Let’s have a look at the main philosophy behind blockchain technologies:

In our previous post, we briefly discussed the main events that have resulted in the emergence of blockchain technologies. Let’s have a deep dive into blockchain philosophy in this post:

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Blockchain philosophy

Here is how we can define blockchain in one sentence:

Blockchain is a technology created by those who believe that people have the right to interact freely with each other without any type of intermediary in digital life

This phrase is pretty self-explanatory, but let’s look at each piece one by one..

“Blockchain is a technology..”

All in all, let’s not forget that blockchain is a technology. Actually, if you ask die-hard crypto people they will tell you that blockchain is nothing without crypto. With all due respect to these maximalists, we will treat blockchain as a technological advancement.

So in essence, blockchain is a system written in code - so it is essentially a software. What it does and does not, will be part of these series that we will discuss in the following posts.

Just to reiterate: When we talk about blockchain we are talking about digital life. Blockchain has limited (almost no) interaction with physical life. This distinction is important as people usually mix these two and try to apply blockchain into physical transactions. No - impossible.

When you think of applying blockchain to an area, you need to first look if the area is fully digitalized or not. If not, then first you need to take the necessary steps to migrate to a fully digital life before you even consider blockchain applications.

“…created by those who believe”

Blockchain technology is created by a group of people who are equipped with cryptography, coding, economics and game theory. If you ask who these people are - well most of them are anonymous. Why? They prefer to be and it is not fair to ask them to come forward. What is important is their ideas and what they brought to the table rather than who they are.

Some of these people are actually known around. There are many many names but let’s bring up three of them here.. David Chaum, Nick Szabo and Hal Finney. Those pioneers are each deserve a separate post here but for the time being, you can click on the link and read their biographies on Wikipedia. (You can look at our post on these gentlemen for further detail).

“…that people have the right to interact freely with each other…”

Interacting with others would occur on many dimensions. One is to have the ability or means to interact with others. The other is to interact with anyone regardless of physical boundaries. A third dimension is to interact with them any time. In other words to interact with others without any limits.

“…without any intermediary in digital life”

What we have in our previous paragraph is almost impossible with existing financial institutions. By the way, that is not to blame financial institutions. Unfortunately, the internal systems as well as the infrastructure used between financial institutions are all legacy systems. These systems have their own limitations that prevent these institutions provide ‘free’ service to individuals.

While an alternative to these financial institutions were almost impossible in physical (pre-digital) life, luckily with the introduction of technology, financial services became fully digitalized that allowed emergence of alternatives to incumbent financial players.

to be continued…

So blockchain technologies showed individuals that there is another way to perform transactions among themselves. Faster, cheaper and accessible to everyone… but with certain responsibilities.. But how does blockchain technology work? That is for our next post…

This piece is first published in BlockchainIST Center on May 25th, 2021.

None of the views expressed in this article should be considered as investment advice