As a result, more and more knowledge work will become as modular as physical work. Programmers will enjoy the freedom to step in and out of projects as they wish. But their work will also be coordinated, evaluated, and compensated by algorithms and protocols.

On the other hand, blockchains make it easy to assign property rights at a granular level (ownership of single lines of code) and automatically compensate the owners of said rights whenever their "assets" are being used.

For the company:The labor/ creator lets themselves be tracked, measured, and optimized, and the company gets to keep a copy of that data to run its business and maintain the relationship with the laborer for the long term. This is giving up some privacy for the laborer.

Ownership, via employee stock option plans, has been a powerful tool for incentivizing talented people to dedicate their skills to building startups in Silicon Valley. While this model has been extremely successful, it hasn’t been accessible to all, constrained by geography and legacy financial infrastructure, among other factors. One result is tha... See more