Blockchain Code & Information Theory

I am a big thermodynamics law guy. It plays a part in how the climate works, designing and manufacturing pharmaceuticals to building transistors that make your TV function.

?I have been thinking about blockchain technology from a 2nd law of thermodynamics perspective. Here we mean entropy and the universe tending towards a more disordered state. More disorder increases variation and reduces signal to noise.

From an information theory perspective, we consider the ability to transform, utilise, extract, and process data. This is much more efficient for blockchain code as compared to the current financial operating system (written in the 1950s, mostly in Cobalt programming language, on a bunch on heterogeneous mainframes, with many intermediary layers). Blockchain code in a nut-shell relies on hash algorithms (think mapping function eg. postcode), cryptography through public and private keys, immutable ledger, and peer to peer transactions. This allows for information exchange in the order of minutes, that cannot be compromised and is secure.

Now, if you ask me which coins will be in the top 20 in 5 years' time, that I cannot answer. The way I tend to think about this is through the lens of ecosystem and applications. I see a world where blockchain enables applications not only currency, but other areas that include logistics, insurance, law, energy grids, IoT, ICT, and healthcare. My sneaky suspicion is that bitcoin will still be around as it was the first (Lindy Effect*).

*The?Lindy effect is a theorized phenomenon by which the future?life expectancy?of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, it is also likely to have a longer remaining life expectancy.