Why not Tokenize Notre Dame Restoration?

Photo by Adrienn from Pexels

On Monday, April 15, one of the world’s most iconic landmarks, the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame fell victim to a massive blaze that resulted in the collapse of its spire and much of the roof. Fortunately, the firefighters managed to prevent further serious damage but the church is clearly in need of a serious restoration effort.

The shocked world has not lacked responses, with people as diverse as French billionaires, British estate owners and ordinary donors rapidly answering the call of contributing to the restoration. However, in my view, however unlikely the use of crypto in this case may be, it would still be interesting to consider if tokenization could

But, first, let us make several background observations.

• First, ethically speaking, Notre Dame does not belong to the French state, even though, legally, it does. It is instead closer to being unowned by anyone, thus every human could potentially participate in deciding its fate. Notre Dame was built by the Catholic Church but it built it using what was essentially slave labor and forced wealth transfers, and, in my view, no amount of subsequent use can justify its property in the building. The fact that the French state then nationalized it from the church does not make it the legitimate owner, either. It has also shown itself as terribly incompetent at managing and maintaining it. It will still manage the restoration because of the legal mandate but it should ideally refrain from decision-making about it. At the same time, clearly identifying the eligible descendants of those who were forced to contribute to the construction of Notre Dame is not possible, so it can be considered an unowned physical object from the ethical standpoint.
• While French citizens are, on average, perhaps the most concerned about the future of the landmark, there are people all over the world genuinely caring about it, too. It would be right to allow them to not just contribute to the restoration financially but also have an effective voice in how it will be done.
• That said, it is probably better to avoid mere votes so as not to repeat a Boaty McBoatface-style result. Merely, giving one’s opinion in a vote is cheap. Those, who want to have a say should contribute at least a reasonable amount.
• There has already been a lot of disagreement registered about how exactly the roof and spire of the cathedral should be restored, with several modern architects including Norman Foster proposing modern solutions and many people demanding that the cathedral be restored as close to its pre-fire state as possible. I will refrain from expressing my view here but note that there are good arguments on both sides of this debate.
• Finally, there has arguably not yet been a bigger opportunity to showcase the benefits of blockchain technology than this one.

With those points in mind, I would like to argue that tokenizing Notre Dame’s restoration on a public blockchain like Ethereum and conducting token-weighted votes could be the best approach to financing it and determining the way it will unfold.

To start with, a public blockchain is, by definition, not confined to a single country and, thus, allows almost everyone with Internet access to participate through purchasing tokens and voting based on how many of them they have bought. It also permits tracking the token ownership and vote results in a transparent and verifiable way, while preventing tampering with the vote results.

Secondly, smart contract-enabling public blockchains like Ethereum enable determining programmatically how the vote(s) will be conducted and the contributed cryptocurrency will be dealt with. This removes the need for people from all over the world to trust the centralized vote organizers and management of the funds they contribute.

These features of blockchain-enabled tokenization and voting will probably greatly increase the likelihood that people from all over the world who care a lot about the fate of Notre Dame will be able and willing to meaningfully take part in it.

How should it be done?

How exactly should the tokenization and voting be conducted? I am not pretending to have detailed answers at the moment, nor do I think that I am the best person to propose them as I am not a technologist. However, the following three principles appear to be good starting points for the potential solution.

There should be a minimum contribution amount set in order to motivate tokenholders to meaningfully participate in the eventual vote(s). Determining what it may be would be no easy task, however. Perhaps, the experience of delegated proof-of-stake blockchains like EOS and projects like MakerDAO should be taken into account.

People whose funds collected through tokenization will be used for financing the restoration should probably have their tokens tied cryptographically to parts of the ultimate finished building. For instance, they could be initially sold ERC20 or similar tokens that may then be replaced by ERC721 or similar tokens tied to physical parts of the cathedral. The eventual tokens may or may not represent limited ownership rights in the cathedral but at least they would have a nice digital collectible, and we should not underestimate those, as Cryptokitties have taught us.

Finally, clearly, those who voted against the winning restoration proposal should not be forced to pay for its implementation. The cryptocurrency with which they will purchase the tokens should either be returned to them or allocated to other uses subject to the initial conditions or their will.

Potential objections

The biggest potential objection I see would be to say that if my proposal were implemented, it would allow a bunch of very rich people to determine Notre Dame’s future look. However, even if this were to happen, would letting a bunch of politicians or bureaucrats decide be a better idea? If one actually studies how rich people managing big businesses react to non-frivolous public opinion, one will have to agree that they are actually way more sensitive to it than politicians and bureaucrats are. Besides, if a lot of people really care about the fate of Notre Dame, they are likely to out-contribute a bunch of very rich people proposing a clearly bizarre or unpopular solution.

It may also be argued that, just like in the Eiffel Tower case, people may initially not appreciate a more modern redesign of Notre Dame but change their opinion later. Allowing them to vote on it beforehand, however, would likely doom it from the start. This is a serious issue but it is likely not more pronounced in the tokenization case compared to a normal restoration scenario with politicians in charge.

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Of course, as I mentioned at the start of the article, the actual prospects of the Notre Dame restoration tokenization proposal may not be very bright in the current political context. However, no one knows when the time for a certain idea has truly come, and, besides, this proposal could be a good starting point for many important related discussions.