Self-Regulation and Code of Conduct in the Community: Four Pilots on Utilising Decentralisation Technologies for Improving Sustainability and Collective Governance

Decentralisation technologies, such as those based on blockchain, provide exciting possibilities to coordinate cooperative actions and contributions of independent actors in favour of more sustainable operations. These technologies offer means to operationalise and define rules for the code of conduct for community members and create incentive mechanisms to motivate self-regulation among individuals. However, while such technologies add ways to increase alignment and avoid selfish actions, they are often perceived as technologically complex and challenging to comprehend and rarely utilised in solving collective, practical problems. We challenge this notion based on four practical pilot experiments utilising novel decentralisation technology to engage community members toward more sustainable operations for collective benefits. The four pilots demonstrate how decentralisation technology can support highly different communities to better attain their goals: “Tracey” provides reliable catch and trade data on tuna fishing; “Barcelona Green Shops” encourages more sustainable shopping behaviour; “Food Futures” measures the environmental sustainability of meal choices; “Streamr Community” incentivises open-source software development. All the pilots have made the solution easy to approach for the intended audience, greatly simplifying the complexity related to the technological protocols. These successes illustrate how translation practices facilitate self-regulation and a shared code of conduct for the community. The evidence and insights drawn from these pilots pave the way toward more sustainable and inclusive business models. We explain how effective translation of digital solutions is highly impactful in reducing social struggles on a global scale. We highlight why the formalised protocols enable effective self-regulation and align actions to benefit the community. Our work illustrates how decentralisation technologies can foster sustainable, collective governance for a more prosperous future for partnerships, people, and the planet.