Digital Democracy - The Power Of The Blockchain
The original vision of Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, was to create an online financial system that didn't rely on human trust.
In his original whitepaper, Satoshi lays out the foundation for the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. He describes how Bitcoin will use a proof-of-work algorithm, to create an immutable chain of events.
Time and time again throughout the whitepaper, Satoshi talks about trust, and how the blockchain has taken the place of a trusted 3rd party.
Smart Contracts For A New Era
The Bitcoin whitepaper shows that Satoshi was only thinking of digital cash at the time he was creating Bitcoin. However today we see that the blockchain is being used outside the purely financial arena.
However cryptocurrency has evolved, today we have the smart contract, which has taken crypto beyond Bitcoin into a whole new realm.
An excellent example of smart contracts at work, is the cryptocurrency XEM (NEM), a platform which will allow Chinese investors to buy, rent, and sell traditional stocks and shares in foreign companies, without the need for a broker.
Investors will even be able to set their own terms on shares they own, with no need for escrow companies or any other 3rd parties.
Perhaps the most popular example of smart contract execution is the much maligned ICO, (Initial Coin Offering), whereby developers can create a coin to distribute to investors, whilst attaching contractual rules than can be dealt with by the blockchain.
We are seeing more and more uses for smart contracts, and perhaps the only thing we can be sure of, is we are only glimpsing the tip of the iceberg.
A Democratic Union?
When it comes to settling disputes and differences, it seems the best system we have come up with is the majority rule of democracy.
For the most part it works well, however when we use democracy in a political setting things can become a little skewed.
Trust rears its ugly head once again, do we trust our politicians and officials to carry out the will of the people? The current system says we have no other choice but to trust them.
A Taxing Thought Experiment
When thinking about big things like this, I find it helpful to try and break it down to a smaller more manageable component.
In this case, let's look at tax, and more specifically tax to be spent on repair of roads and pavements (sidewalks).
At the moment, we simply have to trust that our money goes where it is supposed to, and that the council are getting maximum value out of that money.
Now let's replace the council with the blockchain . . .
We wouldn't have to trust where our money was going, we could see it.
We wouldn't even have to trust that the best firm, with the best price had been chosen for the job, everything would be taken care of by a smart contract or two, and the results would be available for all to view.
If we could do this for roads, then we could do it for other services, and my guess is people would be much more engaged, and willing to pay taxes when they could see exactly where they were going.
I even feel in that scenario, a lot of people wouldn't mind paying even more tax . . .
Is It A Nail?
To the man holding a new hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Of course there is a possibility that we are over egging the power of the blockchain. Perhaps it will forever be an incredibly useful financial tool, and just that.
Maybe the transference of value is only relevant in an online financial world. It is a hard question to answer with any confidence of being right.
At one point we thought laser discs were how future generations would store video. Now you have to be at least 40 to have even heard of them, let alone know what they are (were), and even then, it's unlikely.
Seeing A Smarter Future
I'm not sure if the blockchain will be able to replace every aspect of human administration, however there can be little doubt it would do a better job at administration, than corruptible human beings.
The fact that it has the power to remove the need for human trust, makes it an immensely useful tool. Whether it's making sure money goes where it is supposed to, or that the numbers given in an election are real, the blockchain will forever be part of our smart future.
Further reading:
More Musings
WHAT DO YOU THINK; WILL THE BLOCKCHAIN HAVE A LARGER ROLE TO PLAY IN TOMORROW'S SOCIETY? OR ARE WE SEEING ELECTRONIC NAILS FOR OUR DIGITAL HAMMER? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
You see, if we couple the blockchain with AI, we have a new god perhaps...
Such a bring future ahead of Bitcoin. Go figure why Putin said Russia needs to adopt blockchain technology or they'll miss out on the revolution.
Welcome back! To my simple mind, and with my admitted fledgling understanding of crypocurrency, I think the immutable, transparent, and peer to peer aspects of blockchain technology will increasingly creep into more mainstreem awareness. It will be interesting to see how taxes and regulations intercede and how successful those efforts potentially mask or diminish the peer to peer exchange of value prospects going forward.
Thanks for sharing this @cryptogee, I work full time in the blockchain Space, so I'm quite positive about the future of the technology, or at least a distributed technology like it.
The blockchain can automate, disrupt and remove people from multiple processes, and I think that it will.
The blockchain is a decentralized ledger.
And most of them are transparent.
Govern-cement funds need to become open and transparent.
Then they need to become... smart contracts.
As in, I paid $50 for the roads, and by golly, $50 should be applied to the roads, or returned to me.
And, the list of road fixing should be seeable.
So, the blockchain is building all of this infrastructure now. Yes, the immutable qualities of the blockchain are overkill, but once the smart contracts get worked out, why wouldn't you use it? It will become almost turn-key.
And, honestly, right now, anything would be an improvement. Govern-cements are BAD at money management, and the administrative fees are the largest part of any project.
Govern-cements are going to hate this. But, its going to be, swallow the blockchain pill or die.
excellent your post..i will done upvote
I am not really sure about other arenas, because we live in an ever changing world...However the revolution that the blockchain has brought to the current financial system is immaculate...
Bitcoin is actually "Fiat", although it is a necessary irony because critics of the paper money, the "Fiat" system, have been a necessary development (because it must have happened in history). Latin means "I told you" and Bitcoin also appeared after a 9 page manifesto. There is no difference in this direction from paper money because you have not relied on anything at all. Although it is seen as an alternative to the paper money system because it only limits the amount, there is no question that it is an alternative in today's economy with the limitation of 21 million pieces. But the idea (printing of money by private institutions vs. central mint) and technology may be an alternative.
However, the blockchain technology extracted from the sky has some problems in the area of crypto money. Scalability is one of them. With the reason for the problems that 1 MB blocks create, we often hear solutions such as SegWit, 2X, 8 MB blocks. But there is a second problem that is bigger. Madenciler "class" that approves bitcoin blocks, that is, processes the network. Blockchain's Bitcoin version requires the existence of this class for its operation, and more importantly, it must be charged for the effort it has spent. Bitcoin's verification mechanism Proof of Work (Pow) is a method that allows miners to be weighted decoders. The alternative is the Proof of Stake, which we call the working system in proportion to your share.
In both systems, some "classes" emerge, and in the decentralized world created by Bitcoin, a different but again centralized power is formed. Processers and approvers. Transaction fee payers and fee winners. If the price is higher, Bitcoin will be able to switch from mining to Bitcoin Cash mining, and it is a class that is not loyal but systematic. In that case, "Blockchain" may not be as transforming technology as you might think. Which, I think, is not really true, but it will surely work in many industries. The idea of the centralized currency is the converter itself. IOTA uses Tangle, a different technology than blockchain, to block the "class" formation mentioned above and the inevitable central power that will emerge, and the mesh is clearly defined.
So nobody knows the entirety of your network (which in theory, 51% reduces the likelihood of a 34% attack in practice very much). If you want to approve a transaction, you have to approve the 2 transactions described earlier. Contrary to the fact that the information lies vertically on the Blockchain, you are checking that your own and reference transactions will not cause double spending. Then you explain to the "neighbor" computers. They also send you through similar checks before a transaction. Even if the process is manipulated, the first main Tangle comes true. So miners and wage applications come out from there and we all start to work on principle for all of us.
Nice post, thanks for sharing