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Iain Barclay

Research student,

Overview

I'm interested in understanding how blockchain technology can be applied to large-scale cooperative projects, so that organisations are able to demonstrate transparency in the sources of their data, and participants are better motivated to contribute and able to receive fair rewards for their efforts.

Best known for its underpinning of crypto-currencies, blockchain technology allows an immutable history of transactions to be recorded, fostering an environment in which peers can interact and cooperate in a decentralised and open environment, without requiring pre-existing trust or permission relationships.

My project looks at large-scale work in creating and maintaining collective intelligence, for example open source software development and AI model training, and aims to identify how blockchain technologies can be used to foster new operating practices. Specific technology areas currently of interest include decentralised identifiers, self-soveregin identity, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) and token curated registries (TCRs).