This book focuses on four key parts of the Blockchain ecosystem, which are the most relevant for financial services executives: Tokenomics and Digital Platforms, Markets, Privacy and the emerging phenomenon of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

Tokenomics and Digital Platforms explores some of the key tenants of distributed ledger technology. Markets introduces important dynamics of both centralized (CeFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). Privacy describes the cryptographic primitives that enable safe, blockchain-based digital transactions, perhaps the most critical infrastructure for global adoption of Web3. The last part of the book on DAOs highlights benefits but also risks and boundaries of the emerging new form of organization.

Each part is introduced in a short chapter to set the stage, followed by the contributions of selected scholars. The chapters explain not only what the phenomenon in question is, but also what the associated opportunities and risks are. They highlight what practitioners can do with the insight their research provides.

All chapters are short, easy-to-read, and tailored to the practitioners who need to understand these topics but whose busy schedule doesn’t allow for enough time to read full academic articles to do so.