The thesis · 12 parts
Ending my History bachelor with a thesis about blockchains
Blockchain: Decentralization of Money, Power and the State — written in 2021–22 at the University of Milan, published here in full.
It was for me something obvious to mix History with blockchains, and I’m very happy that I’ve done it.
It was for me a very interesting travel, where I had the opportunity to study something very fascinating, trying to find parallelisms with ancient times and thinking about the possibilities that the future will reserve us.
It wasn’t something easy, since it’s quite a complex topic: it wasn’t just my research, it was also a way to try to explain why a lot of people are so excited about these technologies.
My main goal was to encourage people from the humanities and social sciences. I think they are the ones that could find intelligent solutions to nowadays problems. A big problem is that this kind of people usually are not really friendly with technology, that’s why I wanted to help them. 🙂
Today I will send the thesis to the University. Am I satisfied? I’m, because I just completed something that was quite big. I do not think this thesis is perfect: the topic is so big that I could not find the right way to explain it.
My idea is to continue modifying the thesis, trying to make a book from it. Not a normal book, but a book that can be updated and modified cooperatively.
Maybe a git repo? A Wiki? Any suggestion about that?
The thesis was written in the 2021–22 academic year at the University of Milan, and is published here verbatim — only PDF-extraction artifacts (hyphenation, footnote formatting, page numbers) have been corrected. Footnotes appear at the end of each part, and the full bibliography is on the references page.
The series
Blockchain and History
Why historians should study blockchain: how cryptography, digital currency and decentralization reshape power, money and the state — the introduction to a 12-part thesis.
What Are Blockchains? Collaboration, Forks and Peer-to-Peer
What blockchains are, from a human perspective: open source, digital collaboration, forks, peer-to-peer networks and the client-server paradigm explained for non-technical readers.
Cryptography, Blocks, Bitcoin and Ethereum
Cryptography, hash functions, blocks, Bitcoin and Ethereum smart contracts: the technical foundations of blockchain, from MD5 to Turing-complete decentralized computation.
Religions, Forks and the Digital Past
How blockchain forks resemble religious schisms, the betrayal of the digital, and why controlling the past — hashes, primary sources and the Internet Archive — controls the present.
Metaverses and the Politics of Software Updates
Centralized versus decentralized metaverses, and why software updates — soft forks, hard forks and 9/11 — are political acts that reshape blockchain ecosystems and society.
Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Power
How the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence concentrate power: sensors everywhere, data as the new gold, and why technological acceleration outpaces democratic oversight.
Centralization, CBDCs, Data and the Four Horsemen
Centralization of power through IoT, Central Bank Digital Currencies, the importance of data, and the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse — terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles and organized crime.
Internet of Value, Social Credit and Rewinding Time
Physical desecration and cryptography, the Internet of Value, social credit systems, and rewinding time: how blockchains could let us verify — or rewrite — the historical record.
Decentralized Violence, Mass Adoption and Revolution
Decentralized violence, mass adoption as revolution, planning the revolution, and the reaction of established power — what happens when blockchain undermines state monopolies on force.
Decentralized States: Governance, Traditions, Faith and Nations
Decentralized states: governance without central authority, digital traditions, the question of faith, gods and goddesses, the great legislators, and what will happen to the nations.
Anarcho-Capitalism, Node Hierarchies and Blockchain Security
Anarcho-capitalism and the invisible hand, hierarchies between node and full node, information security, backdoors, and the 51% attack — the security assumptions of decentralized systems.
Reversing the Paradigm: Final Considerations
Reversing the paradigm: blockchain as historical materialism, the separation of the three coins, the family, and final considerations on decentralization, democracy and open questions.
References and Bibliography
Acknowledgements and the complete bibliography and sitography for the 12-part Blockchain thesis series on decentralization of money, power and the state.