Blockchain is a hype that drives you nuts ?!
What is bitcoin and how does it work— watch video
What is the blockchain — watch video
Why blockchain — keep reading.
Klik voor Nederlandse versie (Dutch version)
Abstract
a. Blockchain is hyping harder than the bitcoin
b. There is a lot of miscommunication to be expected because of blockchain’s abstraction, complexity and contradictionairy interests.
c. The imagination of potential applications goes much further than can be scientifically proven that it is feasible to blockchains
d. Ask counter-questions when blockchain believers make an appeal to you. At the bottom I have listed some sample questions.
“Everyone comes up to me with their wildest ideas,” quips a customer of mine who has a management ICT position. “Suddenly they all want to be on the blockchain.”
Air
The hype has only just begun. The Bitcoin has made comparison. If there is a place where misunderstanding, misinformation, high expectations, and the like then it would the crypto-currency world. Several reasons for that lie in the nature of the Bitcoin:
- Very hard to image; it is abstract or “air”,
- Difficult to understand (you will soon find yourself in cryptography, mathematics and distributed networks)
- Complex; the complexity is high because we have to capture human behavior in algorithms and there are as many parties involved as there are in the real world.
And that’s just considered one blockchain; the one under the hood of the bitcoin. There are already many more blockchains live or they are just about to “air”. Each blockchain with its own characteristics, technical development, its unique features and its own objectives. All the more reason that if people starting talking about thé blockchain, confusion is spreading instantaneously. If you already know that there is more than one, the complexity does not make it easier to talk about it constructively.
More than just money
A blockchain can be much more than money. Consider contracts, saving value as real estate, jewelry, art, as well as 100 kWh of energy. Therefore, it is to be expected that the hype over blockchain will be bigger than the bitcoin-hype. Bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg of possibilities.
And that is why the feast of the great collision of interests only just started. Major stakeholders who feel threatened in their very existence are invited to that party. Think of banks, charities, insurance companies, notaries, logistics service providers, governments, and so on. In short: anyone, any organisation, any sector that (partly) derives their existence from a central position as Trusted Third Party can go and reinvent themselves in the coming years.
The alarm clock is to blame
What does a stakeholder do, who has overslept and has been woken up brutally from a deep coma by his clients? That person scares, speaks gibberish, and often tries to come up with excuses and blames the alarm clock…
The analogy is obvious: the alarm is blockchain technology and much of what you can read in the media about bitcoin and blockchain is coloured by the (brutally kicked) sender of the message: a party intermediary. It mostly does not help to get a more objective readers view. You as a reader will get battered with party stuff, some come prepared! Know who wrote the message or paid for it. That is a first step to distinguish sense from nonsense, fear from enthusiasm, danger from opportunities in the way we think, talk and write.
One thing is certain: Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT, including bitcoin, many alt-coins, public and private block chain, and the like) is here to stay, a big invention with major impact because of some accidental circumstances under which the technology may flourish. These circumstances are discussed here.
‘When smart people hear the term “smart contracts” their imaginations tend to run wild’ says Gideon Greenspan about it. Greenspan is a scientist and understands what innovations like blockchains can do presently, given their early existence. But he can also explain the limitations blockchains will have in the future. It has been proven scientifically what such “thing” as a blockchain can ever do and what not. But it would go into too much detail to explain it. For simplicity here: know that there are known limitations.
Blockchain-horny
If we consider the confusion mentioned above, the blockchain’s complexity and its disruptive effect on established interests we are well on our way to understand the immense communication challenge we face. Add up that people can think creatively far beyond the present state of science that already has aired its preservations on what ever will be possible with blockchains, we can wet our chests*: We are going to miscommunicate a lot on this topic.
*don’t know if that is a valid English expression but Google translate allows me to write it down :-)
Counter attack questions
Back to the present. The hype has just begun. Eagerness, anxiety maybe greed pops up. And you happen to be in a focal position. You have the budget or you know what to do; at least that is what your
colleagues think. They will drive you crazy with this hype.
If your office is suddenly overrun by a horde of horny blockchain adepts, and you want to do something about it, prepare and counter attack with the following questions:
1. “A ha, so you want money to investigate blockchain, because otherwise we would miss out. What exactly would we miss out on, can you give some real life examples? You can also send me some links. “
The strength of this question is that the blockchain-believer at hand has to explain to you what stories he believes in. That is useful information. For there is nothing available at the moment, apart from stories. With some exceptions here and there.
2. “Well, well, so Peter has already created a design, smart guy, ey, timely too. Can I see that again. He has shown you that it is currently implementable? And if not: that the idea will ever be implementable? “
This question is a knockout because “most of the ideas are not wrong because the technology is immature or because the tools are not yet available, but more because they are raised by people who do not understand the fundamental properties of program code that is executed locally in a database“ says Greenspan.
3. “Wow, that is cool stuff!, management wants you to pick this big thing up immediately … What is the earning model they pursue? Not that you have heard of any? Have they given you an idea of intended results? No? What is the research objective then?
This last question helps our blockchain believer to place the research in proper realistic context, because:
At present the investigation into the impact of blockchain technology for your organisation can be done at no cost.
More on that later. A tip of the iceberg: Google is your friend.
‘What is in those smart contracts for me?’ Greenspan: “A smart contract is a piece of program code that is stored on a blockchain. It is executed by blockchain transactions and reads and writes data in the database of the blockchain. That’s it. Really. “
That implies that one needs much comprehension and adaptability to invent something useful that can be implemented too. Everything else would be daydreaming.
Read an in-depth story on the limitations of smart contract on blockchains: http://www.the-blockchain.com/author/gideon/
Photo credits: http://elmarco.nl and http://www.westfriesgenootschap.nl/
