Josh Stark — Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains (2022)
Stark argues that human civilization has two fundamental mechanisms for achieving reliable coordination: atoms (physical properties of objects — a lock, a wall, a gun — coordinate behavior through physical constraint) and institutions (shared agreements and enforcement mechanisms — laws, contracts, social norms — coordinate behavior through social trust and threat of sanction).
Blockchains represent a third mechanism: coordination through mathematical and computational properties that are neither purely physical nor purely social. A smart contract is enforced not by police or social pressure but by the thermodynamic properties of the blockchain — it is computationally expensive to attack, and its execution is guaranteed by the logic of the system itself. This is “hard” coordination in a new sense.
For OM: Stark’s framework clarifies why Ethereum is a genuinely different coordination substrate, not just a faster or cheaper version of existing institutions. The “hardness” property — coordination that doesn’t rely on social trust or physical force — is precisely what makes Ethereum adequate to extitutional needs: it coordinates without coercing.