An opinion piece published by American online magazine Wired on Feb. 6 has leveled criticisms at the promise of new blockchain-based architectures of trust. The article’s central argument is that trust is not eliminated, but rather displaced, in blockchain systems — principally from institutions and social conventions onto technology.
The article’s author, Bruce Schneier, alleges that this techno-maximalism overlooks both the residual trust in tech systems whose governance remains irreducibly human, as well as the frequent — and often opaque — fallibility of the technology itself.