Code, Consensus, and Cultural Data: Blockchain for Resilient Research Infrastructures

Research data forms the foundation of digital scholarship, yet our infrastructures face unprecedented threats from tampering, censorship, and institutional fragility. This presentation explores how blockchain technology - beyond cryptocurrency hype - can strengthen critical research infrastructures in the digital humanities. We examine blockchain's core properties of immutability, decentralization, and transparency, demonstrating how these technical features translate into practical benefits: provenance tracking, censorship resistance, and resilience through redundancy. The presentation's central thesis, "Less Trust, More Truth," captures blockchain's fundamental promise: shifting from blind faith in institutions to cryptographic proofs that anyone can verify. Through concrete examples including OECD data repositories and cultural heritage preservation projects, we illustrate blockchain's potential for protecting contested histories, minority narratives, and vulnerable archives. However, we also confront significant challenges: scalability limitations, energy consumption, technical complexity, and the tension between immutability and privacy rights. The path forward lies not in pure blockchain solutions but in hybrid approaches that combine blockchain's strengths with traditional systems' flexibility. Success requires interdisciplinary collaboration between technologists who understand what's possible and humanists who understand what's at stake. Blockchain offers no perfect solution, but for critical research data - the foundations of our scholarship and cultural memory - it can be a valuable ally against falsification, censorship, and loss.