# Blockchain and the Tokenization of the Individual: Societal Implications
## 4 Trust in a Centralized World and Emerging Solutions for the Protection of Human Data  
There is a body of research that seeks to define \"trust\", which is a complex sociological, psychological concept and the basis for human interactions [20]. As the old adage goes, \"Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair\" (source unknown). Given the data breaches and misuse of individual/citizen data described in Section 3, trust in a centralized world is problematic as the governance model assumes self-regulation by the central parties. This fact is described in the Netflix documentary entitled, \"The Great Hack,\" where privacy and abuse of individual/citizen data is the tip of the iceberg of a calculated strategy to both take data and control away from the individual [21]. An observation has been that the \"outrage\" from this data abuse has not come from individual/digital citizens, but rather from nation-state governments and privacy, as well as human rights organizations [22]. This fact begs the question as to whether or not the individual is immune to such data abuses that involves his/her data. Perhaps the response to this hypothetical question may be the degree of perceived or actual abuse, e.g., personal bank account and funds stolen vs. identity fraud vs. data leakage with no \"direct harm\" as a result of an organizational breach. If the degree of perceived or actual abuse is greater than \"no direct harm,\" then the question is whether or not the egregious act has resulted in the individual behavioural change from passive to active digital citizen. There is an abundance of research in human hacking, but in terms of empirical and behavioural analysis that confirms a change as a result of such abuse, the research is lacking at least at the macro level [23]. This particular question may be difficult to ascertain because individuals (collectively) may be disinclined to share the fact that they have been victims. Therefore, the postulation is that behavioural change is possible when correlated with the severity of the abuse. However, trust can manifest itself in a Thomas Hobbes-like Leviathan where a central authority like a government entity operates in the background to assure that society behaves according to the rules that have been developed by the central authority [24]. As a social psychologist, [PERSON] observed that rules will be followed if the citizens perceive procedural fairness [25]. At the opposite end of this trust spectrum is peer to peer (P2P) trust, which is based largely on relationships and shared ethical norms. P2P trust may be interpersonal as experienced amongst families, friends or via a shared set of operating principles, for example the Internet. Furthermore, the modality of the engineers who develop protocols and architectures to evolve the Internet (The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF) is \"rough consensus and running code\" and \"we reject kings, presidents and voting\" [26]. Additionally, reputation graphs can reflect P2P trust relationships [27]. The blockchain has often been referred to as \"trustless trust\", an assertion from [PERSON] and evidenced by the operational nature of the blockchain, e.g., \"in proof we trust\" [28]. Within the context of this paper, there is evidence to suggest that the digital citizen is evolving towards a hybrid approach between P2P and Leviathan trust where the result is the removal of intermediary actors and the requirement for transparency in Leviathan trust models [29]. There are emerging solutions that seek to mitigate against data leakage and the protection of human data. With privacy by design as a tenet, in regulation, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has defined data protection specific to enterprises. Failure to adhere to GDPR compliance will be expensive for enterprises [30]. GDPR further poses the question as to what constitutes actual data, for example hashing of personal data within the blockchain could be problematic.