School of Social and Political Science

Description

Controversies in the Data Society 2026 series - Session 9

Blockchain and distributed information systems where trust is ensured by mathematics and not human institutions is one of the more radical ways that computers could be used to support changes in fundamental social processes and institutions. We are all familiar with first-generation digital assets such as Bitcoin, and their associated controversies, but there are many more ambitious programmes aimed at creating standardised and dependable blockchain infrastructures for decentralized finance (de-fi) and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) 

In this session, we hear from two University of Edinburgh scholars, Dr Morshed Mannan from the School of Law, and Dr Taylor Spears from Edinburgh Business School, a researcher in the organisational aspects of financial technology and modelling. Dr Mannan and Dr Taylor explore the way the idea of decentralisation is realised through the work of developers and regulators attempting to build a new generation of more dependable blockchain infrastructures and organisational practices.

About this session

Dr Mannan’s talk is called How developers struggle to realise the promise of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: 

Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) are blockchain-based entities that enable decentralised coordination through self-executing code. Although often associated with financial speculation and crypto-libertarianism, DAOs have also been imagined as democratic, community-owned infrastructures aligned with the solidarity economy. This article explores whether DAOs can be considered solidarity economy organisations in practice by evaluating the type of working conditions they produce. Based on ethnographic research with 38 DAO contributors, rooted in workers’ inquiry, we examine the extent to which DAOs produce working conditions consistent with solidarity economy values, such as decent and stable employment. Our findings show that, while many DAO contributors aspire for DAOs to be solidarity economy vehicles akin to cooperatives and mutualist organisations, in practice, DAO labour falls short of this vision. We identify key areas - psychosocial security, financial predictability, and regulatory clarity - that must be addressed for DAOs to realise their solidarity economy potential. Several proposals, generated through research activities with participants, are outlined to improve key issues. This article contributes to ongoing debates on the potential of DAOs and provides the first comprehensive empirical study into working conditions in DAOs. 

Dr Spears’ talk is called The Politics of Stack Decentralization in Decentralized Finance: 

In recent years, decentralized finance (DeFi), a category of financial applications that enable trading, lending, and investing through blockchain technology without the need for trusted centralized intermediaries, has become a significant area of financial innovation. While ‘decentralization’ is highly valued as a technical and ideological goal among DeFi practitioners, in practice, DeFi applications operate via stacks of related technologies, both centralised and decentralised, including blockchains, web interfaces, wallets, and node providers.

This article has two purposes. First, drawing on an analysis of regulatory documents, this article argues that the ‘DeFi stack’ has entered regulators’ ontology, in contrast to their historical tendency to black-box the infrastructures of markets. As such, regulators increasingly conceptualise DeFi as a layered architecture of technologies and target rule-making and enforcement action towards centralised leverage points in the DeFi stack, especially user interfaces and gateways. Building on Kane’s account of the regulatory dialectic, I argue that regulators’ growing focus on stacks opens a new axis of regulatory evasion: the strategic reconfiguration of dependencies and control across stack layers. I then outline two ideal-typical responses to this emerging terrain. Evasive decentralisation seeks to decentralise vulnerable layers to reduce intermediary-like points of control, such as web interfaces. Open centralisation instead centralises a default conduit to ensure usability and platform control while preserving permissionless alternatives to ameliorate legal liability. In doing so, the paper reframes DeFi regulation as a politics of infrastructural configuration across layers, with implications for how financial governance evolves as finance becomes tech.

About the speakers

Dr Morshed Mannan is a Lecturer in Global Law and Digital Technologies at Edinburgh Law School. He was previously a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, where he was part of the BlockchainGov ERC project. His research focuses on blockchain governance and cooperative governance. In addition to his several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these topics, his latest co-authored book Blockchain Governance was published by the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series (August 2024). Dr Morshed is a Research Affiliate of the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy at The New School in New York City. He is enrolled as an Advocate by the Bangladesh Bar Council, and has been called to the Bar of England & Wales.

Dr Taylor Spears is a Lecturer in Financial Technology and Organizations at Edinburgh Business School, researching the organisational aspects of financial technology and modelling.