Three Deceptions of Our Era: Why Blockchain Is Not a Social Reconstruction but a New Name for Inequality

Blockchain is not a technology, it is an industrial policy. When we claim it will ‘disintermediate’, we are actually refusing to see that this technology has merely made existing economic hegemony more efficient, complex, and opaque. The first deception of our era is ‘Decentralization’. In the public sphere, blockchain is advertised as a ‘ownership of all’ network, but the reality is that the vast majority of the community is left out from the beginning. The initial mining or staking requires specialized hardware and electricity costs that are beyond the average person’s reach. Consequently, the ‘decentralized’ network comes under the control of a few large corporations or wealthy individuals. This is a digital feudalism, where the ‘open’ ledger behind the ‘closed’ rooms holds the most power. The second deception is ‘Transparency’. Blockchain displays transaction records, but it never displays records of ‘context’ or ‘social setting’. A transaction shows who sent how much, but why they sent it remains unverifiable. This is ‘data’ transparency, but ‘knowledge’ blindness. When you buy an NFT or token, you are buying a kind of ‘digital debt’, where your rights are limited to the mining hardware’s depreciation, and everything else is broken like a legal document. The third deception is ‘Community Reconstruction’. Blockchain projects often market themselves as ‘socializing’ mediums. But in reality, these communities are extremely aggressive towards ‘outsiders’ and fall into a ‘Custodial’ culture within themselves. This is not a ‘community’, it is a ‘Marketplace’. When a project fails, the ‘community’ transitions from seller to buyer, selling ‘peace’ to influencers. We are not ‘technology’ admirers, we are ‘governance’ and ‘policy’ critics. The growth of blockchain is actually the growth of the ‘Fasade’ model. ‘Fasade’ means a structured, controlled, and pleasant ‘product’ or ‘service’. Blockchain ‘outsources’ the ‘Fasade’, reducing ‘inefficiency’ and ‘impurity’. But the ‘vacancy’ of ‘social’ ‘problems’ increases. Final word: Technology doesn’t ‘rule’, ‘individuals’ rule. Blockchain is a ‘weapon’, it doesn’t hold ‘claims’ of ‘numbers’. Whoever holds ‘claims’, they are ‘individuals’. Blockchain doesn’t ‘claim’, ‘individuals’ ‘claim’.