Starting with BitTorrent and then Bitcoin, decentralised economies and technologies have been on the rise over the last 15+ years, gaining significant momentum in the last 2+ years with the advent of platform ecosystems such as the blockchain platform Ethereum.

New projects have evolved from decentralised games to marketplaces to open funding models to decentralised autonomous organisations. The hype around cryptocurrency and the valuation of decentralised economies drove the market cap of cryptocurrencies to over a trillion dollars at one point in 2017.

These high valued technologies are now enabling something new: globally scaled and decentralised business models. Despite their valuation and the hype, these new business ecosystems are frail. This is not only because the underlying technology is rapidly evolving, but also because competitive markets see a profit opportunity in exponential cryptocurrency returns.

This extracts value from these ecosystems, which could lead to their collapse, if unchecked. In this paper, the authors explore novel ways for decentralised economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with, competitive markets at a global scale utilising decentralised technologies such as blockchain.

The authors note a societal shift from competitive marketplaces, populated largely by centralised organisations, to decentralised socioeconomic markets. To find out more, read the research in full.