The five pillars of blockchain
Following a fascinating talk by Andreas Antonopoulos, I’d like to share with you some absolutely crucial ideas about blockchain.
Why is blockchain #revolutionary, what makes this financial technology so innovative?
How do you differentiate between truly relevant use cases, and those that are simply marketing?
Let’s discover together the five pillars of blockchain, which should be part of the basic ethical criteria when supporting a Web3 project.
First pillar: open
Open means that anyone can access it, anyone can participate. No need to ask permission from anyone, to reveal their identity, their ethnicity, their political ideas. Everyone has the right to build an app on the blockchain, to use other people’s apps, to come up with the weirdest and wackiest concepts, whether they are relevant or not.
On traditional payment systems, it is not possible to build an app on it without the agreement of its owner. The only solution would be to build my own payment system before I can implement my new concept.
In the blockchain system, anyone can build on anyone’s work, without asking permission from anyone. *
This is exactly what happened with internet: a tsunami of innovations. That’s why banks won’t be able to keep up with blockchains, from use to iteration. That’s why they are afraid of public blockchains.
Second pillar: public
Public means that everyone can check what has happened on a blockchain. Obviously this is a technical skill, if you learn how to do it effectively you can probably get employed as a Data Analyst.
In such a system, cheaters are detectable, even years after their thief, because the blockchain is immutable and doesn’t forget anything.
This means that for the first time in the history of humanity, we have in our hands a transparent monetary tool that potentially puts an end to corruption.
Third pillar: neutral
A neutral payment system doesn’t care who sends money to whom, for what reason, where the funds come from and where they go. It simply makes sure the transaction is exact, that it actually happened.
Money is a mean of communication for value, nothing more and nothing less, a mere vehicle.
This may sound radical, but this is how the world worked until the 1990s.
Some critics will tell you this is the open door to anarchy. We reply to them that the transparency of our ecosystem doesn’t require banning transactions to know exactly what’s going on.
Access to money and its #free use should be a human right. The criminals should be arrested following an investigation, with proofs, there is no need to prevent them from transacting to effectively combat them. The blockchain is able to provide this evidence more than anyone else, to anyone, and without waiting for a state or bank to sign off.
Fourth pillar: borderless.
Today’s society considers money to be localized on a territory, and moves from one to another. But cryptomoney is everywhere, it is already in the country of destination, as much as in the country of origin, since it is kept on internet which knows no borders. A cryptocurrency is present everywhere internet exists, and even beyond as Bitcoin transactions have been conducted through radio waves.
The blockchain is an international phenomenon, no matter where you live, or travel, you will always find your funds in the same place: on the internet.
Fifth pillar: censorship resistant.
Money is a purely intellectual concept, and first and foremost a means of commercial communication. If we have the freedom of expression, the right to support associations or political parties of our choice, why shouldn’t we have the right to use our money as we please, as long as we pay our taxes?
This means of communication should be incensurable.
If we open the Pandora’s box of currency censorship, where is the limit, who will guarantee it? It then loses its initial purpose to become a tool for population control, a means of police, even a weapon of war.
If the most advanced societies separated religion from state, it was because collusion led to abusive censorship, as well as conflicts of interest, and high corruption.
But when banks are too close to the state, we see similar problems causing trouble and disorder in our societies. Liberalism has allowed the liberation of minds from the grip of religions, it’s time to liberate them from that of banks.
Many of us have been interested in the blockchain for the lure of gain, but the most passionate are often driven by freedom, transparency, resilience, decentralization of the ultimate power that is money. All humans having had structural responsibility in their hands have sooner or later yielded to the temptation to abuse this power. Many of us believe that disintermediation is the ultimate solution to this multi-millennial problem. The blockchain represents in our eyes a historic opportunity, to bring more equity, and to offer the ideal and universal vehicle of value for everyone.
