Blockchain is not only a Technology, it is an Art of Looking at Things Differently.
Disclaimer: Everything written in this article might have been heard or read before. The reason for this article is to allow me to speak out loud to the greater audience and allow this understanding to enable people to come to their senses and allow them to think beyond Blockchain as a “Tech Jargon”. I provide my view and do not aim to generalize. Hence, I may be wrong in some of the things, may be right. However, I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments section below.
Summary: Blockchain is not only a technical term, but a formalized way of calling things out that have been prevalent since decades.
Blockchains are everywhere, in the Bitcoin Blockchain or Decentralized Apps or in our SUV (at least to some extent). Blockchain is a concept of society.
But, did Blockchain come into existence with the Bitcoin Whitepaper? Or did it exist well before that ? Well, that is what we have to find out.
Bitcoin came into existence in 2008–09 and people realized its value in 2013 and ever since has been on an exponential path to growth. They started buying bitcoins, building similar currencies and what not thereafter. Then came the mighty Ethereum, which brought the capability of Smart Contracts with it. This allowed people to develop applications in a totally decentralized ecosystem. But,
Wait!!
This is the technical side of the story. What about non-tech side? Was the concept of Blockchain still present in the society ? Have we all been using Blockchain’s concept in our life and not realized until now ?
Let’s take a few contexts where the underlying concept of Blockchain are evident. (Note: Below analogies may not be exact. They are meant as a reference and not as a direct example.)
Blockchains are like those bunch of wooden sticks, where if they try to exist individually they are weak, but when they form a bunch, no matter what tree they originated from, they deliver higher strength and resistance to load. And they don’t need to be from the same source (tree).
Concept of Blockchain states that things generate value, when different and unimaginable things start to work together to attain a certain goal.
A 4X4 wheel drive vehicle is powered by the engine, but separately. They run on their own. They are not dependent on other wheels to allow themselves to rotate. Obviously, the aim of the wheels it to move the car ahead and if even one flattens, the car is no longer in motion. However, I want you focus on the rotation. Does the rotation of the wheel stop, if any other wheel goes AWOL?
Another great thing to notice is a Community. It consists of unknown people, at the starting point. You collaborate and work with others, not to build trust, but to achieve a certain goal. Trust is rather one of the by-product of that activity. But, how many times have you assigned someone a task just because they want to do it ? Or how many times you have been granted permission for a task, by an unknown person, just because you asked for it? At least a couple of times, I’d assume. Did you get to trusting that person before assigning the task? That to, at the first glance? Something like: “Trust at First Sight!” ??
Decentralization has been here for decades but has become evident in Technology only in the last decade. Blockchain is not constrained to not some sort of nodes and/or ledger. It is a way of voluntarily helping others to build something, without having to trust everyone at the first meeting.
Blockchains are essentially an art of looking at things differently. Or rather acknowledging the process and functions which have been around us for decades. If we want to look at Blockchains, we shouldn’t be looking at the technology alone. Rather how societies functions and how people come together to collaborate, is what everyone should consider Blockchain as.
PS: The aim of this article is not to provide a way to build efficient Blockchain communities, but rather to allow people to learn about a non-technical side and context about Blockchains (in brief).
