Blockchain Revolution

Chapter 4: Re-architecting the Firm: The Core and the Edges
1
. Interview with Joe Lubin, July 13, 2015.
2
. Companies like Apple and Spotify will be able to use the new platform as well. The goal is that it will be owned
by many entities in the music industry, especially artists. It will likely be easier to earn tokens if you create
content than if you just resell someone else’s content.
3
. https://slack.com/is.
4
. https://github.com.
5
. Coase wrote: “A firm has a role to play in the economic system if . . . [t]ransactions can be organized within the
firm at less cost than if the same transactions were carried out through the market. The limit to the size of the
firm [is reached] when the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm [exceed] the costs of
carrying the same transactions in the market.” As cited in Oliver Williamson and Sydney G. Winter, eds., The
Nature of the Firm (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 90.
6
. Oliver Williamson, “The Theory of the Firm as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract,” The Journal
of Economic Perspectives 16(3) (Summer 2002) 171–95.
7
. Ibid.
8
. Peter Thiel with Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (New York: Crown
Business, 2014).
9
. Lord Wilberforce, The Law of Restrictive Trade Practices and Monopolies (Sweet & Maxwell, 1966), 22.
10
. Interview with Yochai Benkler, August 26, 2015.
11
. John Hagel and John Seely Brown, “Embrace the Edge or Perish,” Bloomberg, November 28, 2007;
www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-11-28/embrace-the-edge-or-perishbusinessweek-business-news-stock-
market-and-financial-advice.
12
. Interview with Vitalik Buterin, September 30, 2015.
13
. Interview with Andreas Antonopoulos, July 20, 2015.
14
. The one exception is the Way Back Machine, which allows you to get a deeper history.
15
. Oliver E. Williamson, “The Theory of the Firm as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract,” Journal
of Economic Perspectives 16 (3), Summer 2002.
16
. Ibid.
17
. Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and
Ownership Structure,” Journal of Financial Economics 305 (1976): 310–11 (arguing that the corporation—or,
more generally, a firm—is a collection of consensual relationships among shareholders, creditors, managers, and

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perhaps others); see also generally, Frank H. Easterbrook and Daniel R. Fischel, The Economic Structure of
Corporate Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
18
. Vitalik Buterin, “Bootstrapping a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation: Part I,” Bitcoin Magazine,
September 19, 2013; https://bitcoinmagazine.com/7050/bootstrapping-a-decentralized-autonomous-corporation-