In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in blockchain technology (Nofer, Gomber, Hinz, & Schiereck, 2017; Gaggioli, 2018). A blockchain enables a network of participants that do not know or trust each other to agree on the state of a shared administration, without relying on human intervention, a central point of control, or regulatory supervision (Tasca & Tessone, 2018; Atzori, 2016). Industries and sectors around the world are exploring the merits of blockchain technology by identifying use cases and developing proofs of concept (Zhao, Fan, & Yan, 2016; Ziolkowski, Parangi, Miscione, & Schwabe, 2018). Following its growth, regulators, policy-makers, and financial service providers have also started to pick up on the topic (Hacker, 2017; Rennock, Cohn, & Butcher, 2018). One reason for this sparked interest is the promise for an increase in efficiency due to the cutting out of middlemen. The fields of application for blockchain technology are potentially countless (Swan, 2015).

Besides movement in the industry, blockchain technology has also received an increased level of attention from scholars and academics (Zheng, Xie, Dai, Chen, & Wang, 2018; Beck, Müller-Bloch, & Leslie King, 2018; Garagol & Nilsson, 2018), with the number of publications growing almost exponentially every year (Zhao et al., 2016; Yli-Huumo, Ko, Choi, Park, & Smolander, 2016). Yet, there is an absence of established theory, few recognized experts, and studies that have mostly focused on the technical features and legal considerations of blockchains (Atzori, 2016; Garagol & Nilsson, 2018). Additionally, eighty per cent of the research focused solely on the Bitcoin blockchain (Yli-Huumo et al., 2016). Beck et al.(2018) state that there is especially a scarcity on the topic of blockchain governance. Moreover, the Dutch Advisory Committee on Blockchain Research recently published a research agenda, highlighting blockchain governance as one of its major overarching concerns and research challenges (Bodo et al., 2018).