Blockchain – Pilgrim’s Progress (or Gullible’s Travels)

[A tale of digital discovery]

Intrigued by the great tumult in the marketplace, Pilgrim vowed to go on a pilgrimage to find the source of this mysterious thingamajig - The Blockchain. So, after dinner, he kissed his wife and children goodbye and set off on his marvelous adventure.

Ensconced in his study, with only his trusty laptop and his ever-faithful companion, Google, he began by typing, “What is The Blockchain?”

Google gave up after 13 million hits, so he chose a leading website and, searching for the single source of truth*, asked the same question. Pilgrim could almost feel the disgust in the response.  “It is not The Blockchain, it is blockchain, it’s an uncountable noun and because it, itself, is the definitive article, the the is superfluous!”

Suitably chastened, Pilgrim continued his search in lower case. But while the word consensus was bandied around a lot, there was precious little consensus on what Blockchain actually was.

• The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.
• A new Internet [and/or] a backbone for a new type of Internet
• A trust machine [and] a web of trust
• It is a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can inspect, but which no single user controls.
• A single global database that records the state of deals and obligations between institutions and people
• A blockchain is a data structure that makes it possible to create a digital ledger of transactions and share it among a distributed network of computers. It uses cryptography to allow each participant on the network to manipulate the ledger in a secure way without the need for a central authority.
• Simply a newer, better, more sophisticated form of database technology
• A kind of self-auditing ecosystem of a digital value
• Immutable agreement for the Internet of value
• An unintimating online network platform that enables dozens/hundreds of grassroots organizations to address their primary obstacle - the governance paradox.
• Blockchain is a vast, global distributed ledger or database running on millions of devices and open to anyone, where not just information but anything of value – money, but also titles, deeds, identities, even votes – can be moved, stored and managed securely and privately– and where trust can be established through mass collaboration and clever code rather than by powerful intermediaries like governments and banks.

The buzzwords were swarming around Pilgrim’s ears like a nest of angry hornets and weasel words were warping his logic. But the concept of ‘virtually everything’ intrigued him so he continued, as the potential of the Blockchain appeared unlimited and inevitable.

• Digital Gold
• It looks ready to functionally overhaul the way value is moved in the digital age
• Blockchain promises settlement that could be very close to real time
• It is clearly, in very clear terms, faster, cheaper and more transparent than some of the existing practices we have today
• By creating a new way to verify transactions aspects of traditional commerce could become unnecessary.
• High assurance P2P, Block Chain Ledger technologies, form the basis for the re-wiring of the global marketplace.

But everywhere, Pilgrim encountered a visceral hatred of central authority,

• A shared, immutable ledger enables transparent, peer-to-peer, real-time settlement without the need for financial intermediaries.
• These rules aren’t controlled by some slow moving elite group at the top of the pyramid
• Blockchain truly is a mechanism to bring everyone to the highest degree of accountability.
• And decentralization is already a reality
• The blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority.
• Blockchain does away with the need for a middleman or a central registry

But, not everyone was in thrall to the vision

• The magical pixie dust that can just be sprinkled atop everything.
• Blockchain is not going to change the world.
• Blockchain is bullshit

Pilgrim was confused, he felt trapped in a web of mistrust – who was right and had the single source of truth?  Who was wrong and would, forever, wander along a forking side-chain of the Internet of trust?

Pilgrim searched hither and thither but still could not find anyone who could answer his question. Or rather, everyone had a different answer.

Then he realized that blockchain was indeed virtually everything, it was whatever you wanted it to be, it was the embodiment of all of your aspirations.

But if everyone had a different perspective, how could we achieve consensus?

Pilgrim looked around and found that he was back where he started, ‘What IS the Blockchain?’, he screamed, as the men in white coats moved in.

Pilgrim felt a tap on his shoulder - it was his wife with his nightly hot chocolate. “You have been asleep”, she whispered. “Yes”, said Pilgrim, “and what a nightmare I have had. Thanks’ be, it cannot be real”. 

“Wanna bet?”, said Google.

*Actual quotes are shown in italics but not referenced, to preserve the identity of the author/poseur