Its all about trust!

You have heard this saying, “Uber owns no taxis, Airbnb owns no hotels, Netflix doesn’t own any multiplex, Alibaba doesn’t have any inventory of its own! Yet they are some of the most successful companies today”. How did we get here?

It can be attributed to trust. We trusted these companies to provide us with services and products which are quintessential to our lives. At a basic level, they forged trust with the help of the internet. They have leveraged the foundation of the internet which hinges on connecting people, services and products.

The internet has evolved through the years, from the early days of circuit switching model (pre-established connection between two parties sustained to an exchange) to the TCP/IP protocol (Information is digitized and sent in small packets through servers around the world). It was a paradigm shift in communication and information sharing, and we trusted the TCP/IP protocol, governments have trusted it, organizations have trusted it.

Now, we are witnessing another paradigm shift, rather a quantum leap of sorts with the advent of Blockchain — a technology framework founded on decentralization and distribution. Blockchain as a framework is underpinned as a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), based on a decentralized ledger of transactions hosted on the world wide web, verified and authenticated by thousands of nodes.

These nodes would be people like you and me who would have access to the ledger. In fact, cryptocurrencies (created on a blockchain framework) are the best examples of DLTs, where thousands of people manage and determine the mining and flow of the cryptocurrency.

As simple as it may sound, it is indeed a quantum leap because Blockchain fundamentally challenges all the current systems of government, organizations and societies. Hence from an adoption perspective, it is a quantum leap. We are hardwired to believe in analog trust because of practice and being accustomed to the way the world works. Blockchain propagates the idea of digital trust.

Currently, the world is centralized as we know it and power is vested in the hands of the few. Blockchain aims to take the power away from the few and distribute it to many and help eliminate inefficiencies and corruption in the process. We as citizens of the world, need to shed inhibitions and begin to trust digital encryption. It requires a fundamental shift in human behaviour.

If the adoption of certain cryptocurrencies are anything to go by, Blockchain is here to stay, but for it to change the world, its going to take much more than just cryptocurrencies. More applications touching every facet of human interactions need to be built on Blockchain. What does it mean for the future?

For starters, we can say that the future is going to be trustworthy!