Blockchain

4Toward a Social Smart-contract?

The blockchain paradigm is the paradigm of non-centralization and disintermediation by digital means/technology as such. The blockchain makes it possible to rethink the social contract from a digital direct democracy perspective (section 4.1) by using Decentralized Autonomous Organization (section 4.2) and by changing the way public registers are conceived (section 4.3).

4.1. Disintermediated direct democracy: perspectives opened by the blockchain

4.1.1. The terms of the social contract: centralized representative democracy or disintermediated direct democracy

The social contract is one of the main arguments justifying the exercise of political authority. If the concept of the social contract does not have the same meaning for all classical [HOB 85, LOC 80, MIL 59, ROU 62] and contemporary¹ philosophers, in terms of the level of individual alienation necessary for social functioning and its counterpart, and if the currents of political thought are torn on its meaning², it is nevertheless possible to extract a definition from its essential and generally accepted characteristics.

The social contract could thus be presented as a concept, frequently represented in the form of a historical fiction, corresponding to a necessary and tacit renunciation by an individual of part of his or her freedom of decision and action, to enable a unifying authority to make a society function in a peaceful and rationalized manner by serving the interests of each ...