How Crypto Tokens Might Have Helped the Great Library of Vilna

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tl;dr: the challenges of community ownership have been with us for a long time. Crypto tokens represent an opportunity to improve accountability and transparency. The story of a library in Lithuania.

My friend Dan just had his book published. It’s called The Lost Library: The Legacy of Vilna’s Strashun Library in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.

On the surface, the first Jewish public library in the world would not seem to have to do much with the world of emerging technologies.

However, as I read through the first chapters (I’m on page 100 or so), I found myself thinking that many of the problems the library faced at inception could have been solved, or at least ameliorated, had blockchains and smart contracts been available.

[Ah, the challenges of a “Crypto First” mindset.]
Without going in too much detail (go get the book), here are the basics.

The Strashun Library
Mattityahu Strashun was a prominent scholar who lived in Vilna, Lithuania in the late 1800s.

In addition to being an accomplished Talmudist, his most notable achievement was that he amassed the largest, most diverse collection of rare Jewish books anywhere. Upon his death, his instructions were to make the collection the property of the Jewish community of Vilna with access to anyone.

Public libraries are one of those things that we take for granted, but 150 years ago they were anything but common. The New York Public Library was only established in the early 1900s.

Strashun’s desire ws to create the first totally public, community-owned, Jewish library was revolutionary.

This is where the challenge began.

It’s one thing to have a will that says “the community is the owner of the books.”

It’s another thing to actually have the executors and trustees of the will actually fulfill the wishes of the deceased and respect the wishes of the community.

For years, those who had the power over the books (the trustees) kept relatively tight control over the assets. They gave their reasons, some of which were legitimate (e.g. getting legal permits from anti-Semitic Russian authorities), but transparency was lacking and accountability was not guaranteed.

I found myself thinking that, “man, if they had had blockchains and smart contracts,” many of the disputes could have been resolved.

How Crypto Tokens Could Have Helped the Strashun Library
Let’s say that every member of the Jewish community of Vilna had a digital ID.

Call it “Vilna Jewish Community (VJC) ID Tokens.” Everyone has only one.

Meanwhile, there is one token that represents ownership of all of the books in Strashun’s library. It’s a synthetic asset that combines all of the 5,000+ books in the library, which all have their own individual tokens as well. At the beginning, however, they are bundled.

Strashun’s will is written into a smart contract which says, “upon my death, the rights of ownership are assigned in equal parts to every one who hold a VJC ID token.”

Then, upon his death, the community does in fact own the books collectively.

After that, through blockchain-based governance and voting, the community can elect trustees to handle minor decisions, however they define minor.

They can also put major decisions to a vote. Decisions are recorded on a blockchain. Accountability is enforced as the community can recall trustees who don’t get the job done, however they define it.

The key point is that, in a world of crypto tokens, the community could actually own the assets and make the decisions that it considers to be in its best interests.

If the community wants to sell part of the collection, that’s a vote. If it wants to change the hours of access to the library, that’s a vote. Or could be.

They don’t need to be involved personally in every transaction or decision, but as owners, they have a right to be informed and expect accountability.

Public Ownership
It may seem far-fetched to think about Vilna in the late 1800s and how a blockchain, smart-contract based system could help reduce the concentration of power and ensure that decisions are made in the public interest.

However, I don’t think it’s as remote as it seems at first glance.

The issue of “how do we make sure we are acting in the best interests of the community?” has been with societies since the beginning.

Today, however, the stakes of “public” are larger than ever before as are the potential consequences.

Mike Ananny wrote a great article called Tech platforms are where public life is increasingly constructed, and their motivations are far from neutral which highlights some of the same issues that faced the Strashun Library.

Instead of access to rare books, today’s tech platforms decide who gets access to what kind of information…and when.

Yet “news that is for the common good and benefit” should be a decision that is made by the public, not a handful of people.

Until now is that effectively making decisions which represent the will of the public has been too cumbersome and costly.

In an era of stakeholder capitalism that seeks to better represent the needs of the community, people are going to expect more.

The good news is that we finally have a way to do it.

It’s slow and not user-friendly, but it is here.