Blockchain and Community Networks: friends or foes?

There is a lot of discussion and numerous initiatives that aim to explore blockchain technology in the context of Internet access sharing and more general Community Networking.

At the IGF 2018, I did a small intervention at the workshop WS279 "Scaling community networks: exploring blockchain and efficient investment strategies". This was a merge of two workshops, one of which was titled "Community networks meet blockchains: friends or foes?".

I tried to give my own answer to this original question in the IGF 2018 workshop WS279, based on the book chapter I co-authored with Jens Martignoni for the new DC3 book "The community network manual : how to build the Internet yourself" edited by Luca Belli.

In short, my opinion is that when blockchain solutions are linked to the global blockchain speculation ecosystem, they will inevitably lead to situations that are not compatible with the values of self-determination and empowerment of local communities that most Community Networks embrace.

In the following, you can read the text I wrote in preparation for my intervention slightly edited to be more coherent.

What can blockchain do (and what not) for community networks

What is blockchain

Blockchain technology solves the problem of accounting of a variety of interactions without centralized intermediaries, through extensive cryptography, replication of data, and distributed computation. To achieve a truly decentralized, peer-to-peer, structure, it relies on significant investment of resources from the individual "peers". The more the network grows, the more resources are required by each peer to maintain its state, the blockchain, and ensure the integrity of the data.

This is one of the main reasons why blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have an almost built-in speculation element.

To say it simply, one only agrees to invest the enormous amount of resources with the expectation to get rich in the future! So, a typical bubble/lottery mentality has ingrained the blockchain narrative and its followers,making blockchain projects to look more like "ponzi schemes" than crowd funding for innovation platforms. And the actual, technical, political, or other reasons that would justify the use of blockchain in a certain situation often get lost on the way. It is all about money.

In addition, there are other characteristics that make the whole enterprise very questionable at a political level namely the fact that decentralization does not include proper governance structures, the replacement of institutional trust by encryption algorithms, and its severe impact on energy consumption.

Indeed, in the discussion about the impact of blockchain, "This changes everything" as Naomi Klein's recent book analyzes very eloquently, where "this" is referring to the "climate change", of course.

As I often point in conversations with colleagues, if your blockchain solution is not energy efficient, if it does not involve some people somewhere meeting in person to make decisions, and if it does not imply a structure for building trust at a human level, it is not "for good".

Most importantly, if it causes value to fly from local economies to the unknown, it can be very harmful at the long-term for those involved and beyond.

What happens when Community networks meet blockchains?

But let's see how all that is being played out today in the area of community networks.

And let's start by a Community Network born long time ago, when blockchain was not yet invented. Freifunk.net is a Community Network in Germany whose members have developed an alternative firmware for routers which allows to share your Internet connection without any cost for your own usage, and also create links between nearby routers, or a "mesh" network, to expand the coverage.

These community members do not only share their spare Internet capacity without any direct reward but it's quite the opposite case. They invest a significant amount of time and effort fighting for our right to share, despite the severe technical, legal, and political obstacles that such "natural" sharing practices face today.

On the other extreme, there are numerous blockchain-based initiatives like RightMesh, Ammbr, Skycoin, Wificoin, and many others, which have recently resurrected the narrative of making money by sharing one's Internet connection.

"One network accessed by anyone, owned by everyone", one can read at http://wificoin.net, or similarly "Better Internet for everyone, built by anyone" at hypermesh.net,

Skycoin is building "The new Internet for the new world", and Rightmesh puts "The power of connectivity in the hands of people". Ammbr is more direct offering a clear incentive to its potential customers: "Get paid to share your internet connection with the world".

Ammbr is of particular interest because some CNs like guifi.net and ninux.org openly support it.

In my opinion, there are many problems with this narrative, including the soundness of its economic model. But the worst of all is that it promotes the idea that the major obstacle for community networks are incentives for personal profit, which is inaccurate looking at the successes of current CNs with such motives, and EVEN if the face huge political, legal, and social challenges today, as José Bové mentioned in his intervention in the recent netCommons workshop at the EU parliament. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGwXUAyzRv4

An analogy with AirBnB

Let us thus make an analogy with housing, and how the AirBnB platform has professionalized the offering of accommodation through sharing. For this form of sharing,there used to be alternatives based on the "gift economy" model, for instance, 'couch surfing' being the most known platform.

Remarkably, renting one's apartment with the mediation of a global commercial like AirBnB is branded today as "sharing economy", while it is beyond any doubt just a "renting" (for financial profit) economy.

Through this successful business model, AirBnB did indeed influence also the political and legal sphere, lobbying to bypass laws that protect the hotel industry and the quality of urban living in residential neighborhoods.

It would need, however, another talk to explain how the overall impact of AirBnB is more negative than positive to local economies, with the recent struggles of the cities of Barcelona, Amsterdam and others to regulate its use, an evidence of the threats posed by such global intermediaries.

In any case, from a "user" perspective, sharing one's Internet connection is much easier than sharing one's apartment, isn't it?!

It is really (or could be) just a matter of configuration of one's router.

Still, some might rightly argue that network systems like Freifunk are an exception, and if we really need to solve the problem of Internet affordability, more explicit incentives need to be provided. It could mean that people will need to invest in more performant and robust infrastructure than just sharing their spare capacity.

The good news

The good news is that there are already in function "pragmatic" (market based) models, like Guifi.net that operates a region-wide (and beyond) infrastructure, through which members of the network contribute in a fair way to the (market) cost of their common Internet gateway. Freifunk.net includes also such subnetworks in their ecosystem.

Again, the main obstacles in the expansion of this model are legal and political. Guifi.net is very often refused access to public infrastructure that would allow the CN to expand their backbone network. Along these lines, they have recently submitted a complaint to the EU ombudsman and, by the way, we should all help them defend their cause for the benefit of all Europeans!

In short, as Guifi.net has solved their sustainability problem, but their further growth is prohibited for questionable legal (national) grounds, against the EU legislation. Even more importantly the network does not even have to scale itself. Other communities can replicate the same model, as scaling through replication is a very sustainable and resilient option for "growth".

As for the "trust" building, from which blockchain "relieves us", is one of the most important benefits of systems like guifi.net. They engage people in deliberations, and develop appropriate methodologies for resolving conflicts and build consensus, and real, community, trust.

Taking this process away from communities is in the long-term producing more and more unsolvable issues like we have seen in the transformation of localities through homogeneous cookie-cutter / standardized solutions.

Decentralization will work "for good" if the "nodes" of the network are, rather than somewhat helpless individuals addicted to the ups and down of the bitcoin and ethereum prices, well organized communities that are aware of their rights to the Internet, sharing knowledge on how to build their own customized community networks.

Blockchain can help to make transactions easier and more credible, but only if it is designed to be independent of the global blockchain speculation market.

* Thanks to Ileana Apostol, Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, and Félix Tréguer for feedback in earlier versions of this talk preparation draft.