The blockchain: a solution…
I felt obligated to give a response to the article that appeared in the Dutch media (‘The Correspondent)’ last week. The journalist writes about some interesting use-cases with Blockchain, but places them completely ( and if you ask me.. in a far too negative) context to the world. Besides, I would say he should have done some more research on the subject.
Here you can find the Dutch version of my article…
The author starts his journey with a story of his visit to Blockchaingers. The biggest and most challenging hackathon from Europe, as the organisation themselves also describe it. (Yes, some of the links are from Dutch sources, sorry ; ). I think the event is a great way of putting Groningen on the map. Unfortunately, I was not able to visit the hackathon myself, but in a run-up to this event various ‘deep dives’ were organised, which I could attend. I think it is very cool that you can visit these events permissionless. If you are a blockchain and crypto enthusiast that is of course…
The Deep Dives are meet-ups that explore the impact and possibilities of ‘blockchain-technology’ on different areas of expertise. What I witnessed was an excellent way of connecting the Dutch business world with the innovators in crypto-space. What followed after that was a very interesting exploration to where this new technology could be implemented, and a search for what to actually do with it.
Vinay Gupta ( take a look at his presentation ; ) spoke for instance at a Deep Dive where the subject of ‘Global Digital Identity’ was examined. His company Mattereum is working on a solution for insuring ways of doing business with digital identities. That seems to me a very handy use-case in this digital time. After all, our identity is no longer exclusively to be found in our passports and driver licenses. Increasingly our ‘digital identity’ is merging with the person we are in the offline world.
Given the fact that sending information over the worldwide web is becoming more and more subject to security-issues, and when your credentials are in your passport you can just show them to the customs official for instance, it seems very important to me that we are also making some progress ‘online’ in this area. If only there was a solution to this problem? Of course.. the blockchain could be it. But…
Why do we need a decentralized protocol on the blockchain that takes care of our digital identity?
Well… ‘us Dutchies’… do probably not suffer that much when travelling abroad, but ask a refugee what he thinks of central authorities controlling his or her existence in this world. I think everybody can imagine something like this to be quite a problem. The blockchain provides us with the excellent possibility of giving people a global and alternative solution.
You should not want to look at blockchain-development only from a local perspective.
‘Identity’ is a fundamental human right. A right which you cannot leave to a central party, according to Tykn also. I sincerely agree with them and ‘our Correspondent’ should also. You could almost say that this great article earlier (as we are used from them ; ) is mostly about our digital identity and the information that surrounds it. Facebook controls this for a great part now.
Also for many of the other dangers they describe in the article, there are now blockchain-alternatives. Big centralised companies are a danger to our society. Period. They are in desperate need of disruption. It would in any case be very welcome if we have an option to choose, which… there is… available right now! Go and try this new and decentralised browser of Blockstack. It is a cool new tool and it is made possible by.. the blockchain! Does this already work smoothly? No, not yet, but it is in development and now we have a choice. With it you can also access a decentralised Twitter… where you can log-in with your own unique decentralised Blockstack identity. Very cool.
“There is no sector in the Netherlands that is not depended on one or more of these platforms. The most important Tech companies — Alphabet-Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft — make up our new online infrastructure. Think about search engines, maps, cloud services, identification- and login-systems, app-stores, etcetera... These are commercial products. The private infrastructure is more and more defined by commercial values than by public values. Also in public sectors as schools, media and hospitals.” ... according to the Correspondent.
So. At the subject of identity there are already many parties at work on solutions to be found, but also in other areas of expertise there are many developments. Countless blockchain-teams are working on ‘taking care of privacy’ for instance. I am very interested in Horizon, but there are many more. The European privacy legislation is also a great step forward, and nobody says that those rules should no longer apply when you make use of blockchain-technology. You have to be very careful though as an end-user on how you interact with this new technology. In participating with the blockchain comes great responsibility. But… wasn’t that already the case in this digital era where we interact with each other on the internet?
To keep control of our data there are already various apps to discover. Yes, off course a lot of work still has to be done. That’s also why there is a huge demand for developers who have the skills to do that. Alongside the justly identified blockchain-hype by the Correspondent, the space is also booming because of the potential there is. There are countless initiatives where people can participate permissionless. You don’t even have to be a developer. The blockchain is here for everybody…
Mattereum of Vinay Gupta is researching the legislative and technical side of making a connection between digital assets and services and products in the real material world. I wonder if the author also went for a chat with all these innovators. Did he look at all those very specific areas of expertise in combination with the blockchain? I sincerely question if he watched some videos at the Internet at all.
Yes, off course these are all complicated subjects. No perfect solution is within close reach. Everything that happens outside of ‘the system of a blockchain’ is vulnerable for corruption. At many areas where blockchain can make a difference there are big hurdles to take, but progress is being made every day.
It is no coincidence that digital companies like the ones the Correspondent is pointing out to us are the biggest in the world. All these companies are doing business on the internet and are working with our data. What if there was a way that we can keep the fuel that has brought those centralised companies in control into our own hands? Well… it is stating the obvious, but yes the blockchain can take care of that. We can now trade with our own data instead of copying it. You should also watch the videos that blockchain guru Andreas Antonopolous made about this. Listen and learn about the era of the Internet of Value. I can wholeheartedly recommend this to the Correspondent and I am looking forward to a new article on that subject alone!
Politics and media
I have heard the last couple of years (just like the writer) a lot about blockchain. Who hasn’t? It is everywhere.
That’s why I’ve decided to commit myself fully to the research of ‘blockchain-technology’ since last year of August. In september 2017 I visited our Hall of Knights in the Hague ( at the start of that same Blockchaingers hackathon ; ) and listened to our Royal Prince Constantijn. The ‘start-ups-really-do-make-a-difference’ prince also sees the possibilities of experimenting with new technology. Our then Minister of Security and Justice Stef Blok was also present. He spoke mainly about the importance of innovation and the difference that it makes between different generations. He also spoke about the role of the government to be a safe-haven for entrepreneurs and scientists. No, that’s not only about the importance of 1 app being developed by the municipality of Zuidhorn by a few students, which the Correspondent mentions in their article. But off course it does start there!
I’ve heard Stef’s dream is…
“… that our society will make it possible to take the same steps forward, like we did in the past, alongside the development of technological progress.”
If the media provides us with inaccurate reports about those new technologies that doesn’t help. The student in Zuidhorn was very clear in reporting that something did not go that well when applying this new technology to the app he was making. Isn’t it then the responsibility of the media to give us a correct report on that too? Wait.. what if even the blockchain could provide us with a solution for this problem we have with the media?
I believe it is very important that we have municipalities like Zuidhorn in the Netherlands where innovation is being embraced. That there are experiments. That they do appear in the news with what they are doing. That they are participating! If later there is bad reporting on what happened, and if there is no ‘follow-up’ reporting being done whatsoever, then it seems to me that the media are to blame.
Yes, of course Zuidhorn deserves praise about their innovative policy. They are diving head-first into new possibilities and are trying to make a difference. Great! Even when it is not done properly at first, they still deserve a pat on the shoulder. Even if you can’t find the right use of the application at first than you still deserve a price for pioneering. Oh wait.. they also got that award in 2018! Yes, sometimes these pioneers have to walk in the wrong direction a bit. Sometimes you have to go and try and put a six-pack of beer with a fork-lift truck at the counter… (this is a remark at a quote in the original article of the Correspondent ; ) When something is not possible or it doesn’t work out like you planned it, then you can try again… and again… until you get it right. It seems to me that’s the whole point of experimentation.
‘Yes… big centralised companies are a threat to our society!’
I’m very glad to see that the Blockchaingers will be back next year. I’m happy to live in a country where we have the freedom to experiment with all of these new possibilities. I think it is very important for the development of the Netherlands if we don’t try to stop disruption and innovation at the front door, or try to control it with regulation. This can be a roadblock for start-ups and it might not leave enough room to develop. And when that regulation is designed without us knowing what we’re talking about, it can be even more harmful.
To take good decisions we’ll have to start with providing our national consciousness with good information. We’ll have to spread the knowledge about what it is that makes these technologies different. We’ll have to understand what it is capable of. Therefore it is also pretty important to know what we are writing about. I understand this is no easy endeavour. The blockchain space is complicated and I am also still searching for a clear and proper path through this new world off course.
On my search through blockchain though, I found out pretty quick that what was being written in the media did usually not match up to my findings. A lot of journalists are overlooking global developments. They mostly write from a point of scepsis and distrust and hype, instead of curiosity. I think this is a missed opportunity and a waste of the energy that is being put into it.
If you are also interested in joining us in the search for knowledge about ‘the blockchain’ technology, be welcome at our co-working Tuesday of Blockdam!!!
Global perspective
No, the blockchain is not a database, and no it is not an enhanced spreadsheet either.
Blockchain is a way of synchronising databases worldwide at different places, without anyone having the ability to make a change in what has been recorded.
It is a fundamental change in our possibility to work with the internet. The only way to do this right is to let the system itself print a digital coin. “We can even solve the problem of central banking with that!”
“We can solve the problem of central banking with that!”
This is a quote from the presentation of Vinay Gupta that I have already shared earlier. He sees the blockchain as a convenient tool for solving other global problems too, such as poverty and climate change. It seems to me that should be even more reason for the Correspondent to be interested. Yes, the discovery of the blockchain can lead to a Universal Basic Income. Also a quite interesting but hard to accomplish idea, isn’t it? ;) Eh.. by the way mister Correspondent. Weren’t we supposed to be going back to the whole idea of having more Utopias in our world? Well, because ‘the blockchain’ gives us an opportunity to give humankind a global and better perspective on what it is we are doing, says Vinay, we can solve these global issues. That to me looks like a perfect lens to look at this new technology. By the way, that’s also no Utopia. It is a very practical and realistic opportunity.
We will have to look at the world from a distance, from different areas of expertise and sciences. That’s a view that is totally missing in the article from the Correspondent. If you talk about blockchain and its evolvement, you cannot only look at it from a national perspective…
How does it work?
The discovery of the blockchain led on the third of January 2009 to generating the genesis-block of Bitcoin. The creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was smart enough to realise that a few important factors would determine the succes of his creation. One of those was that he (or she, or them? ; ) would stay anonymous. In hindsight this was also a very useful trick to save his own head from the global razor blade, but there was another reason for this.
It comes in very handy if a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO’s, also a minor invention of the blockchain ; ) can prove themselves only in one way, namely, without it being guided by a central entity. Yes, the miners are solving a very complicated puzzle to secure the network, but in a well-designed decentralised system they will never have any supervision or control. Their role is to make sure transactions are being sent through, verified and secured. The more mining power there is, the greater the security. That doesn’t mean that when the network will be used more, that also more mining-power is needed. The press is usually wrong about this too. Because mining machines are reaching their maximum capacities, ‘the power’ that some of these really big mining-pools have is already on its way back…
Another point of discussion in the press is that (Bitcoin-) mining costs a lot of energy! That is also being viewed from the paradigm of the old economy and a very narrow-minded one in my opinion. A misconception that will see the ray of light on the longterm, because first of all, mining is using energy now that was already being produced.. and secondly, well… Bitcoin just might be the energy saver the world is waiting for.
Another misunderstanding lies in the development of the protocol. The development is slow by intent, because of the strong values it has… Sometimes our world has to wait for a solution to problems, like scalability for instance. It takes time and effort to implement certain solutions that are already there (!). Last year during the period of boom there were very long transaction times and costs which could have been prevented if only the various parties doing business with Bitcoin had implemented Segwit. Because of all the interest from the crowd they just didn’t have the time to do that yet.
Lightning Network which is now being deployed will make it possible to do micro-payments on that immense worldwide web. It is a completely new technology and a rather special invention. No, it is not a centralised database on top of Bitcoin! It is being developed with the value of decentralisation at its core. You can take a deep dive into it, but I’m warning you up front. Even after an intensive study it is still quite complicated to understand. I’m looking forward to an article on this one from our Correspondents in the future! 😉
Advantages
Bitcoin is super interesting as a ‘medium of exchange’ for the rich among us. Houses and expensive cars are already being bought with this digital coin. It can take away a lot of the hustle and bustle around these purchases. Also a nice way to start a revolution, ‘the elite’ can participate too!
We, as Dutchies, can hardly comprehend it, but there are still poor people in the rest of the world who will sent their money to family abroad by giving it to the bus driver. These people will find a perfect alternative in Bitcoin. There are many experiments in developing countries now. Yes, a smart-phone that can take care of a bitcoin-transaction costs about 20 euro’s, and that’s one of the really big obstacles of course, but also real progress is being made in a lot of places around the world. Oh by the way, if you do not trust your own country and you have been through various cases of hyper-inflation in the past, then Bitcoin just might prove to be a very interesting alternative!
‘Our world is gaining more wisdom in a very rapid pace. Yes, the blockchain is a paradigm-shift, but off course you’ll have to know where to look to see it…’
This documentary is a very interesting presentation. It does not have anything to do with Blockchain in particular, although the technology is being mentioned. It does however put this technology in the broader scheme of what is happening. Enjoy! ;)
“From the final report of ‘Mijn Zorg Log’ appears that everything which makes Blockchain technology so interesting is not being used. Some parties are pointed out upfront as exclusive miners, in other words: they can veto an addition to the database, of in this case ‘maternity care data’. That’s better for the environment and not in dispute with the law of privacy, according to the report. But, wasn’t the whole point of blockchain that from now on we could go without these trusted third parties? What are they doing over there? This is not the ‘exponential innovative mixture that was being promised right? As Erik Gerritsen, the highest official of the ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport tweeted out later…”
No, indeed. A central party which provides a decentralised solution, that’s kind of weird. Anybody can see that there is a contradiction here. Even though there are many companies that can also benefit from a blockchain solution. If only you look at the scale at which they operate, you can see enormous possibilities. Even banking is making progress in different areas by applying blockchain technology.
“Meanwhile the worldwide market of Blockchain is being estimated by Bloomberg at about 700 million dollar ( loosely 600 miljoen euro). Big companies like IBM, Microsoft and Accenture have complete divisions exploring this revolutionary technology.”
That’s not really a small market indeed. It could very well be that eventually no real decentralised solution will come out of these investments. Real development takes place mostly beneath the surface. It is where developers are messing around. The true force of blockchain technology will take years to take off, especially on a worldwide level. Those investments will have consequences though. There will be discoveries and applications will flourish. Crypto in its whole is just a big experiment in that perspective!
Okay… just a few more possibilities… we are almost there.
The term ‘smart-contracts’ was already invented in 1994 by Nick Szabo, but with blockchain technology a total new dimension has been added to this space. What are the countless possibilities of these ‘smart-contracts’? On platforms like Ethereum and Bitcoin (and many competitors ; ) this new technology is being explored by many. We ain’t seen nothing yet!
‘Voting on the blockchain?’… also that is a very complicated matter. It is nice to see how new areas are being explored. How do you bring the ‘blockchain-technology’ in contact with the world outside of the code? Try googling ‘Triple Entry Accounting’ (also invented much earlier) and realise what a kind of difference this can make if you involve the use of the blockchain. The world of administration and auditing is huge and also for our tax office this can solve a lot of problems! Look at the overall advantage of doing ‘business in transparency’ by working with blockchain technology.
Developments in the area of gaming and ‘collectibles’ are rapidly evolving. Yes, this starts with a crypto-kitty and it will reach to far away regions of sales and marketing. There are already possibilities of playing a game without even knowing you are ‘using this new technology’. Before you know it you will use an application without even knowing that you are on a blockchain-platform. That is off course until it is time to ‘cash-out’ at a decentralised market place. Azelo is being developed in The Hague. You can visit them on Friday’s! If you are interested in a regularly (and very cool ; ) meet-up about blockchain I would recommend that you check out the great Blockchaintalks!
Yes, there are a lot of scams going on with all the fund-raisers lately, but how many experimentation is being done on the area of ‘Token Economics’? The art of doing business with digital tokens. A rather extensive journey in itself… which many teams are looking into right now. ‘Why Blockchain?” Well, because you want to experiment with trying out a new token. A completely new way of fundraising, but also of customer-contact, new possibilities for marketing and sales departments, and many things more to come.
There are medical, logistic, legislative, augmented & virtual realities, and Artificial Intelligence applications! On all these areas of expertise dozens of teams are exploring the technology and everywhere there are popping up interesting use cases. Yes, they are all developments made possible by and in collaboration with the blockchain. Listen to many projects in the Netherlands at the Blockrock podcast!
To conclude. I hope I could show some of the readers of the Correspondent a different perspective on ‘blockchain technology’. Of course it is unnecessary, because the technology will find its way itself, but to inform people about what is going on does not seem like a bad thing to me.
I think it is very important to find our own way with these new technologies, but we should be guided by the correct information. Then the reader can decide which part of it is true or not… and how much time these things will take to develop.
