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TopBook Review: The Rise Of Blockchains
Disrupting economies and transforming societies
By: Nir Kshetri
Published 2022
By: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, The Lypiatts, 15 Lansdown Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL50 2JA, UK
ISBN 978-1-80220-816-0
The Rise of Blockchains explores how blockchain technology is disrupting economies and transforming societies. It offers detailed insights into the synergistic and complementary effects of blockchain and other new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things(IoT), satellite imagery and digital twins (Kshetri, 2019). The book highlights how the developments of ecosystems around blockchain are helping to realize the potential of this technology to act as a “trust machine” across more contexts and settings (Shoker, 2021). Multidisciplinary in both scope and perspectives, the book looks at blockchain's potential for impacting challenges in supply chain management, security, privacy and compliancy issues, and transforming payment and settlement systems (Li & Chen, 2023). It further provides insights into the opportunities, barriers, and enablers of blockchain adoption by organizations.
This book is divided into three parts. Part 1, “Blockchain and Organizational Transformation”, includes Chapter 1 through Chapter 3. The introductory chapter gives an overview and description of key issues and concepts related to blockchain. They include crypto-currency, permissionless and permissioned chains, public and private blockchain networks, centralized and decentralized ledgers, distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, blockchain as-a-service and initial coin offerings. It discusses the origin, evolution, and trajectory of blockchain. It also touches on the diverse value proposition of blockchain across various industries. Also, the roadmap of the book is discussed.
Chapter 2 offers an analysis of blockchain's impacts on organizational forms, business models and strategies. It demonstrates how blockchain-led reduction in the cost of verification and the cost of networking can help promote transparency, build trust and reputation, and enhance efficiency in transactions, which can have important implications on the functioning of organizations. In this way, blockchain can disrupt economies and transform societies. In this chapter also provides detail discussion of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that are facilitated by smart contracts. For instance, a DAO could own a self-driving car to use as a taxi 24 hours a day. The income generated would be used to pay for its fuel, repairs and insurance. The money that is saved can be used to replace the vehicle at the end car's life. A key focus of the chapter is also on the effects of blockchain and smart contracts on key mechanisms related to the governance of interorganizational relationships that are employed by participating firms. Specifically, this chapter looks at how formal contracts which focus on economic and legal aspects and relational norms and trust, which deal with social aspects are likely to be impacted by blockchain and smart contracts.
Chapter 3 provides an analysis of how many of the trust-related challenges in in inter-organizational relations can be overcome by combining blockchain with other advanced technologies, mainly so called the Fourth Revolution technologies, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. Specifically, it gives special consideration to the potential of significant added value as well as complementary and synergistic effects by combining blockchain with technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of things, analytical fingerprinting, satellite imagery, machine vision and digital twins. This chapter also explains how blockchain has been a missing link in current technological developments.