Blockchain and Trust

When people get to know about blockchain it is the “no trust required” or “the trust is in the network” feature is the hardest to comprehend. This makes it a tough barrier to overcome to promote blockchain.

Trust is a human quality that defines our relationships, the OED definitions use phrases like “relations have to be built on trust” and “a man in a position of trust”. Somehow suggesting that trust could be taken away from us and put in a network of machines is unnerving.

Throughout history instruments of trust have been used to exchange value like coins and more lately credit cards. But the trust is still there, a third party is providing it for us in the case of coins it is the central bank and for credit cards, it is the bank.

We are conditioned to have to trust someone in order to carry out our lives, we are used to trusting and being trusted. To suggest that we need not have to do this even in a small way seems alien and dehumanising. To use machines as the agent of this change gives rise to the Skynet nightmare scenarios.

So why do we need to remove the trust? Here are some reasons; the speed and transaction volumes of modern commerce, the global distance over which we operate, the costs of the usual instruments of trust and the reach of those who would break trust.

How does blockchain remove this thing we’ve needed for so long? Essentially everyone knows everything and everyone follows the same rules, each part of the network can validate what the other parts are telling it on its own and the whole system uses consensus rather than central authority.

Articulating just how important the effect of this will be is one of the most difficult barriers to widespread adoption of blockchain. At the moment is it a little like the used car salesman asking you to trust them “it’s a lovely runner, only one old lady owner”!