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Amsterdam Center for International Law Amsterdam Center for International Law

Smartphone documentary about blockchain technology

22 June 2022

‘With the development of advanced digital technologies, distrust is also growing’, concludes researcher Balázs Bodó. He collaborated on the innovative smartphone documentary about trust in digital technologies and the role of blockchain technology. Questions addressed include how to discern real from fake news and how to increase public trust in COVID vaccines.

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. This is certainly true of the trust people have in digital technologies. In the smartphone documentary Trust in the Blockchain Society experts from the UvA’s Amsterdam Law School and elsewhere discuss pressing issues surrounding technology, trust and distrust.

Distrust

Balázs Bodó is a principal researcher at the Blockchain and Society Policy Research Lab of the Institute for Information Law (IViR). In the documentary, he talks to several international and local experts, including former broker and journalist Brett Scott, internet pioneer Marleen Stikker, cryptographer Jaromil and crypto-economist Shermin Voshmgir.

‘With the development of advanced digital technologies, distrust is also growing’, says researcher Balázs Bodó. ‘How do you tell real news from fake news? Can we trust the digital tracing apps and vaccine passports? How do we build trust in COVID vaccines? Trust seems to be in a state of crisis.’ In any case, Bodó believes there are good reasons not to just trust everything. ‘Services and businesses are often opaque, highly automated and hardly regulated foreign private entities with their own economic, political, social and cultural agendas.’ 

But certain digital technologies might also help us address this crisis of trust. ‘For example, reputation systems can help us decide whether to trust strangers we meet on e-commerce or sharing platforms. Blockchain systems minimise the need for trust by strictly enforcing the conditions of interactions through cryptography and smart contracts.’

With the development of advanced digital technologies, distrust is also growing Researcher Balázs Bodó

Blockchain and Society Policy Research Lab

The Blockchain and Society Policy Research Lab of the IViR is a research project funded by the Eurpean Research Council that focuses on the social and policy questions surrounding automated, often so-called ‘trustless’ technical infrastructures like smart contracts, distributed ledgers, data intermediaries or self-sovereign identity solutions. These are meant to facilitate social and economic cooperation between strangers but also cause distrust.