exchange become less adapted to new digital technologies, compared to open and commons-based forms of production (Kostakis and Bauwens, 2014; Kallis et al., 2018). Growth-oriented incarnations of P2P, through uberized "sharing" platforms for example, are often even more power-consuming and alienating than traditional modes of capital accumulation (Garcia-Ayllon, 2018). But blockchain could enable a more sustainable P2P trajectory, while potentially helping the degrowth movement break the current impasse between socialist ecomodernism and anarcho-primitivist ideas (Robbins, 2020).
A blockchain is a distributed database. Unlike a shared spreadsheet, hosted for example by Google or Microsoft and organized into columns and numbered rows, a blockchain is organized as time-stamped blocks chained in a cryptographically secured chain. The database is "distributed" - hosted by all users - allowing the immutable recording of transactions on a network. The database is very difficult to hack, with no single point of authority to make mistakes and collapse the system. The cryptocurrency network, Bitcoin, was the first blockchain application, but cryptocurrencies are just one use of the technology. Despite using the same P2P approach, many blockchain platforms hardly resemble currencies. Some blockchains, like Ethereum, use algorithms to facilitate automated "smart contracts" and distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs). These secure mechanisms for electronic collaboration use self-executing code to eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries to broker between the parties to the transaction. (see Fig.1).
Fig. 1. Typical mechanics of a blockchain transaction.
Blockchain platforms have been developed to enable, for example, decentralized renewable energy networks and climate change mitigation platforms (Howson, 2019), alternative food production (Howson, 2020b) and environmental monitoring networks (Howson et al., 2019), land registries and supply chain management systems (Goldstein and Newell, 2020), charitable giving platforms (Howson, 2020d) and humanitarian assistance (Howson, 2020a). Despite the dominant uses of the technology firmly embedded in the main narrative of the green economy, blockchain could also provide opportunities to facilitate degrowth goals (Balaguer Rasillo, 2020). The technology enables effective ecological regeneration in some cases, while steering pathways to socially equitable and decolonized outcomes. But the benefits of blockchain are not universal, alternative non-blockchain approaches often exist, while applications always come with challenges and trade-offs.
3. Blockchain for democratic and (re)distributive economies
Some blockchain projects aim for institutional reforms that match degrowth aspirations to disrupt debt-based economic systems, while inspiring alternative community currencies. Blockchain projects are also being used to help envision direct alternatives to representative democracy, universal basic income (UBI) systems, and the protection of the physical and digital commons (see Table 1).
Table 1. Examples of blockchain applications for social good.
Project Description / Use Case Development Stage
Alice in Government: A blockchain tool that allows users to vote transparently on collective strategies to combat climate change. active
Circles: A blockchain-based universal basic income tool to support local community economies. active
Democrat.Earth: The Earth-based platform Ethereum issues tokens to verified participants, providing a means of governance through staking and proxy delegation. The VOTE token allows network participants to validate candidate identities by staking while preventing "bots" and "sybils". active
Dunitrer: Software offers the possibility to create cryptocurrencies and deploy them as universal basic income (UBI) systems. active
Economic Space Agency: A blockchain-based value creation system, including distributed exchange and peer-to-peer issuance of rights, money, credit, participation and surplus sharing as separate protocols. In development
FairCoin: A cryptocurrency for communities. Independent groups can buy Faircoin from centralized nodes and then autonomously decide how to achieve common goals while participating in open assemblies to make proposals for developments and changes. active
Mastodon: Open-source and decentralized platform to facilitate closed (allowed) social networks. active
The People's Bank of Govanhill: A feminist community currency project in Govanhill, Glasgow. The project takes existing community economies as a starting point, mapping the local economy, expanding ideas of community currency, and examining how feminist economics can be put into practice in the local community. active
Redecentralize: An independent, volunteer-led organization that connects blockchain developers with media, policymakers, and the general public to promote the decentralization of digital technology. active
Regen.Network: A blockchain platform that serves as both a "true cost accounting machine," a "green data marketplace," a "distributed computer network," and a "biosphere monitoring device." In development
Rohingya Project: A self-governing identification platform that does not depend on states or a third-party intermediary to issue supporting documents to access credit and other services. In development
Scuttlebutt: A secure and decentralized gossip platform. Messages are transmitted directly between friends via an open p2p "gossip protocol" without depending on a single central server. active
HYPHA / SEEDS: A blockchain platform to encourage participation in the tasks necessary to create a healthier society. Users earn seeds to plant trees and do good deeds. active
TerraO: Collective artist exploring the creative uses of blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) on the Ethereum network for ecosystem protection. In development
Content based on a review of the project's white papers, consisting of a documentary inspection of blockchain-based projects focused on sustainability and civic engagement. Everyone's active/dormant status was checked against exchange databases or remote interviews were held with project developers where a project's status could not be confirmed online.
The Govanhill People's Bank2 began as a series of community currency experiments, ad hoc exchanges, street discussions, and mapping workshops intersecting local economies. The Glasgow project uses open blockchain experiments to explore ways to put ecofeminist economics into practice. In the spirit of Gibson-Graham et al.'s (2013) metaphor 'Economy as an Iceberg', the project aims to code a new local economy with principles of degrowth to support the various informal, non-commodified and reciprocal care practices subordinated to a growth-oriented market economy. Unlike the People's Bank of Govanhill, the decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency, FairCoin, aims to grow beyond a single localized community. The FairCoin experience is designed to support local degrowth economies that are organizationally autonomous but affiliated with a broader global network (Balaguer Rasillo, 2020). FairCoin was created by the FairCoop movement, following in the footsteps of the Integral Catalan Cooperative (CIC) in Catalonia. Despite their explicit intentions to degrow, according to Dallyn and Frenzel (2020), FairCoin's design is problematic due to the omission of effective 'common boundaries' (Ostrom, 1990), or 'filtering layers' (De Angelis, 2017). They argue that post-capitalist commons need clear boundaries to remain protected from the encroachment of capital's values and practices. In the case of FairCoin, these encroachments are centered on state-backed fiat money, libertarian hierarchical market influences (Bitcoin, for example), and plans to extract private value from the commons. Layers of filtering between these entities are inevitably necessary because some capital is needed to support the commons and to allow the broader movement to expand and expand without diluting the group's radical communal anarchist ideals and practices (Dallyn & Frenzel, 2020).
Blockchain technology is also being used to facilitate new forms of local democratic governance. Democracy: Earth has developed a censorship-resistant open source platform to enable "quadratic voting" within networks. Quadratic voting is a method of collective decision-making that makes marginal cost proportional to the votes cast (Siddarth et al., 2020). Participants are also allocated a token budget to spend on voting. Voting tokens cannot be bought and sold, but the more someone votes on a single issue, the more expensive it becomes, eliminating the need for polarization in binary decision-making. As with any voting system, it is possible for tokens to be used as currency. It is impossible to prevent coercion and undue influence in voting systems using software alone.
Just as groups can agree and deploy blockchain applications to oversee communal decision-making processes, groups can also agree on rules governing monetary exchanges. Linares and Cabaña (2020) argue that programmable demurrage systems (or 'rotten money'), to make money lose value when it is not used, to improve it as a medium of exchange, can help solve economic, social and ecological crises. when integrated into a degrowth framework. They offer multiple forms of money to promote the social reproduction of people. An active example is Circles, which uses the Ethereum xDAI sidechain3 to produce a UBI system distributing a fixed monthly income to all verified community members. The platform has been tested in Bali, Indonesia, with reports suggesting that an alternative community-based cryptocurrency improves both wealth equality and access to basic needs in poor communities (Brown, 2021).
Despite their radical potential, Fouksman and Klein (2019) argue that without scrutiny, these UBI schemes are a Trojan horse. They create oppressive class formations and are a colonizing force where specific racial groups are targeted for experimentation. Platforms like these, built by well-meaning blockchain developers, could also evolve into a more broadly oppressive rules-based system, or "blockocracy" as Kavanagh and Ennis (2020) describe it. These would not, of course, be degrowth applications. But, for degrowth to move from an activist slogan and a social movement (Demaria et al., 2013) to an economic institutionalization beyond the local level, it is likely that communication technologies will have to hold everything together. Decentralized/distributed P2P applications that are not prioritized in the governance structure may be required (Pazaitis et al., 2017; Balaguer Rasillo, 2020).
4. Ecological regeneration beyond the crypto-carbon show
A key sticking point for many critical blockchain researchers is the technology's ability to disintermediate otherwise secure livelihoods (Kshetri, 2017). Blockchain applications are also often resource-intensive, both in terms of hardware usage (Lange et al., 2020) and energy requirements, relative to the human labor they move (Klein, 2018; Sullivan, 2018). As de Vries (2019) suggests, given the fundamental challenges of uniting Bitcoin mining with renewable energy, as well as the perpetual renewal of mining hardware, we should conclude that renewables could never enable a sustainable Bitcoin. But not all blockchain consensus protocols are as energy-intensive as Bitcoin's. For example, "Proof of Stake" (PoS) protocols require less than 1% of the energy consumption required for "Proof of Work" (PoW), as used by Bitcoin, Monero and Dash among others. "Delegated proof of stake" (DPoS) and "delegated byzantine fault tolerance" (DBFT) models use negligible amounts of energy to grant validation power to nodes holding stakes (Howson, 2019). The 2020 Serenity (or ETH2) update to Ethereum completely removes the need for miners and associated perpetual hardware updates to maintain the network.
Blockchain technology using alternative validation models can facilitate fast, scalable, and energy-efficient applications. But greener blockchains don't automatically equate to degrowth. Many blockchain projects simply use environmental credentials to enable new forms of "green capture" for global carbon market mechanisms (Howson et al., 2019). Infinite Earth's Veridium Labs project, for example, is a private Hong Kong-based company that is partnering with IBM and Stellar, to develop a platform for selling carbon offsets from Indonesia's Rimba Raya reserve using cryptocurrency. The sale of these "cryptocarbon" tokens reimburses the private investors of the projects, rather than the local host communities. The project is a for-profit enterprise that does not directly incentivise additional tree planting or carbon storage activities (Howson, 2020a). Growth-oriented incentives also risk maintaining pre-existing north-south neocolonial geographies of inequality. Plastic Bank, for example, is a tokenized rewards program incentivizing the informal collection of plastic waste by poor communities via a blockchain app and wallet. The app offers a creative and cost-effective way for Plastic Bank's corporate partners in the Global North (including Henkel, SC Johnson and Eat Natural) to dishonestly tackle plastic pollution problems in the Global South, without having to find alternatives to plastics. (Howson, 2020b). Other growth-oriented companies such as Adaptation Ledger, Climate Trade, and Climate Futures have launched blockchain platforms to make it easier to sell green bonds. For example, the green asset portfolio was developed to help evolve the global market for green debt products, primarily from Africa. The platform functions as a tool for bond validation and impact reporting (Green Assets Wallet, 2019). Blockchain technology is also being leveraged to mitigate pollution and enable more transparent food supply chains (Howson, 2020b). These interventions to improve efficiency and consumer confidence are not aimed at reducing the flow of materials upstream or combating overconsumption of resources, but rather at enabling new markets and capital accumulation.
Gunderson et al. (2018) describe an "energy boomerang effect," in which mechanisms to increase resource efficiency and decarbonize energy production lead to increased energy use and unsustainable material consumption across the economy. This is not a problem with renewable energy production per se, but with the imperative of using energy for capital accumulation and economic growth. According to them, a model of development of degrowth with collective energy systems makes it possible to reduce total energy consumption. Blockchain is used to enable these community-owned, community-operated distributed microgrids and P2P energy exchange, where individuals conduct energy transactions with each other without the need for central oversight from profit-seeking intermediaries (Gardner, 2019). However, there are inevitable implementation challenges. Blockchain solutions that combine energy efficiency, scalability, speed, and security features cannot yet be achieved without significant compromises. Andoni et al. (2019) argue that in many cases, blockchain-based microarrays have few advantages over conventional databases that are currently faster and less resource-intensive. Blockchain systems may require the production of new hardware infrastructure, the costs of which must be outweighed by the benefits achieved by data integrity, enhanced security, and eliminating the need for trusted intermediaries.
Blockchain-based applications, such as those of Terra0, clearly appear to be transitional for degrowth. Terra0 is an artistic intervention that attempts to conserve terrestrial ecosystems that allow them to possess and protect themselves. The blockchain project uses distributed land registries that do not distinguish between individual, corporate, or even non-human entities as specified land owners (Gloerich et al., 2018). For Terra0, forest action is understood in terms of a set of relationships that produce a desired outcome, allowing a forest to shape an economy (Howson et al., 2019). Terra0 creates a framework in which a forest can sell licenses to remove forest resources via smart contract DAOs. With the accumulated capital, the forest (represented by the DAO) is bought from the initiators of the project, to finally appropriate. The "augmented forest" is then able to finance itself, buy more land and expand, while promoting sustainable management opportunities for human custodians (Seidler et al., 2016). Terra0's applications have yet to be tested, but it is one of many ambitious degrowth projects offering creative blockchain solutions to address real-world sustainability challenges.
To expand the livelihood possibilities of degrowth for humans, Büscher and Fletcher (2020) envision a basic income for conservation (CBI). These schemes, they propose, would allow a basic income allowance for sustainable land managers and should replace failing market instruments, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) and REDD+. While Büscher and Fletcher argue for traditional centralized institutions, such as NGOs, states, and the private sector, to take the lead and fund these programs, distributed blockchain applications, like Circles and Democracy.Earth, already enable community-run basic income tools. Basic income systems like this are more democratic, scalable and transparent than centralized approaches. Subverting traditional conservation funding brokers could also enable decolonization, or simply replace these brokers with something worse (Howson, 2020c).
5. Increase degrowth without crypto-colonialism
Solutions to growth-induced environmental crises, rooted in positivism, reinforce a colonial perspective (Nirmal and Rocheleau, 2019). Fostering a pluralism of values, a growing coalition of degrowth researchers-activists aims to transform degrowth into a larger-scale international field, connecting networks of social and environmental justice movements (Liegey and Nelson, 2020). To avoid a colonial approach to the transition process, a main concern must be to prevent a branch of ideas from being imposed on vulnerable groups, especially technological ideas, such as blockchain. Escobar (2018:65) argues that to design tools for degrowth in a positive way, one must deconstruct the colonial divide – "the divide us against them that was introduced with the conquest of America, slavery and colonialism and that is alive and well today with modernizing globalization and development." For degrowth technology to be decolonizing, it must not show a propensity to deploy towards neocolonial projects, and it must be useful for restorative justice. If distributed technologies limit the freedoms of vulnerable groups and leave intact the legacy of colonial dispossession, whether they were "co-produced" or not, then their conception is not decolonizing.
Howson (2020a) explores how environmental crises are being used to justify "crypto-colonialism," where blockchain technology is used to extract economic benefits from peoples suffering from the scars of colonialism in the South. These benefits include land, labour, data and other resources needed to foster capital interests elsewhere. One of the most egregious manifestations of this blockchain-based neocolonialism is seen in Puerto Rico's exclusive crypto-enclaves. As Crandall (2019) explains, the visions of decreasing women-led and grassroots groups in Puerto Rico, to exercising collective sovereignty over their lands, energy, and resources, conflict with the growth-oriented visions evoked by crypto enthusiasts (mostly fintech and venture capitalists in the United States) seeking to establish their own crypto-utopia. Blockchain applications can connect diverse groups, but often involve attaching automated conditions to interactions, inevitably leading to power asymmetries, while limiting the freedom of some users (Howson, 2020d). Indonesia-based blockchain project SEEDS, 5 aims to provide nascent communities, often relocated from the North, with tools to build local economies, including UBI programs, while encouraging community-based ecological regeneration tasks, such as tree planting. In addition to being potentially colonizing, SEEDS maintains a multi-level hierarchical structure and associated governance framework that is likely to foster homogeneity rather than diversity of interests.
In some cases, blockchain initiatives are being used to promote indigenous customary land claims. But indigenous is not always synonymous with degrowth. Some initiatives like the Honduran land registry of blockchain, designed with indigenous communities in mind, have been criticized for their strong tendency towards growth-oriented business interests of their developers (Eder, 2019). The Canadian non-profit organization, Blockchain for Reconciliation, aims to ensure that blockchain project promotions take into account local interests and are supportive of local struggles for restorative justice and reconciliation with colonialism. The project represents the interests of the Cree and Saulteaux First Nations communities of Treaty No. 4. The independent blockchain group says there's no better place for "trustless" systems than between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian government. The group describes itself as "a filter layer" encouraging distributed application developers to start working with Indigenous communities in a spirit of collaboration, not colonization. Other Indigenous blockchain projects, such as IDGO, aim to create tourism- and blockchain-based community economies for local Indigenous peoples. Indigenous identity cards are verified by indigenous community nodes around the world to strengthen local autonomy and ethnic identity. Tourists can purchase digital passport permits, the proceeds of which are donated to Indigenous communities to pay for environmental protection, education and cultural continuity (Ringuette, 2020). These projects can help empower some communities in the short term. They can encourage meaningfully engaged visits. But such projects also support the conventional growth economy if they entertain alienated workers in search of ecotourism voyeurism (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019). In localized degrowth economies, the need for such evasion is less likely (Howson, 2020c), but the need to build international alliances between marginalized communities will remain. Dislocated communities, including Indigenous perspectives, will continue to benefit from cultural exchanges, even within a sustainable shrinking society.
Despite these mixed results, critical degrowth specialists shouldn't be too inclined to reject blockchain altogether. This technology promotes political and economic change by bypassing growth-oriented interests, rather than fighting them (Russo, 2020). Continuing this fight fosters a crisis of imagination, preventing the degrowth movement from seeing alternative post-capitalist futures (Thwaites, 2020). A distributed network of global infrastructures supporting more direct, deliberative and democratic forms of governance, belonging to a network of networked communities, could help transcend this crisis.
6. Conclusions
Centralized digital technology is destroying human freedoms and the environment (Bihouix, 2020). With new blockchain platforms for surveillance capitalism, green growth tools for environmental management are increasingly automated (Howson et al., 2019). Despite these concerns, some researchers see blockchain as a potentially useful tool for the transition to a post-capitalist society (Huckle and White, 2016; Raworth, 2017; Büscher and Fletcher, 2020). Others argue that explorations around distributed technology are a diversion, diverting attention from opponents targeted by degrowth (patriarchy, racism, environmental destruction, and class conflict). This commentary offered a critical exploration of blockchain solutions to spark discussions on how (or if) these technologies could be useful in facilitating sustainable degrowth economies.
The exploration focused on three key challenges for the technology. If blockchain is ever useful for degrowth, it should:
help build (re)distributive economies,
regenerate the environment without commodifying it, and
help facilitate international alliances without imposing a particular set of values.
There are many other litmus tests in addition to those explored here that require research. What is certain is that these technologies, by themselves, will not transcend political constraints beyond keyboards. They could, however, make these struggles more effective, allowing for a transition away from local and/or large-scale market capitalism. For sustainable degrowth, trust must be built before a blockchain. Technology potentially opens doors to new possibilities by transcending the neoliberal crises of the imagination (Thwaites, 2020). But degrowth specialists need to be aware that blockchain projects exist because their users often don't trust their institutions or even each other (Golumbia, 2016). The use of "trustless" systems to enable the exchange of things between users indifferent to building strong trust communities will ultimately lead to unsustainable and socially divisive outcomes. The objective of degrowth projects should therefore not be to use blockchain for degrowth, but to open up to technologies such as blockchain if a transition to degrowth requires it. Green growth, inclusive growth, sustainable growth: would all be coherent approaches for trusted world leaders to manage an acceleration economy. However, the global economy has hit a wall. The slowdown, according to Dorling (2020), is not a temporary failure on the way to the sunnier highlands, as humanity continues to progress with "the great acceleration." In the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns around the world and widespread distrust of the leadership of the white supremacist patriarchal state, the need for a "recovery" (growth) seems questionable. Despite the challenges and trade-offs outlined here, this is the perfect time for more research on degrowth and, perhaps, to design and deploy blockchain projects to enable a sustainable degrowth society. Declaration of competing interests The authors state that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that might have appeared to influence the work reported in this article. PeterHowson source: https://www-sciencedirect-com.bu-services.univ-antilles.fr/science/article/pii/S0921800921000781