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Mind & Society

15.04.2024

Trust and reliance in the cognitive institutions of cryptocurrency

verfasst von: Enrico Petracca, Shaun Gallagher

Erschienen in: Mind & Society

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Abstract

The stated aim of cryptocurrencies is to free the monetary system from the need to trust financial intermediaries, by relying on incentive design and technology. Many descriptive studies, however, have questioned cryptocurrencies’ delivery on the promise of trustlessness. This paper promotes a normative analysis of trust in cryptocurrencies by discussing (i) whether trust is in principle eliminable, and (ii) whether trustlessness is in itself a desirable goal. These issues are closely related, we argue, to the further issue of what kind of institutions cryptocurrencies represent. We discuss the cognitive functions played by cryptocurrencies through the lens of the “extended mind” hypothesis in the philosophy of mind and hence conceive of cryptocurrencies as mind-extending institutions. As the models of institutional mind extension differ in the fiduciary bond they assume exists between individuals and institutional resources, we compare the reliance-based model of “scaffolding institutions” with the trust-based model of “cognitive institutions,” showing that the ineliminability and desirability of trust lead to seeing cryptocurrencies as instances of the latter. In the end, our discussion suggests that trust is a necessary component of cryptocurrencies’ cognitive functions and its promotion helps to perform such cognitive functions more effectively and sustainably

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Nakamoto’s numerous quotes on trust are collected at https://blockchain.news/wiki/satoshi-nakamotos-quotes-on-trust-trusted-third-parties.

In the literature, separate concepts are sometimes used to denote trust between individuals (“interpersonal” trust) and trust in institutions (“institutional” trust), but in this paper, since our goal is exactly to show that institutions like cryptocurrencies are constituted by interpersonal and social relations, we’ll not differentiate between the two. More specifically related to our goal is to distinguish what is genuine trust from what is mere reliance. Therefore the attribute “interpersonal” will henceforth include collective entities unless otherwise indicated.

Phrases such as “trust the blockchain” are common (see, e.g., quotations in Tan & Saraniemi, 2022), but it is possible to come across more explicit statements like “[t]he IT artifact itself that is the technology is the recipient of the trust, the trustee” (Sadhya et al. 2018; p. 8).

A first formulation of these criteria can be traced back to Clark and Chalmers (1998).

For example, in social systems based on slavery, chains are better conceived of as an expression of power relationships rather than as a technology.

Considerable fluctuations in the market price of cryptocurrencies suggest that the store of value function is not fulfilled, but some supporters maintain that fluctuations will progressively abate and value stabilize (Ammous 2018). Digital currencies whose value is tied to another asset like gold or other currencies are called “stablecoins.”

An alternative security protocol introduced to reduce the use of electrical energy is called proof-of-stake, and is based on the principle that to be a validator one needs to demonstrate possession of an amount of cryptocurrency, therefore an interest (stake) in the good functioning of the system.

Interestingly for our discussion, after it exceeded the threshold GHash.io first “promised to never launch a 51% attack” and then pledged to “not exceed more than 39.99% of the overall Bitcoin hashrate.” Perhaps by the hand of someone who didn’t trust GHash.io’s promises, the mining pool incurred a serious cyberattack and closed soon after. https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/16/popular-bitcoin-mining-pool-promises-to-restrict-its-compute-power-to-prevent-feared-51-fiasco/.

Nakamoto says, for instance, that “[t]he system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes” (p. 1, emphasis added).

Antonopoulos (2014; p. 209) is even more clear on this when he says that “the consensus mechanism depends on having a majority of the miners acting honestly out of self-interest.”

Another issue that directly involves trust frustrates Bitcoin’s epistemological utopianism. While Bitcoin clients are of three types (full, lightweight, and web clients), only full clients (also known as full nodes) store a complete version of the ledger and perform functions that other clients need to operate through them. Antonopoulos (2014; p. 6) says, the “light client does not store a full copy of all transactions and therefore must trust the third-party servers for transaction validation.” This means, in brief, that they must trust the “truth” full nodes tell them.

This has led someone to suggest that the truth being recorded is a “fiction,” hence a fictionalist account of the nature of Bitcoin (see Warmke 2024).

Although this seems a purely technical aspect of the blockchain, hence a matter of mere reliance, Bratspies discusses the case of a Bitcoin wallet app, called Blockchain (with capital b), that in 2015 experienced a bug that left wallets, namely, where cryptocurrency owners’ private keys are stored, vulnerable. “The flaw apparently came about through a series of bad development choices which all failed in the worst way possible,” a journalist reported, to which statement a Blockchain representative replied: “We immediately disclosed the issue and released a fix.” In any case, the example shows once more how difficult it is to disentangle trust neatly from reliance. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/01/bitcoin-app-critical-update-bug-crypto-breakdown.

In 2016, for instance, Ethereum’s team unilaterally altered the blockchain’s record after $150 million were diverted from the first smart contract-based funding organization (DAO) (see Ammous 2018; pp. 254–255).

The video can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQqZ9b0S0BY (Accessed on July 23, 2023).

Transcripts are ours.

One example illustrating the extended mind in Clark and Chalmers (1998) has an explicit “cyberpunk” connotation, and in Natural-Born Cyborgs Clark remarks that “[a]t moments such as these, the cyberpunk future seems unexpectedly close at hand” (Clark 2003; p. 125).

This is a possibility that Jalan et al.’s (2023) analysis does not rule out.

A smart contract is a computer program running on a blockchain that executes only once certain conditions are met (i.e., it follows an “if-then” logic). For example, the transfer of a piece of property title is automatically executed when certain conditions are met (e.g., the payment of a corresponding monetary sum): then the transaction gets recorded into the blockchain, becomes publicly known, and cannot be reversed unless other prespecified conditions are met. A Bitcoin transaction can be seen as a form of smart contract, but the Bitcoin protocol does not generally implement smart contracts. The Ethereum multipurpose blockchain also runs the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin named Ether. Other blockchains that implement smart contracts are Binance Smart Chain, Avalance, Cardano, Tron, and Ripple.

Ammous seems at one point to be aware of this, too: “eliminating the need for trust in third parties is not an unquestionably good thing to do in all avenues of business and life […] it is clear that there is a trade-off involved in moving to a system that does not rely on any trusted third parties” (Ammous 2018; p. 259).

Buterin does not deny that there are also short-term benefits of trust. He mentions “COMMUNITY SPIRIT,” defined as “[h]aving a tightly knit community, where everyone feels a sense of camaraderie in a common tribe and mission” (Buterin 2022; Part 3, essay 6) as one of the reasons why the blockchain has undergone fewer attacks than economic theory would predict. His point, however, is not that the blockchain cannot count on community spirit but that it cannot count on it systematically. In discussing this, however, Buterin adds a bit inconsistently that blockchain’s protecting factors like community spirit “are true today, but are likely to get less true over time” (ibid.).

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Titel: Trust and reliance in the cognitive institutions of cryptocurrency
verfasst von: Enrico Petracca
Shaun Gallagher
Publikationsdatum: 15.04.2024
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Erschienen in: Mind & Society
Print ISSN: 1593-7879
Elektronische ISSN: 1860-1839
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-024-00302-z