Blocked and chained: Blockchain and the problems of transparency
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Blockchain is frequently claimed to be a democratizing technology. However, its relationship to both law and broader democratic institutions remains uncertain. One claim regarding blockchain's democratic potential is that it is radically transparent and can bring such transparency to existing systems of governance. This paper interrogates that claim in three different ways. Firstly, it examines blockchain technology against broader theories of transparency. Secondly, it examines the relationship between transparency and democracy, questioning how blockchain technologies could mediate that relationship. Finally, it examines how blockchain technologies could impact a particular exercise of transparency, freedom of information requests. This paper finds the relationship of transparency itself to democratic ideals is complex, contested and highly context‐dependent; the “democratizing” technological transparency built into blockchains could easily prove undemocratic in application. Blockchain technology cannot meet broader transparency goals without addressing political gatekeepers and the legal, social, and cultural needs that animate those goals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".