  A lot of business and research effort currently deals with the so called
decentralised ledger technology blockchain. Putting it to use carries the
tempting promise to make the intermediaries of social interactions superfluous
and furthermore keep secure track of all interactions. Currently intermediaries
such as banks and notaries are necessary and must be trusted, which creates
great dependencies, as the financial crisis of 2008 painfully demonstrated.
Especially banks and notaries are said to become dispensable as a result of
using the blockchain. But in real-world applications of the blockchain, the
power of central actors does not dissolve, it only shifts to new,
democratically illegitimate, uncontrolled or even uncontrollable power centers.
As interesting as the blockchain technically is, it doesn't efficiently solve
any real-world problem and is no substitute for traditional political processes
or democratic regulation of power. Research efforts investigating the
blockchain should be halted.
