How does a community remain committed to an imagined digital future despite that future’s inherent contradictions? This article analyzes such a challenge as it was faced by Berlin’s NFT (non-fungible token) enthusiasts. Dominant narratives about NFTs and other blockchain technologies envision a virtual and ostensibly trust-free future, but these enthusiasts’ pursuit of such “trustless technologies” resulted in a double bind. In this bind, they repudiated trust relations on the web without the means to fully obviate such relations, leaving blockchain’s trustless future in doubt. To resolve this bind, Berlin’s NFT enthusiasts expanded their interactions by assembling in-person. In Berlin’s offline spaces, they found trust relations they deemed permissible according to the dominant blockchain ideology. Rather than blur the boundary between the virtual and physical, this community maintained distinct interactional norms in each, enabling them to maintain their imagined blockchain future.

中文翻译：

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面对区块链的双重束缚：无需信任的技术和柏林 NFT 社区的“IRL 朋友”


尽管未来存在固有的矛盾，但社区如何仍然致力于想象的数字未来？本文分析了柏林的 NFT（不可替代代币）爱好者所面临的挑战。关于 NFT 和其他区块链技术的主流叙述设想了一个虚拟的、表面上无需信任的未来，但这些狂热者对这种“无需信任的技术”的追求导致了双重束缚。在这种情况下，他们否认网络上的信任关系，但又没有办法完全消除这种关系，这使得区块链的去信任化未来充满疑问。为了解决这个问题，柏林的 NFT 爱好者通过面对面的聚集来扩大互动。在柏林的线下空间中，他们发现了他们认为根据占主导地位的区块链意识形态允许的信任关系。这个社区并没有模糊虚拟和物理之间的界限，而是在每个社区中保持了独特的交互规范，使他们能够维持他们想象的区块链未来。