This is such a great and difficult question. There are so many camps of thought on this that it can become dizzying and so murky to get into, but it’s still a fundamentally important question. My initial thought would be that a utilitarian perspective probably provides the most guidance because of its focus on outcomes. In this crypto ecosystem, we can actually track outcomes on the block, so it gives everyone the same point of entry into the discussion. That keeps us away from worrying about intention or rationales; notoriously difficult variables to reliably access and assess. Obviously, that creates many blind spots as well, but considering the ethical implications of scripts is a great point of entry to considering what blockchain does as a technology to the world around us.
This discussion has a lot of connection to the post @jasonanastas recently wrote. Research Summary: “Blockchain Ethics Research: A Conceptual Model”. One of the many takeaways I got from that was that the original authors seem to be pulling together and proposing ethical checksheets. Could we apply one of those frameworks, such as theThe PAPA Framework for Data Ethics to this post-mortem as a way to test out these checksheets to see if their application brings us to clearer answer to @OffcierCia’s question: