The stakes are high as blockchains with smart contracts gain traction. On the one side are the proprietary blockchain vendors like R3; and on the other are the open blockchain enthusiasts like Ethereum developers. Tim Swanson, the masterful marketing director of R3, is spearheading an effort to discredit open blockchains. He is R3’s marketing director and perhaps believes he is in a world of scarcity where he must undercut the open blockchains to ensure R3’s viability. Here are some of his tactics.
- Relabel open blockchains as “anarchic blockchains” in order to induce fear and doubt in potential users who are unsure of their own technical know-how.
- Justify the tern “anarchic” because governance of an open block chain is “ad hoc;” which implies that governance of closed blockchains is fixed or permanent. This is very cleverly deceptive because it disguises the fact that closed blockchains are specifically designed to enable ad hoc decisions by the owner and proprietor of the blockchain at issue. I would argue that proprietary blockchains are therefore more anarchic.
- Focus on the interest that many users of an open blockchain have in anonymity and freedom from censorship to distract from the fact that users can “choose” to link their blockchain activities to traditional legal infrastructure for specific purposes via the smart contracts they accept or offer.
A caution. Follow the money. R3 is doing brilliant work. Their developers are among the best in the ecosystem and folks like Ian Grigg have pioneered much of the intellectual capital we all share these days. But I would invite proprietary block chain vendors like R3 to model rhetoric that builds a community where an ecosystem of both proprietary and closed blockchains is properly represented. We don’t want another round of monopolistic firms like Google and Facebook milking us and locking us in. Let’s build an ecosystem that honors the open framework offered by Satoshi and put the brakes on our own personal agendas. There are great use cases for proprietary blockchains. However, I hope our default is to stay as open as we can.
