The Blockchain Chronicles : A Social History of Ideology, Code, and Law
The Blockchain Chronicles : A Social History of Ideology, Code, and Law
Click to enlarge
Author(s): De Filippi, Primavera
Dietz, Joel
Nabben, Kelsie
ISBN No.: 9780262060776
Pages: 376
Year: 202705
Format: Trade Paper
Price: $ 105.00
Dispatch delay: Dispatched between 7 to 15 days
Status: Available (Forthcoming)

A foundational social history of blockchain technology, tracing how cypherpunk ideology, cryptographic code, legal imagination, and financial experimentation gave rise to cryptocurrencies and Web3. The Blockchain Chronicles tells the story of blockchain's emergence from a fringe crypto-anarchist experiment into a contested infrastructure reshaping money, finance, governance, and society. Primavera De Filippi, Joel Dietz, Morshed Mannan, and Kelsie Nabben chart the journey from early cypherpunk manifestos and cryptographic experiments to the emergence of Bitcoin, Ethereum, decentralized finance, DAOs, and network states. Combining primary sources with historical, legal, and social analysis, the authors critically examine the ideas and debates that shaped blockchain's development. The book situates foundational texts, including Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper and Vitalik Buterin's early writings on Ethereum, within the broader intellectual traditions of libertarianism, crypto-anarchism, extropian futurism, open-source culture, and decentralized governance. The book also examines real-world governance crises like the FTX bankruptcy, the Terra/Luna collapse, the DAO hack, and Bitcoin's scaling wars, providing insight into the many challenges of governing decentralized communities. In doing so, it shows that blockchain is not only a technical architecture, but also a political and legal project: an attempt to redesign trust, authority, ownership, and collective decision-making through code.


To be able to view the table of contents for this publication then please subscribe by clicking the button below...
To be able to view the full description for this publication then please subscribe by clicking the button below...