Collaboration across the broad reach of the university’s research community is central to the effort, said Jaswinder Pal (J.P.) Singh, the director of the Center for the Decentralization of Power through Blockchain Technology, known as the DeCenter.

“We take a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach to issues around blockchains and the decentralization of trust and power,” said Singh, Princeton’s Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Societal Change. “We believe the technology has substantial promise to reshape a number of areas in finance, business and society, but the applications are not yet well understood, and the inherently financialized nature of the area creates new societal implications and risks.”

The white paper, Decentralizing Power Through Blockchains: Key Research Questions Across Disciplines, is available on the center’s website.

Singh said the uses that technologists and entrepreneurs envision for blockchain technology could pose challenges for governments and international organizations.

“For these reasons, resolving some of the most important questions requires interdisciplinary collaboration across computer science, engineering, economics, political science, ethics and other social sciences and the humanities. The goal of this white paper is to identify some of these key questions,” he said. “At a moment when tremendous power has accrued to centralized institutions and corporations, and when citizens around the world are losing trust in their legacy institutions and in one another, it is urgent to understand both the power and limitations of these new technical, economic and social protocols that might distribute power and control differently.”

Blockchain combines cryptography and economic incentives to create a widely distributed record of agreed transactions to achieve trust without the need for central authority. The technology’s most widely known use is to create Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies, but researchers say it also offers potential uses in other areas of business, finance, government and society. Princeton University created the DeCenter to help understand the technology and study its societal and policy impacts.

The DeCenter has involved researchers, such as Matt Weinberg, an associate professor of computer science who is developing new algorithms related to blockchain technology, and Prateek Mittal, a professor of electrical and computer engineering who has studied efforts to create decentralized networks. The center has also turned to experts in philosophy such as Andrew Chignell, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Religion and the University Center for Human Values, who is working to understand the ethical implication of the technology, and in political science, such as Nolan McCarty, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs.

In a series of conferences, the DeCenter has convened top federal regulators, experts in human rights, engineering, public policy, economics and ethics to identify and refine topics for research. A central focus has been to foster collaboration across disciplines to identify key questions and areas that blockchain technology can address.

The Center plans to continue the collaborative work with its next conference scheduled for the spring of 2025.