Intro to Blockchains; part 1

The following is an expanded excerpt from my "Intro to Blockchains" talk at The Engine House on the IOM, 20/03/2019;

Ronald Reagan famously said; 

"Trust, but verify" 

He was talking to Russia about nuclear disarmament, but the phrase applies to almost every aspect of our day to day lives.

We have trust issues. We don't trust each other so we invented ledgers. We don't trust each other to maintain those ledgers so we invented banks and other institutions to hold them for us. 

The people in those institutions? We don't trust them so we created rules and regulations for them to follow, and management structures to ensure people follow those rules.

But can we really trust those people to enforce those rules? Of course not, so we invented auditors whose job is to find people breaking those rules. In turn they have rules and regulations, and then managers to make sure they follow the rules. 

This goes on and on up the chain until we end up with a legal system which provides the ultimate enforcement of the rules and regulations we bring into law.

Even then it doesn't work. Since 2000, Bank of America has paid $58 billion in fines. Doesn't sounds like trust is being effectively created. 

We don't have trust.

We have replaced trust with authority and bureaucracy. We have systems which create a huge waste of time and money, in every aspect of our lives. This is because the systems we created don't have inherent trust, and the people controlling them have proven they don't deserve trust.

What if we could trust? 

What if we could trust that our transactions could not be changed and altered when we weren't looking? 

What if we could trust that our data really was safe, and that centralised organisations couldn't change it, sell it, or censor it without our consent? 

What if we had systems where we could trust that people were who they said they were, that their real history matched the history they told us, and that their qualifications and experience were genuine?

What if?

Blockchains are a new system of trust and this is what they can do for us.

When we say blockchains are "trustless" we don't mean there is no trust. It means that there is no trusted (I use the term loosely) authority sat in the middle of the data, controlling it, altering it, and potentially abusing it.

It means anyone can view the code, anyone can verify the maths, and anyone can understand how it works. It means we can trust the system itself, rather than the institutions around it. 

For the first time, in the blockchain, we have a ledger we can trust, rather that hoping that the people controlling it are trustworthy.

And that has the potential to change everything.  

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For more information or to discuss anything in this article please comment or drop me a message,

Dan