By John IV
govern: to exercise continuous sovereign authority over (Merriam Webster 2019)
sovereign: one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere (Merriam Webster 2019)
Self-sovereign identities put the user in control of their data and financial assets. If governing can be thought of decision-making regarding the aggregation and allocation of resources, how could self-sovereign identities and smart contracts offer new opportunities for personal self-governance? Opt-in mechanisms of incentivization based on the conditional provision or restriction of access to financial or informational assets could provide individuals with an enforceable mechanism of self-regulation, to encourage intentional behavior. As long as individuals are interacting with the cyber domain "through" their self sovereign identity, such mechanisms could apply globally, regardless of the person's physical location.
As the world globalizes, long-held understandings about the nature and role of government and the individual are being challenged. The concept of governance has been expanding to include the processes of decision-making of private and third sector actors, regional. international governments, and even individuals, working in coordination in hierarchical, market- and network-based organizational structures (Bevir 2012). Increasingly, our traditional systems of government and governance seem to be showing their limits in their ability to respond to the demands of this dynamic and evolving period of human activity. As the limits of traditional governance become apparent, new and more nuanced mechanisms are emerging, creating an opportunity for a more capable form of governance. Notable amongst these are public blockchains, which allow users to store and transfer financial assets and deploy and execute software without requiring permission from any authority.
To govern is to make decisions, to aggregate and allocate resources in accordance with the needs of the governed. Mechanisms of governance often use the granting and revocation of access to resources - goods, services, information or access - to incentivize the subjects governed to behave in accordance with the laws, rules and norms deemed right and just by those establishing the system of governance.
By this definition, each individual person engages in self-governance in some form. Ultimately we are all governing ourselves - we control (consciously or less so) the actions of our minds and our bodies within our individual awarenesses. We each make decisions about the resources under our control and decide the boundaries of acceptable behavior, as well as consequences for crossing those boundaries. This is most often highly informal, an internal process of making resolutions, commitments and intentions to ourselves and others we trust - partners, friends, family. Our personal codes of behavior are informed by the law and fear of consequences enforced by the state, though they sometimes stray beyond its bounds; commonly personal strictures more stringent than what is legal are self-imposed due to some perceived moral, personal or social duty.
We set these goals and boundaries because we believe achieving or adhering to them will improve our chances of achieving or acquiring something we want, whether it is a material thing, recognition from another, good health, a sense of virtue and so on. In other words, we each pursue our goals and ideals through personal self-governance.
It is at this level - the private, individual level - that blockchains may offer an opportunity to formalize those personal processes of governance into a personal structure of government. Self-sovereign identities put the user in control of their informational resources - personal data and financial assets - by decentralizing responsibility of maintaining custody of the private keys required to prove identity and access personal information. Using smart contracts, individuals could self-incentivize desirable behavior by programming incentives or actions that are conditional upon that behavior. In this way, these emerging technologies could help its users live their lives more in line with their ideals and values.
Deep ethical questions concerning such a system and its configuration deserve thoughtful consideration. First, a few examples help to illustrate the idea, built on conceptions of various levels of Web3 penetration into our information and communications technology systems.
The first and most obvious use of programmable incentivization mechanisms to guide individual behavior is the control of funds. Suppose Alice has reflected and decides she wants to prioritize her physical health and well-being. She's tried to do so in the past, but found making a habitual lifestyle change difficult.
Alice could create a payable smart contract that, upon reception of funds, diverts a portion of the income to a wallet address that Alice has budgeted for her health and exercise - or to a smart contract instance that she has sole access to. If the gyms and exercise studios she frequented accepted payment within such a system, this contract could have a fixed list of approved addresses where contract funds could be sent. With this, Alice has to spend that money at gyms.
Extending this - reliant on even deeper conversion of our systemic value chains to integrate with Web3 technologies - suppose Alice wants to improve discipline about her diet in this holistic effort toward her ideal lifestyle of health and fitness. Within the contract instance holding Alice's funds, she could enforce a mechanism preventing her from purchasing certain classes of food or drink items - say, ice cream and potato chips. This of course depends on the grocery store providing that information to the contract when a transaction is generated and signed (or perhaps when the item is scanned), but if this were possible, Alice could set unbreakable rules she might be less inclined to follow on impulse at the store.
A final example relies on another, perhaps more difficult, system integrating with Web3 technologies to enable programmable self governance: the browsers or operating systems running on the self sovereign person's devices. Informational resources have value; granting or revoking access could incentivize behavior. Suppose Alice accesses her online streaming services and social networking sites by logging in with her self sovereign identity. By placing a smart contract layer she controls in the authentication process, Alice could enforce another rule - say, that she cannot stream a film while she is scheduled to exercise, or at all, until evidence of that day's exercise has been reported to a smart contract from her smart device.
While a small example, these ideas illustrate the potential for enable self sovereign individuals to shape their own behavior by programming their own incentives. They also raise questions about the ethics and risks of such a system.
The opportunity for any technology to improve justice and human dignity tends to be positively correlated with the risks it represents to the same; blockchains and smart contracts are no different. As the entry point to the Internet in a Web3 world, self sovereign identities deserve extraordinary care during the early phases of their design and adoption to ensure they are configured to serve their users, are difficult to abuse and misuse, and are easily adapted in the inevitable event of the discovery of vulnerabilities.
Using self sovereign identities and smart contracts for programmable personal self-governance could enable identity owners to align their behavior with their ideals, but the programmatic manipulation of - and especially restriction of access to - any valuable asset carries risks, even if the system works as intended. Leaving aside bugs and code errors resulting in the loss of funds, certain ways for Alice to terminate her self-imposed contracts seem a necessary safety mechanism. In this example, imagine the white-listed gyms closed, or their private keys were compromised - or somehow a situation changed and Alice needed to withdraw those funds to use elsewhere. A nuanced aspect of system design would be to configure the execution of a safety mechanism - effectively canceling a contract - to be more difficult than simply following the rules of the contract, without being impossible. Perhaps a social approach would work - Alice needs to collect signatures from three friends, explaining why she's decided to break her commitment to herself, or maybe she has to pay some money, etc. Safety mechanisms would likely need to be tailored to the terms and risk of the contract - but are necessary to mitigate unforeseen risks.
These self-incentivization mechanisms, at least in the foreseeable future, will need to be opt-in. Until (if ever) all digital activity is conducted after self-sovereign authentication, ways for Alice to circumvent her own rules abound. She could simply buy her ice cream with cash. If such mechanisms are consciously opted into by identity owners, then they are only doing themselves a disservice by evading enforcement. The goal would be to provide support for Alice to act as she herself intends to - as her own sovereign authority - and not to impose restrictions on her from outside.
Persistence. Immutability. Openness. Programmability.
As self-sovereign identities emerge, the opportunity they present to improve how we govern ourselves should be thoughtfully considered. Here implications for personal governance were explored, though since governments, corporations and other entities have digital identities, they could engage in a similar approach to hold themselves to - and perhaps prove - intended behavior.
Furthermore, similar smart contract mechanisms developed by community authorities could offer individuals the choice of attaching their self-sovereign identity to such an authority such as a government, company, university, etc. By 'subscribing' to an organizational membership - or even a country's citizenship - the informational actions of the self sovereign individual could be subjected to the conditions defined by that organization or authority. Taxes could automatically be deducted from every transaction (regardless of location); religious dietary restrictions could be enforced at the point of sale; individuals could avoid purchasing products from companies with unsustainable supply chains with decision-making automated. Of course, constraints on freedom are difficult to justify if some benefit is not conferred: the benefits of membership or citizenship. Adherence to these membership or citizenship contracts could be how valid membership is proven and rights are conferred upon the members.
Blockchains, smart contracts and the self-sovereign identities emerging within the Web3 paradigm may be enabling a new type of governance, global in scope.
Bevir, Mark. (2012). Governance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dictionary by Merriam-Webster. (2019). Merriam-Webster. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/. [Accessed 12 August 2019].