Centralized vertical authority has become the main organizational model in society, simply because there has not been a better alternative so far. For the first time in history, citizens can now reach consensus and coordination at global level through cryptographically verified peer-to-peer procedures, without the intermediation of a third party. The blockchain technology ushers in a new era of decentralization on large-scale, in which human factor is minimized and trust shifts from the human agents of a central organization to an open source code.

In such distributed architecture, “code is law”: the protocol is open-source and it can be review by anyone; the network is not owned nor controlled by any single entity; data are simultaneously kept by all nodes, thus ensuring proper redundancy16. Neutrality of the code, distributed consensus and auditability of transactions can significantly reduce or overcome frictions and failures inherent in decision-making process of centralized organizations (e.g. lack of transparency, corruption, coercion, etc.). Many new decentralized governance models and services can therefore be implemented and experienced through the blockchain, without the oversight of governments (Swan, 2015).