The Blockchain Quiz Competition: A Tale of Strategy and Wits
It was absolute mayhem in the auditorium. Otherwise cool and collected men were engaged in a game of tug of war but there was no rope nor physical strength involved, rather just their wits and speed of thought.
It was just how Mr John, the school administrator liked it. He always believed most knowledge is dynamic, not right or wrong just what school of thought could convince more.
The topic of contention this time —Blockchain technology
The prize: A movie night with pizza. Yes, if you went to a boarding school this was actually a big thing.
During the quiz, a mediator would ask the questions and a jury evaluated the answers offered by each team. Additionally, each team had the option to issue a challenge in each round, with the caveat that failing the challenge would result in a penalty for the team in the subsequent round.
The atmosphere grew raucous when one of my team members challenged a verdict that had found her to be wrong, arguing that “the supposed immutability of the blockchain is actually a farce.
You see, Mr John walked into class one day and announced that we were going to have a quiz on a new and rapidly emerging topic called blockchain technology.
The topic was entirely new to us — we had never encountered it before, never considered it, and had never received any formal instruction on it. However, for him, this was precisely the type of subject that made for a successful quiz competition — he even referred to it as a ‘town hall event’.
He motioned for Mary and me to stand up, and after identifying us as the top students in the class, he asked Mary to select two additional classmates to join her team for the event. Without hesitation, Mary selected two other challengers in the class who were also vying for the title of the best.
When it was my turn to pick, I found myself facing a brief but difficult dilemma. Tobi and Musa were the other top challengers in the class, and given the precedent that Mary had set, it seemed natural for me to select them for my team as well.
However, I had the benefit of attending a previous edition of this ‘town hall event’, which had been contested by an earlier group of students. I recall that this event taught me that intelligence alone would not be enough to win the competition.
To win, it wasn’t enough to be intelligent; you also had to be bold and courageous, willing to challenge those with far more experience than you, but with sound reasoning to back you up. Above all, it was crucial to win over the crowd, as their support could make all the difference.
Tobi possessed many of the aforementioned traits, but he was too deferential to the teachers to challenge their decisions, while Musa was too reserved to display the necessary flair to win over the crowd.
I needed a team with charisma, the ones who did not shriek in the face of pressure, the vivacious ones that will look you straight in the eye when calling your bluff; Daisy and Baba were the ones. They were the “men” I trust.
And so the die was cast. Mr John loved a game so he had placed half-baked materials in different sections of the library, materials that will only go so far as to tease the answer to you.
Two weeks we had to comb the library and gather as much information as possible while every other day we had two hours of research time in the computer room.
Amidst ongoing classes, my teammates and I will sometimes stab them just to research as much as we could about the topic. Sorry, Ms Irene, we got a date with blockchain! A pizza movie night over good grades? oh lordy lord, you bet. Bring on the Pizza, baby!
D-day was here and the atmosphere was electrified. Our team had been dubbed “Team Diamond,” while our opponents were called “Team Gold.”
As the event began, chants filled the air as the audience rooted for their chosen teams. The jury, dressed in all white, looked ready to deliver verdicts as if it were the teams’ judgement day. And there was the school administrator, with a wry smile on his face, sitting right in front of the hall, he absolutely loved these shows.
The quiz consisted of three rounds where one member from each team competed against the other. The rounds were structured as follows:
Round one: Question and Answer segment
Round two: True or False questions
Round three: A Debate
It was round one and Daisy was chosen to represent our team, while Jake was selected to represent the gold team.
On stage, they stood as we looked upon them, Daisy on the left and Jake on the right standing in front of tables that had been equipped with buzzers.
In Daisy’s eyes, you could see that defiance that always made her a conundrum. Some thought it made her brash; I thought it made her bold but regardless, I knew she will definitely fight for a win.
“Fingers on your buzzer”, the mediator bellowed. Daisy looking up at us one more time flashed a smile as if to say “I got this”.
And here is your question: “What is blockchain?”
Gbam! Jake got to the buzzer first and immediately went off
“Blockchain is a shared and immutable distributed ledger for recording data and assets saved as blocks that are connected to each other in a chain and secured through the principles of cryptography.”
Five seconds to challenge and Daisy went for it. I thought to myself, “This answer is correct, spot on.” However, I hoped she knew what she was doing because if she was wrong, our team would be penalized in the next round.
The jury was evidently surprised by Daisy’s challenge and couldn’t help but giggle. Can you really blame them though? People with more experience can often be more rigid in their thinking.
What is your challenge? the mediator asked brusquely and Daisy with a subtle smirk proceeded to present her challenge:
“My opponent here has delivered an answer that truly will be considered 100% correct in the realms of blockchain discussions, immutability — a word that any definition without is considered lacking but I do not submit to those terms and frankly it is a farce.
I consider the immutability of blockchains as one of the greatest marketing gimmicks ever used but if truly this immutability can only be achieved with the complete non-interference of a central authority at any point then it brings jest to anyone who appends the name blockchain to closed off digital ledgers.
The blockchain inherently depends on the good behaviour of a number of mine-holding individuals and I wish somebody in this hall right now could stand up and tell me what happens if a very wealthy man or corrupt government decides to install greater mining capacity than the rest of a blockchain network to then be in total control of what transactions they validate or not, creating what is known as a 51% attack. Can someone tell me? Anybody?
If not, I proceed to define blockchain technology as:
an advanced digital ledger of transactions whose replica is distributed across a network and secured through the principles of cryptography. Thank you.”
What a challenge! It was such a surreal moment that I even had a little accident if you catch my drift. With her bold statements, she had successfully cast doubt on the jury, who seemed ready to award the first round to team gold. Surely, we have this one in the bag.
“Who told you that!” one of the judges exclaimed sternly. Another judge barked, “You must think you’re something.” I suddenly remembered where I was. In Nigeria, it’s probably a written law that elders are always right.
Some saw reason to her challenge though and thus led to the all-out mayhem amongst themselves.
Mr Ola, standing at only 5 feet 2 inches stood up and pulled his shirt challenging Mr Ike who stood at way over 6 feet to a round of Gidigbo, an African combat style that involves grappling with the goal of throwing your opponent off balance. Meanwhile, Mr Yusuf climbed up the table and to our shock started to dance and jiggy, why? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
I looked towards our school administrator surely believing he was going to intervene to bring sanity back to the occasion but who was I kidding? he had his phone out, trying to capture the chaotic scene from the best angle possible.
After a while, some semblance of calm returned and the Jury called for a recess to assess the challenge before delivering the final verdict. We went out of the hall and on seeing Daisy, I immediately ran the other way to go change my pants, phew I needed to get that in order.
Returning to the hall, I gave Daisy a warm hug, that was just an unforgettable moment of genius. She had raised the bar and therefore, Baba and I had to meet her there.
Back in the hall now and I could not tell which was a better relief — the fact that the results were finally in or that Mr Ola had his shirt back on — a close call I would say.
“And the winner of round one goes to…Team Diamond!”, the mediator announced. Just the start we needed, I could taste that Pizza now.
