The Rizomic™ Platform

A White Label Blockchain-Agnostic Plug-and-Play Financial/Asset Enterprise Management System

Christine Satchell James Leftwich Robert Masters Adrian Manning

Abstract Rizomic™ is a system engine with the primary function of connecting real world assets to one or more Blockchains. It does this by allowing users to create their own digital tokens which they can attach a value to then deploy across Blockchain networks. Users can then issue, share, track and trade digitally represented assets and services. Rizomic™ provides a portal between centralized and decentralized environments, simultaneously integrating and incorporating into the Blockchain networks elements such as governance and legislation required by the greater state and political environments within which societies operate. Rizomic™ recognizes and seeks to bridge the chasm socially, culturally and politically, between Blockchain technologies and the mechanisms of the centralized world on the premise that we are better together. This process is mutually beneficial; blockchain technology provides trust, efficiency and speed to the mechanics of day-to-day financial systems and Fiat flows, while the ability to engage with pre-existing, centralized systems provides greater confidence in the sustainability of the cryptocurrency market and encourages non - users of digital currency to enter the market.

“Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what

we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a

world of connections — and it matters which ones

get made and unmade.”

- Donna Haraway [1]

SUMMARY Functionality

Rizomic™ is a blockchain-agnostic asset and transaction management system (Enterprise Management System – EMS) working across multiple existing blockchain protocols. The system architecture is designed for and exists at a higher level than the base blockchains, cryptocurrencies and token [2] models. It is an

enterprise platform aimed at meeting the needs and requirements in a business context. It has the ability to adaptively support a wide range of regulatory and control models. This flexibility allows the enterprise using it to configure it for necessary and beneficial regulation or control, including and incentivizing emergent decentralized and distributed models. Philosophy

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto coupled function with ideology to produce the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. A decentralized, non-hierarchical currency which not only revolutionized the way in which money was exchanged, but challenged the way in which money itself was perceived [3]. At a time when technology was characterized by concerns with

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organizational efficiency, enhancing social mobility and reducing programs to lightweight smartphone apps, Bitcoin brought with it a truly transformative application for informing and affecting users relationship with technology. It’s own embedded philosophy.

Bitcoin is supposed to be about something more

than just money. There is an ideology that is

part of the Bitcoin service; one can not help but

download it along with the electronic wallet

[4].

Eight years on, the deeply ideological nature of the technology challenges those developing blockchain systems to consider implications that extend beyond traditional usability concerns. One of our goals is to ensure that our platforms are developed with a critical awareness of the role the technology plays in shaping the world in which we live. Cryptocurrencies, tokens and blockchains represent more than a technology, it is a technology deeply embedded with a philosophy. An awareness of the social, cultural and political implications of designing systems in this space is important to ensure a result that embodies an optimized beneficial human-centered cooperative and synergized system rather than a rigid, limited and ultimately dystopian automated machine state. Rizomic: Functionality + Philosophy

Rizomic provides businesses and enterprise a versatile and easily adaptable multi-blockchain platform, producing an auxiliary decentralized environment for quick, seamless and trusted exchanges, while simultaneously integrating with the wider system of fiat structures within which global finance flows operate. In combining and integrating the traditional finance world’s infrastructure with the new emergent digital economy, Rizomic optimizes cost, speed, reliability, security and ultimately provides greater and more confident sustainability.

From a philosophical perspective, this is important because it addresses a growing tension - socially, culturally and politically, between the philosophy behind many of the leading proponent of Blockchain technology and the everyday mechanisms of the traditional financial world. Blue Chip Vision and the Rizomic platform were created to operate on the core philosophical premise and mission that we are better and stronger together. With the Rizomic platform, Blue Chip Vision proposes a way forward that allows for a smooth transition to decentralized platforms while allowing the system to integrate and incorporate elements such as governance and legislation required by the greater state and political environments within which societies operate. From a paradigmatic perspective, the predominant global informational and financial technologies and infrastructures embody the centralized and comparatively rigid attributes of the traditional Western mechanical paradigm [5]. Numerous writers have pointed to the phenomenon of a fundamental shift in paradigms that is occurring throughout many Western fields of philosophy, science, engineering and architecture, from a historic mechanical paradigm to one that is more biomimetic [6], or biological in its complexity and expression. Software, and our global infrastructure of information architecture and systems are no less subject to this same shift. Complexity theory [7] and Complex adaptive organizations also emerged as studies of complexity systems in the fields of strategic management and organizational studies. In the 1960s Complexity was an interdisciplinary theory that emerged from the field of systems theory. Ideas and observations in research within the natural sciences were used to examine the aspects of uncertainty and non-linearity in complex systems. Complexity theory proposed that while systems are complex and unpredictable, their

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behavior is also constrained by rules that generate order. Complexity theory has applicability in a wide range of other fields as well, including organizations and management strategy. This is of particular value to enterprises that must develop strategies to adapt in ways to manage growth, efficiency, costs, sustainability, and security amidst environments and conditions that are themselves complex and unpredictable. Complexity theory defines organizations and enterprises as interacting collections of strategies and structures, a model the Rizomic platform extrapolated, applied and embodied to more effectively encompass enterprise infrastructures such asset, data and transactional management systems and software platforms. These enterprise digital infrastructures are also naturally complex, being extensive and dynamic networks of interactions and transactions. In order to be sufficiently flexible and efficiently adaptive, each element and its collective behavior must self-organize and adapt to corresponding and change-initiating events or collections of events in the greater environment or higher-level systems that the enterprise’s own systems are dependent upon. Some generalized criticisms of capitalism are essentially criticism of the global financial system’s centralized, mechanistic and rigid infrastructural systems. Such systems are generally built, as opposed to more naturally grown. Such systems often employ centralized gatekeepers and mediating and facilitating middlemen players that wield great, often subjective, power. As such, they can often be seen as being like the mythological trolls that live beneath bridges and prevent or control those attempting to cross their bridge. These centralized elements, both people and institutionalized steps, also add time and latency to many types of individual transactions and necessary adaptive change to overall systems. One need not ascribe these rigid, centralized and subjectively controlling qualities as having their

origins in bad faith or ill intent, as many of the structures have been put in place specifically to prevent fraud, criminal misuse and abuse and other potential risks and damage to the systems, in both financial value as well as universal trust and confidence, such as Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes and regulations. But even so, the core architectural paradigms that underlie these traditional information and transactional systems and institutions give rise to problematic bottlenecks and uneven power and privilege, which in turn structurally limit a greater potential equitable access to capital for a larger and more diverse group of individuals and enterprises. The current shift from traditional double-entry accounting, intermediating parties and clearing houses, and centralized controlling authorities to the new decentralized models of distributed hyperledger accounting and transaction facilitation is part of a larger macro-level paradigmatic shift occurring across many fields, from science to systems engineering and beyond. The underlying paradigm is undergoing an evolutionary transformation from the historical centralized mechanistic paradigm to an emergent distributed biological or biomimetic paradigm. The world is shifting from modeling and designing things as a machine with deterministic linear behaviors, capabilities and outcomes to modeling things as a biosphere composed of dynamically flexible and adaptive subsystems that are controlled and constrained by interrelational rule bases. This shift from the machine paradigm to the biosphere paradigm does not necessarily preclude undesired or even dystopian outcomes among new decentralized, distributed and adaptive technologies, systems and applications within the new paradigm. One need only to examine the incredibly complex natural biosphere such as the Amazonian rainforest to see that while not a machine or mechanistic, it nevertheless contains all manners of poisons, traps, defenses, fangs, claws, stingers, thorns, niche adaptations,

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camouflage, deception, hyper-competitive strategies and symbiotic alliances. So as the new era of decentralized and distributed models and systems leads to an increasingly complex computational biosphere of technologies, systems, autonomous or semi-autonomous agents and more, it will be necessary and desirable to give careful thought and extensive modeled simulations and testing in order to sufficiently examine and understand the nature of the potentially emergent outcomes that particular designs or configurations will give rise to. It will be incumbent upon architects and engineers to understand, as best they can, how their designs at the component and system level will affect emergent outcomes once deployed. These emergent outcomes will have impacts in multiple dimensions, potentially including psychological, emotional, social, political and economic. These will involve individuals, groups and society as a whole. The goal must be to maximize positive emergent outcomes, such as fairness, balance, growth, improvement and equality in all of those dimensions and minimize negative outcomes, such as domination, imbalances, injustices, exploitation and abuse. Any possible future that we move our informational and transactional computing and accounting infrastructures to, even if fundamentally different and decentralized from our traditional centralized models, will still require ongoing and never ending vigilance, responsive and proactive design, and collaborative refinement and improvement in order to establish, maintain and protect fairness, security, confidence and optimized equitable access and benefits to all. In other words, if we don’t want a wild jungle, we must create, plant, tend and nurture a fertile garden. Realizing, accepting and preparing for this new decentralized and rhizomatic paradigm and world, the Rizomic platform has positioned itself to continually develop and grow to bridge the existing traditional enterprise and financial world with an ever-expanding number of substrate

technologies, such as blockchains as well as the newly emergent alternatives, such as the distributed consensus-based ledger and accounting technology, Hashgraph [8]. The Rizomic platform envisions a future world where the asset, financial and transactional systems of enterprise, as well as the global financial and transactional system itself, are no longer limited to the slow, rigid and inefficiently responsive, elite gatekeeper-controlled and discriminatingly limited, and ultimately unjust machine model of the past. The Rizomic platform was conceived and is being continuously developed to usher in a world where the asset, financial and transactional systems of enterprise, as well as the global financial and transactional system itself are more like a garden. Where the old systems were slowly and expensively built, the Rizomic platform supports a world where supporting systems can be much more quickly, efficiently and adaptively grown. It foresees embodying necessary oversight and regulation within systems that themselves are distributed and decentralized, and hence more equitable and fair. One might picture the old traditional mechanistic model as a centralized and built prison of cells, with its gatekeepers as prison guards ruling over its users as prisoners with very limited volition or say, and who are limited to the pre-defined identities or models dictated by the centralized elite. In this model, everything and everyone must conform to the limited, often one-size-fits-all constraints of the centralized institution and system. In order to optimize controllability, the mechanistic model favors and often requires limiting diversity and flexibility. Hence the mechanistic models rigidity and inherent difficulty and inefficiency in adapting to diverse, different new or changing needs. The same limitations apply to the mechanistic models structural ability to accommodate a correspondingly diverse range of individuals, with different, new or changing needs and requirements. The old centralized mechanistic system is brittle and unresponsive to these kinds of real world needs, and so inevitably creates

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inequities, imbalances, discriminatory injustices and an unnecessarily lopsided distribution of haves and have nots. In great contrast, the new innovative vision of the Rizomic platform is that of a diverse and fertile garden, where accepted and necessary regulation has been envisioned as embodied in a more nurturing and adaptive form of collective and distributed gardeners. Instead of the mechanistic models punitive limitations and requirements, this model encourages management models that accommodate diversity acceptance and valuing, and supports necessary intervention in manners that more resemble tending, minor pruning, occasional weeding and watering, and do so by way of systems that are themselves distributed and decentralized. Picture a community of thoughtful and caring gardeners, instead of regiment of stern regulatory gatekeepers and prison guards. In this garden model a much greater diversity of individuals, groups and enterprises will have much greater opportunities to participate, grow and flourish. Historically disadvantaged groups who have experienced significant difficulties and obstacles in accessing capital and financing will have much greater and expanded access to opportunities through secure and managed crowd-sourced models. In the distributed garden model that Blue Chip Vision is working to bring about, these historically disadvantaged groups will have greater access to financing than the more limited models of friends and family, venture capital and angel funding. Venture capitalists, while innovative for their time, have proven inadequate in transferring needed capital to a much more diverse and varied range of people. Even models such as incubators, which have indeed endeavored to provide a more nurturing environment for startup companies and organizations with comprehensive support services, mentoring, networking opportunities and more have not been able to keep up with and accommodate the full demand of the world’s

diverse aspiring and potential entrepreneurs. A much more distributed and decentralized model is imperative. Furthermore, beyond the issue of new and small-scale startups and entrepreneurs is the much larger and global issue of the unbanked and financially underserved. Unbanked and financially underserved populations throughout the developing world, as well as in less affluent parts of the developed world, will have greatly increased opportunities to participate in improved transactional systems, allowing more wealth and prosperity to be grown from the bottom up, as well as more efficient and corruption-proof means to transfer wealth from the developed world directly to them, rather than it being filtered and pilfered by corrupt go-between entities. Blue Chip Vision™ as an organization, with the Rizomic platform as one of its core underlying technology platforms, envisions these new decentralized models and their applications, such as ICOmint™ that licenses the Rizomic™ platform technology, as an important enabling component in bringing about this new, more complex and diverse global garden model. SYSTEM DESIGN

Core Technological and Applicational Challenges

As blockchain models proliferated and grew, specific technological and applicational challenges emerged that Rizomic was developed to address. Following the original Bitcoin blockchain other blockchains and associated models followed such as Ethereum, Litecoin and others. These offered different blockchain models and protocols with aims of improving or remedying perceived limitations or problems in the original Bitcoin blockchain mode. This evolution has progressed in recent years leading to a highly fragmented blockchain landscape.

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For companies looking for enterprise solutions that will allow them to utilize the many capabilities and benefits of blockchain technology, this fragmentation presents a significant challenge. Different blockchain protocols differ in cost, speed, reliability and security, and these considerations must be taken into account by any company that wants to utilize blockchain technology to track and exchange their wide range of assets, from currencies, loans, inventory, contracts and more. This significant dilemma for enterprise called for a solution in the form of a platform that could provide adaptive flexibility, resilience in the face of emergent problems or failures in particular blockchains, and remove the burden of having to

commit all of a company’s blockchain strategy to a single blockchain or hyperledger. At the same time such a platform could relieve companies from having to engage with the blockchain protocols themselves individually, and instead interact with a simpler higher level interface focusing on their assets and transactions in a simpler and standardized manner. Such a platform solution would bring benefits of greater flexibility, reduced risk and lowered personnel costs. Solving this enterprise dilemma and developing such a blockchain-agnostic plug-and-play platform is a goal that Blue Chip Vision set in 2015, resulting in Rizomic™.

Figure 1: Overview of the Rizomic™ Enterprise Management System (EMS) Platform

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System Principles

● Rizomic is a system that allows users to easily and seamlessly access a range of blockchain platforms.

● Rizomic allows end users to issue, share, track and trade digitally represented assets and services.

● Rizomic supports a process where users can attach any value to any particular token, which in turn, can be placed on a growing list of Blockchain networks.

● Rizomic’s support for multiple blockchain

networks also means that if one becomes unusable or undesirable others can be immediately implemented in its place.

System Characteristics

The Rizomic system is characterized by the following features: Agnostic

The Rizomic system architecture is technologically blockchain agnostic in that it provides the freedom of interoperability across blockchain networks. Users can freely traverse blockchains including, for example, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Rizomic is also contextually agnostic allowing the use of blockchain applications across a range of business practices and processes. Immutable

Data on the Rizomic system is immutable. It cannot be manipulated or altered which in turn provides stability, transparency and accountability. This integrity and visibility enhances business processes and transactions by greatly boosting trustability.

Many business transactions require an

immutable, agreed upon log and this is exactly

what blockchains can provide [9].

White Label

Rizomic is designed as a “white label” platform, allowing companies to rebrand it as their own product for internal or external business uses. As such Rizomic provides standardized core functionality while allowing companies to concentrate on their own core business and service value propositions. The blockchain agnostic nature of Rizomic meets key User Experience (UX) objectives for the successful adoption of White Label products [10] by allowing business objectives, user goals and technology parameters to be synchronized. Branding and functional customization is integrated deeply into the Rizomic system yielding superior flexibility and adaptability while retaining core technological standardization and coherency. Regulatory

Rizomic is designed to support and ensure compliance with regulatory systems and processes no matter where in the world the business utilizing the platform is operating from. It does this through a mechanism that allows state-mandated legislation and governance to be embedded within the Rizomic platform. This is significant in that it allows the controls of pre-existing infrastructures to be incorporated into decentralized spaces. Furthermore, the Rizomic model is highly adaptable which means it can also support new emerging forms of regulation as it emerges to reflect the needs of this rapidly evolving digital environment.

Because they lack a central point of control,

these networks, applications and organizations

require new distributed governance systems to

coordinate on matters such as interoperability,

privacy and security, in a collaborative

manner…. “We need to figure out new

decentralized governance systems that can be

easily deployed on top of these decentralized

infrastructures [11].

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TECHNICAL OVERVIEW OF THE RIZOMIC PLATFORM SYSTEM A Micro-service Architecture

The Rizomic platform is designed with a micro-services architecture approach. As a result, the form of the Rizomic platform is that of a collection of small, inter-connected services, each performing a distinct task. This architecture encourages the separation of concerns and lends itself to horizontal scaling and parallel processing. Services are separated into distinct security and permission groups with encrypted internal

communication between services where applicable. This approach to security is distinct to the “egg-shell” approach associated with monolithic applications where once the ``shell'' is cracked, all parts of the application are vulnerable. As such, the Rizomic platform has been designed to offer absolute maximum security. A high-level schematic of the Rizomic platform’s internal components is given in Figure 2. This demonstrates how the subcomponents interface and connect to form the internal API component of the platform.

Figure 2: Schematic of the Rizomic™ Platform’s internal components, demonstrating how the subcomponents interface and connect to form the internal API component of the platform.

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Signing Service

Key-management is always a high concern when dealing with blockchain systems. The Rizomic platform allows users to manage their own keys, but optionally provides users with its internal key management system. The signing-service in this model, deals specifically with this aspect of the system. It manages users private keys and applies cryptographic signatures to transactions which are requested from the Rizomic API. The signing service is the ultimate authority as to which transactions should be signed and requested on the blockchain, as it is the single store of cryptographic private keys. It authenticates each external service and signs (or declines to sign) transactions based upon the authority of the external service. Each blockchain maintains its own purpose-built signing service. Action Handlers

The action handler is a service which accepts messages from “upstream” services and forms them into transactions for inclusion in a block. Action handlers are purpose-built for each blockchain and form a layer of abstraction between the upstream services and the blockchain. This allows for a consistent data model for upstream services which does not necessarily need to take into account the technical specifics of each individual blockchain. Queuing Service

This is a fundamental component of the system which manages the message delivery between all the action handler services. The messaging service provides routing, load-balancing and redelivery if a service (or the messaging system itself) experiences downtime. A single, canonical messaging service is implemented

which natively supports massive horizontal scaling. Blockchain Protocols

Although the Rizomic platform is capable of implementing a wide range of blockchain protocols, the currently implemented protocols are Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Bitcoin protocol, uses the open assets protocol (OAP) [12] through the use of the .NET Bitcoin library [13]. This enables what are known as “colour-coins” on the bitcoin blockchain through carefully constructed bitcoin transactions. Each colour coin represents a particular Rizomic asset on the bitcoin blockchain. The Ethereum implementation uses a Token factory contract which generates a new ERC20 [14] compliant smart contract for each new issuance of a token/asset. The token factory is capable of creating ERC20 compliant tokens that can be either continuously minted by the issuer of the token (i.e an unlimited supply token) or fixed supply tokens which cannot be created or destroyed. Each type of token maintains its own smart contract, that users can interact with independently of the Rizomic platform, via direct access to the Ethereum blockchain. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BITCOIN AND SYSTEM DESIGN

Do Artifacts Have Politics?

One of the defining characteristics of our engagement with technology is the potential for new developments to transform the way we live our lives. As Langdon Winner proposed in his seminal article Do Artifacts Have Politics? “The

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things we call ‘technologies’ are a way of building order in the world.” [15]. In the 1990s, The Internet collapsed time and space, eroded the boundaries between content producer and content consumer, and blurred the real with the virtual experience [16]. In the early Twenty First Century, the mobile phone challenged traditional concepts of time and commitment, and ushered in a new era of spontaneity [17]. Today, the heralded technology is the coupling of functionality and ideology at the centre of Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision for society which has resulted in blockchain networks. They bring with them a push towards decentralization and erode the power held by financial institutions. In this way, blockchain technology not only challenges the ways in which capital flows, it has the potential to fundamentally disrupt the nature and power of Capitalism’s traditional institutions. It can be seen that artefacts can and do have politics and highlights the importance of understanding the power of the systems we are building. Theoretical Frameworks: The Rhizome

Theoretical and philosophical frameworks are helpful for connecting the release of a technological system with the outcomes of user interactions [18][19]. The process of building systems cannot be driven solely by what is technically achievable. Rather, the digital architecture must be considered alongside an understanding of the cultural practices within which the technology will operate, as well as its role as part of political and institutional power structures. As Palen and Dourish argue, “What is important is not what the technology does, but rather how it fits into cultural practice [20]”. Blockchain produces a unique digital space, one that is constantly being redefined by those who design, build, maintain, and use it. In A Thousand

Plateaus , theorists Deleuze and Guattari [21] note the importance of exploring the potential utopian and dystopian outcomes of systems that break with the conventions of capitalism. They provide the metaphor of the Rhizome to help explain the complex relationships and ever shifting power structures that emerge when decentralized spaces emerge from centralized environments. Rhizome Theory

In botany and dendrology, a rhizome, from the Ancient Greek word "rhízōma," meaning "mass of roots", is a stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstocks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow perpendicular to the force of gravity. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards. If a rhizome is separated each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. A Thousand Plateaus , by theorists Deleuze and Guattari provides the metaphor of the Rhizome. Originally, a political science text intended to challenge the dominance of centralized Capitalist structures, the Rhizome is seen by cyber theorists as providing an ideal model for decentralized digital space. Four Qualities of Decentralized Space

The Rhizome embodies four properties that characterise a successful decentralized space. This makes a helpful framework for critiquing the space generated by the Rizomic platform system architecture. It can be seen that the four characteristics map directly onto the properties of the Rizomic engine.

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1) Decentralized and Non-hierarchical

The Rhizome is a decentralized non-hierarchical system that rejects the tightly enforced, and immovable hierarchy that privileged only those at the top.

Rizomic

The centralized model was used for ensuring legitimacy, legality and order in the traditional banking sector. However, centralized systems gave rise to elitist control, which itself has negative social consequences such as favoring access to capital and finance to some while systematically denying similar access to others. The Rizomic™ engine powers a digital ecosystem of ICOmint™ and BASLx™ that reject the tightly enforced, and immovable hierarchy that privileges only those at the top.

2) Assigning Rupture

The Rhizomes principle of ‘signifying rupture’ means that while a connection may be severed, a new one will simply spring up in its place. Just as the original root plant of the rhizome does.

Rizomic

Rizomic’s system architecture maps seamlessly onto this principle of assigning rupture. Rizomic is blockchain agnostic providing the freedom of interoperability across blockchain networks. Users can traverse Blockchains including, for example, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. This means if one network becomes inaccessible, others can be implemented in its place.

3) Nomadic Movement

The Rhizomic space is inhabited by the nomad who is able to freely traverse and connect in any direction, free from the restrictions of hierarchical power structures. Rizomic

This relates to both the user experience and the system functionality of Rizomic. From a UX point of view users are now free to engage with

technology to reclaim control over their finances, operating with a ‘push not pull’ paradigm that puts them in control of their money. From a functionality point of view, as discussed in the previous point, access to Rizomic’s technologically agnostic platform give the freedom of network interoperability.

4) Challenges Power Relations

The Rhizome relates to the internal workings of a decentralized system while simultaneously grounding it within the power relationships that underpin flows of Capitalism.

The application of theoretical Rhizome principles to the design of the Rizomic system engine resulted in a technology that allowed for more democratic end user experience. The Rizomic system powers blockchain networks and platforms producing a decentralized environment for quick and seamless exchanges, while simultaneously integrating with the wider system of Fiat structures within which global finance flows operate. Centralized & Decentralized Perspectives

Blockchain technology was born as the underlying nervous system of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2009. Even though blockchain was first introduced in the digital currency space, its applications have evolved to wider environments. For example IOTA [22] provides coherency and consistency to the currently messy and disjointed Internet of Things space, allowing everyday objects to become integrated into the Tangle network, where they can freely and seamlessly interact with each other, their environment, and us. The type of interactions and transactions generated by blockchain protocols are inherently decentralized, non-hierarchical and free from the

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built-in centralized and elitist gatekeeping constraints of the traditional global financial infrastructure. Decentralized exchanges occur without the time and cost overhead of the traditional mechanistic and centralized regulatory processes and the need for an intermediary middleman facilitator. While an understandable necessity in the traditional centralized model for ensuring legitimacy, legality and order, such centralized systems also naturally give rise to elitist control, which itself has negative social consequences such as favoring access to capital and finance to some while systematically denying similar access to others. Recently, it has become apparent that blockchain technology is rapidly transcending Bitcoin’s initial functionality as a purely digital currency platform. For example, Civic [23] creates a space where digital identity can be constructed and securely managed by the user. New blockchain networks are not only exploding in numbers, they are scaling up to become major digital entities, supporting and sustaining rapid technological and social change. This revolutionary potential of blockchain models has garnered much attention, in part because the Blockchain narrative positions its technical affordances within the positive and expanded political, cultural and social transformations they might bring about [24]. For example, traditional elite and centralized gatekeepers have failed both historically and in their present form to equitably make capital and financing available for historically disempowered and inadequately connected social groups. This represented, for many minority groups, difficulty accessing capital and financing for business compared to access enjoyed by the limited and

elite groups that have been most often supported and advanced by traditional financial institutions and venture capitalists. In offering secure, transparent and more distributed and decentralized model for accounting and transactions, blockchain technology offers a new and fundamentally more powerful way to liberate and empower traditionally disempowered groups that want to grow and participate in building companies, ideas and value in the world. Yet blockchain technology does not exist in a self-contained cryptocurrency bubble. It operates as a decentralized system within the larger system of the centralized forces and constraints of the traditional global financial infrastructure. The reconciliation of these forces is an important consideration for those designing systems in the blockchain space in order to ensure that a shift towards equality does not become thwarted or co-opted by the agendas of the traditional elitist gatekeepers in the existing global financial world.

The vision of freedom that underpins Bitcoin 2.0

tech is one that neglects the power that capital

holds over us. In neglecting this power, I claim

that this technology might be far more dystopian

than we comprehend, making possible societies

that are commodities all the way down [25].

Technological innovation can either push the divide between or bring about the possibility of what Castells calls an ‘incorporative blockchain’ [26]. That not only eases the pain caused by financial institutions, it lends its technical capabilities to those working within the rotating cogs of day-to-day capitalism and makes their life more efficient and streamlined. It is always helpful to understand these concepts in light of those who are actively engaged with the technology. So we turned to Bitcoin Powwow a cutting edge group of Bitcoin and Blockchain

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experts where participants were discussing this issue:

I think of it this way, everyday I use Google

hangout and Skype for work, these are

centralized products with more than a decade of

proven record, but still we have issues from time

to time, my point is not everything should be over

the blockchain, not everything should be

decentralized.

...with that being said, a platform that brings a

combination of trust minimized trade,

decentralized contract execution, and asset

backed token issuance to public blockchains will

be valuable. [27]

Design Implications

Bitcoin’s ideology is grounded in a genuine desire to make the world a better place. The development and deployment of blockchain technologies carry with them a responsibility to understand the implications and potential uses and misuses of the networks being launched into the world. Rizomic™, along with BASLx™ and ICOmint™, supports a digital economy where centralized and decentralized processes have the potential to work in a way that is mutually beneficial. 1. Blockchain technology lends efficiency, trust & transparency to the day-to-day mechanisms of capitalism. Examples include: 'push versus pull' financial management protocols that put users, rather than banks, in control of their money. Furthermore, the process of accessing funding is transformed, enabling individuals and groups not traditionally given readily available access, to finally have access to new liquidity pools. 2. Access to traditional markets provides bitcoin with stability and longevity. An example is BASLx’s model for a liquidity pool providing funding for the manufacturing of everyday goods. This coupling of virtual currency with tangible

real world investments helps those outside the bitcoin community have confidence investing and is a significant step forward in growing the cryptocurrency market. Rizomic forms a crucial and necessary bridge for the enterprise between the historically rigid, centralized and mechanistically built paradigm and the new emergent flexible, distributed and biomimicking paradigm of the garden. Where the old world had elitist gatekeepers and fixed and discriminatory criteria for access, the new world that Rizomic brings offers a fertile ground for supporting a more distributed and fairer access to capital, and guidance and trustability through a superior and more sophisticated “gardener” method of regulation and nurturing control. Rizomic allows companies to experience a smooth transition from the tightly controlled centralized systems to the smooth decentralized space of blockchain networks. Rather than abandon governance, key regulatory and governance functionalities can be embodied in the system itself. This produces a mutually beneficial continuity between the two worlds, ensuring the longevity of the platform, and providing a compelling case for those not yet in the cryptocurrency space to get on-board.

The platforms that will win will be the ones that

can fulfil both the operational and the governance

requirements of a range of applications [18]

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Conclusion

Blockchain technology in less than ten years has created what can best be described as a whole new Internet, casting an increasingly wide digital layer over the world. Rizomic contributes to this growing network, first, in its own right, by providing users with access to a fairer and faster digital economy, but also, as the engine for our digital ecosystem – the Blue Chip Vision of blockchain technologies including ICOmint™ Cellflock™ and BASLx™. References [1] Haraway, Donna Jeanne: “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, Article: “Simans, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature” (Routledge. ISBN 0415903866, 1991), pp.149-181; https://web.archive.org/web/20120214194015/http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html [2] Article: “Coins, Tokens & Altcoins: What’s the Difference”: Site: MasterTheCrypto; https://masterthecrypto.com/differences-between-cryptocurrency-coins-and-tokens/ [3] Nakamoto, Satoshi. “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, Subject: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper (Newsgroup: gmane.comp.encryption.general, October 31, 2008); https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf [4] 1. Rothstein, A. Bitcoin and the Speculative Anarchist. Rhizome Blog. 2014 https://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/feb/18/bitcoin-and-speculative-anarchist/ [5] Article: “Mechanistic paradigm”: Wikipedia; https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanistic_paradigm [6] Vincent, Julian F.V.; Bogatyreva, Olga A.; Bogatyrev, Nikolaj R.; Bowyer, Adrian; Pahl, Anja-Karina (21 August 2006). "Biomimetics: its practice and theory" . Journal of The Royal Society Interface. 3 (9): 471–482. http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/471.short

[7] Levy, D. L. 2000. “Applications and Limitations of Complexity Theory in Organization Theory and Strategy.” Public Administration and Public Policy. books.google.com. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.725.7357&rep=rep1&type=pdf [8] Website: “Hashgraph.com”: https://hashgraph.com/ [9] Merlicek, R. “Beyond Bitcoin: what emerging Blockchain technology means for your organisation”, (The Australian / Business Review; July 5, 2017); http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/opinion [10] Umathay, Ashwin and Sinha, Aunindra Kumar “User Experience Strategy for white labeling a software product”, Proceedings of the 8th Indian Conference on Human Computer Interaction(IHCI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 102-110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3014362.3014374 [11] Tapscott, Don and Tapscott, Alex “Realizing the Potential of Blockchain A Multistakeholder Approach to the Stewardship of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies”, World Economic Forum 91-93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_Potential_Blockchain.pdf [12] Flavien Charlon, “Open Assets Procotcol (OAP/1.0)”, December 12, 2013; https://github.com/OpenAssets/open-assets-protocol/blob/master/specification.mediawiki [13] Metaco, S.A. “NBitcoin”; https://github.com/MetacoSA/NBitcoin [14] Vogelsteller, Fabian. “ERC-20 Token Standard”, November 19, 2015; https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md [15] Winner, Langdon. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Winter 1980). Reprinted in The Social Shaping of Technology, edited by Donald A. MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (London: Open University Press, 1985; second edition 1999). https://transitiontech.ca/pdf/Winner-Do-Artifacts-Have-Politics-1980.pdf [16] Castells, M. “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective” (MIT Technology Review.

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September 8, 2014) https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530566/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/ [17] Ito, M. and Okabe, B. Technosocial Situations. In Ito, M., Okabe, D., and Matsuda, M. Eds., “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/personal-portable-pedestrian [18] Satchell, C. “Cultural theory and real world design: Dystopian and Utopian Outcomes.” CHI 2008. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1357303 [19] Suchman, Lucy A. “Plans and Situated Actions: The problem of human-machine communication.” ISL-6 Corporate Accession P85-00005 (Xerox PARC, February 1985). http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/ISL-6_Plans_and_Situated_Actions.pdf [20] Dourish, P. Palen, L. Unpacking "privacy" for a networked world, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642635] https://dourish.com/~dourishc/publications/2003/chi2003-privacy.pdf [21] Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980. “A Thousand Plateaus.” Trans. Brian Massumi. (London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980). Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-7694-5. http://projectlamar.com/media/A-Thousand-Plateaus.pdf [22] Popov,S. “The Tangle.” (IOTA.org – October 1, 2017) Version 1.3 https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf [23] “Civic Whitepaper” (Civic Technologies 2017.) https://tokensale.civic.com/CivicTokenSaleWhitePaper.pdf [24] Karlstrøm, H. “Do libertarians dream of electric coins? The material embeddedness of Bitcoin.” Distinktion: (Journal of Social Theory Vol. 15 , Iss. 1,2014) https://archive.org/stream/DoLibertariansDreamOfElectricCoinsTheMaterialEmbeddednessOfBitcoin/Do libertarians dream of electric coins? The material embeddedness of Bitcoin_djvu.txt

[25] Garrod, J. “The Real World of the Decentralized Autonomous Society.” tripleC 14(1): (62-77, 2016) http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/692/776 [26] Castells, M. “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective.” (MIT Technology Review. September 8, 2014) https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/article/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/?utm_source=views&utm_medium=article07&utm_content=Internet-society [27] WhatsApp: Bitcoin Powwow, Thread: “Altcoin Powwow.” (Private Invitation-Only Blockchain-related Forum; Comment by “Omar.” September 17, 2017) https://www.whatsapp.com/

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