Our research examines how transactions can best be governed by blockchain. We extend transaction cost economics from the analysis of markets, hybrids, and hierarchies to include a discriminating alignment of different types of blockchain governance. We model and visualize the comparative efficiency of public, consortium, and private blockchains. Public blockchains economize on mundane transaction costs, consortium blockchains on transaction costs driven by lawful opportunism, and private blockchains on transaction costs driven by blatant opportunism. We illustrate our model in the empirical context of the use of blockchain in fashion supply chains with the purpose of mitigating hazards from unsustainable practices and counterfeits. Our paper responds to recent calls for more research on blockchains as governance structures.
