Blockchain-Enabled Ownership-aware Cyber-Physical Agents: A Multi-Level Morphological Framework

Blockchain technology unlocks a different level of economic agency for autonomous cyber-physical systems. Ownership can be encoded, programmed, transferred, and engineered, even by machines. However, ownership has often been treated as an ad hoc governance concept, externalized or assumed in the process of system design. In this paper, we argue that ownership should be integrated as a system design variable. This is achieved by designing and constructing a morphological framework for ownership-aware cyber-physical agents enabled by blockchain, with a focus on intelligent buildings. Using General Morphological Analysis, we are able to establish a multi-level design space capturing interdependencies between cyber-physical logics, blockchain technology, and various rights of ownership. The framework is synthesized from and applied to a real-world artifact, no1s1, a self-owning smart meditation cabin that is capable of autonomously managing access, finances, and operations. We demonstrate how this framework supports the structured exploration of complex qualitative ownership concepts and further enables the development of different future-oriented scenarios. Outside built environment, the framework is applicable to other cyber-physical systems and the method is extendable to other socio-technical system design.