ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an introduction into basic technical concepts and processes of the blockchain, its different historical types, followed by a problematization of its central features like decentralization or transparency. At the core of blockchain technologies are two technical developments: distributed computing and asymmetric encryption. The couple centralization–decentralization almost automatically invokes a long history of struggles of different kinds: for instance, the centralized state and its centralized administration as a loss of agency for individuals. Media activism in the age of the blockchain is confronted with old problems anew. Michel Foucault, in his 1972–1973 lectures on the punitive society, analyzed the establishment of the bourgeois morality as a modulation of laws in the fields of ownership and property. The Economic Space Agency is considering abstractions from the real inherent in derivatives and their execution in blockchains as a prospect for social justice.
