Ethics of Blockchain Technologies

TL;DR

The chapter situates blockchain ethics within technology ethics and argues for an engineering-oriented approach to analyze and design trade-offs in complex systems. It identifies three core stakes—permissionless identity, privacy versus transparency, and incentive design—as distinctive to blockchain contexts, and discusses obstacles such as conceptual fragmentation and information asymmetries. It advocates practical methodologies, notably Ethical Risk Analysis and Value Sensitive Design, to ground normative concerns in actionable design decisions. The work emphasizes that decentralized, permissionless architectures can advance human well-being when governed by values embedded in engineering practice, while acknowledging regulatory and normative tensions across jurisdictions. Overall, it contributes a framework for integrating normative analysis with concrete system design to foster morally responsible blockchain technologies.

Abstract

This chapter explores three key questions in blockchain ethics. First, it situates blockchain ethics within the broader field of technology ethics, outlining its goals and guiding principles. Second, it examines the unique ethical challenges of blockchain applications, including permissionless systems, incentive mechanisms, and privacy concerns. Key obstacles, such as conceptual modeling and information asymmetries, are identified as critical issues. Finally, the chapter argues that blockchain ethics should be approached as an engineering discipline, emphasizing the analysis and design of trade-offs in complex systems.