First off, the Dukes, the two $1 bet guys in Trading Places, are gone. And your children or grandchildren will find it incredulous that the ledger found in the glove compartment of Alan Alda’s car in Tower Heist was the actual, only, real copy.
Gone also may be the four inch stack of paper forms needed to apply for a mortgage, or the conversations your car salesperson has with their manager in private while you fidget uncomfortably, waiting for an answer (a la Fargo).
That’s because Blockchain “holds the promise of verifiable and indisputable transactions that can be performed automatically at the time of delivery of goods or services,” say Thierry Hubert, CEO and Michael Cave, Senior Data Scientist, of Darwin Ecosystem.
It all starts with mistrust.
If you look at the world for people born after 1980, there is ample evidence that the “person in charge” can’t be trusted. There was the savings and loan crisis of the 80’s; the Enron scandal that stole millions of people’s retirement in 2000-2002; the recession and Bernie Madoff in 2008. We are so used to it that the most recent Wells Fargo account fraud scandal barely got people to cancel their credit cards.
In Blockchain, all on the network have the same exact document/ledger at the same time. If there is not consensus the networks ignore the change. When a digital transaction is carried out, it is stored in a cryptographically protected ‘block,’ governed by rules defined by a governing body, such as an industry consortium, or a predetermined group of members.
“Think of it as not needing a middleman on a transaction workflow with many participants,” says Hubert. “It is a perfectly traceable ledger of transactions, based on a smart contract that is representative of the participants’ consensus, managed and secured by encryption. None of the participants can alter the ledger, and all can trace it. It is peer to peer electronic governance free of human error.”
Want to learn more? Read the full article on Blockchain (and Bitcoin) explained here.