"Blockchain" then, yes, "blockchain" here. Supporters of this concept consider it so important that they write with a capital letter and preach about it as a panacea for all business problems (in particular, for building supply chain management). This crude, irrefutable, self-evident concept undermined the rules not only of commerce, but also of grammar. Doubt it - and you will be exposed as a hopeless countryman and luddite. Use it sincerely - and you will join the ranks of hypers and techno-utopians.
It is impossible to avoid this. An IBM ad blows about a revolution in tracking tomato tracts on the blockchain. The Minister of Finance of the United Kingdom recently said that the blockchain could solve the difficulties of the UK in connection with the exit from the European Union. At a recent conference held by Ripple, former US President Bill Clinton said that the "options and opportunities" of the blockchain are "amazingly huge."
The word "blockchain" is resistant to satire. It is such an obvious target that it is no longer funny, and blockchain supporters are almost completely immune to ridicule. Nothing can stop their tireless enthusiasm: they need to write press releases, attend conferences and spend corporate dollars allocated for research. The blockchain represents a brilliant future and a gloomy present - almost all the vaunted uses are obvious nonsense.
The ICO-mania of 2015–17, which is now declining, has for the most part been based on the ability of the blockchain to revolutionize the markets. In simple terms, the idea was to turn all possible services into the likeness of Uber and replace the intermediaries with a magic database where details are recorded about who provides what services to whom. Some agitators talked about entering the markets, valued at trillions of dollars (yes, trillions, with the first “t”).
Today's heartless corporate blockchains and ICO-based opportunistic blockchains endured mockery and ridicule. However, the term still remains an empty semantic shell, whose life is supported by thousands of press releases, reporting perhaps the very minimum of meaning. The term is used simultaneously to refer to projects, structures and databases that have practically nothing in common. As a result, attempts to define it usually end in failure.
I will try to explain the origin of the blockchain and what we should do with it.
Where did the blockchain come from?
Nakamoto cautiously emphasized that the chain is a sequence of evidence of work done, where each is associated with its parent's hash. (See for yourself!) Proof of performance is an integral part of the concept. This is proof that the one who offers the block did a certain job for him. This allows the system to achieve resistance to the Sibyl attack and convergence (the longest chain - with an unchanged set of rules - is the correct story, by definition) without a single arbitrator.
Such a data structure, with the inclusion of the hashes of the previous blocks, ensures the preservation of the past and the sequence of the database. Replaying the database in each node of the system ensures that it cannot be disabled or changed unilaterally.
The system was created taking into account the hostile context. Hostile governments covered up all previous attempts to create electronic money. If they could, they would cover Bitcoin as well. Thus, it was created with a specific purpose. It should be clarified: Nakamoto created perhaps the first popular, widely used chain list structure — not the first one — but the innovation was in combination with this chain list with the computational complexity of adding new records to the chain.
Does this sound like what corporate blockchains are trying to implement? Of course not. There are no shadow organizations involved in tampering with records of strawberry origins that would be looking for ways to crack IBM's supply chain blockchain. Consequently, the IBM blockchain does not have to adhere to the same standards as Bitcoin. Entries that are stored in corporate blockchains do not need the protection that Nakamoto consensus provides. They do not need open validator groups. A trusted organization can simply vouch for the database, or a consortium of interested parties can exchange records with each other.
Why is the term so popular?
As far as I can tell, people saw the success of Bitcoin - partly relying on an expensive surrogate database - and wanted to generalize it for other uses. Even early Bitcoin developer Hal Finney talked about separating the data structure from the monetary system:
“It may also be possible to reorganize and restructure Bitcoin to isolate a key new idea — a decentralized, global, irreversible transaction database. Such functionality can be useful for other purposes. When it is available, using it to register remittances will be a kind of side effect, and such a system may be more difficult to cover. ”
- Hal Finney in his Cryptography newsletter January 24, 2009
However, as far as we know, such systems truly work only with internal rewards — that is, if fair validation is rewarded with “internal” tokens. If the miners of Bitcoin were rewarded in US dollars, they would not necessarily be motivated to mine in the longest chain. The cost of their equipment depends on the continued existence and prosperity of the chain over which they operate. But private, controlled or corporate blockchains do not have domestic currencies and do not emit currency units to validators, since the group of validators is controlled, and therefore, resistance to the Sibyl attack and good behavior are built into them initially.
I believe that blockchain marketing is so enticing, because the data structure itself - without proof of work or open validation - can provide the same benefits as Bitcoin, without tokens or costly protection against a Sibyl attack.
Patri Friedman said well in his tweet:
“Crypte is characterized by bitcoin addiction”: in almost all analyzes, cryptocurrency networks are considered to be much more similar to BTC than they are in reality. BTC, as a pioneer, is very remarkable, and all those who were involved in the crypt get rich at BTC, they know someone who got rich at BTC, or they want to get rich at BTC. ”
Bitcoin is a monolith that defines how investors and corporate research offices view similar projects. Would Ripple be so popular without the invention of Bitcoin? What about Corda and Hyperledger? Litecoin? ICO in general? Ethereum? It is difficult to even imagine an alternative history, but I suspect that in all cases the answer is no. Bitcoin is a giant whose properties are projected on projects with superficial similarities, which is not always true.
As a result, I am incredulous about those who routinely use the word “blockchain”, especially if they are trying to sell something. The abuse of the term, especially in the general context and without clarification, most likely means one of three things about a person:
- He is guided by good intentions, but the conventions force him to use mediocre linguistic means;
- He is a little confused and tries to hide his ignorance behind technical jargon;
- He is trying to impersonate an expert in the industry, where, if you look realistically, there are no experts.
I firmly believe that the abuse of the term goes back to the desire to create (or advertise) systems that should resemble Bitcoin, but without indigestible elements. Nevertheless, the main thing is lost sight of this: the Bitcoin blockchain is only part of it, but not its essence.
Bitcoin and its blockchain
Speaking of Bitcoin as a blockchain is like talking about a car as a gearbox. The gearbox is a key element of the system, but it does not represent it in its entirety. Blockchain is a metonymy - the part that denotes a whole. Essentially, there is nothing wrong with that. But when someone decides that the blockchain is the essence of Bitcoin, responsible for its success, conceptual confusion arises.
Bitcoin really relies on the chain list. But it also relies on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, an open source and a no-leader project, a replicable database, a self-contained motivation system, the longest chain consensus rule, and a proof of work execution scheme that makes block offers genuinely expensive. (Real cost is simple: it is impossible to forge a block, since it would have to spend a lot of computing power or energy. Thus, it is difficult to create new bitcoins, but anyone can easily verify that you have worked hard for this).
All these components in combination create a system with certain properties: proven deficit, possibility of auditing, resistance to intervention, fair distribution, almost perfect inflexibility of the offer (price increase cannot speed up production), free participation (no one can stop you from broadcasting transactions). Bitcoin), etc. These qualities make Bitcoin unique in comparison, for example, with PayPal or Visa. They are its distinctive features. Without a peer-to-peer nature, open collaboration, voluntary developers and, most importantly, block offers by the method of proving the performance of work, Bitcoin would not exist. The chart below, created by David Pouele based on the ideas of Pierre Rochard, is an attempt to capture the essence of Bitcoin. Note that although the block chain is necessary for the operation of the system, it alone is not enough. Bitcoin is something more.
I can not say what the essence of Bitcoin is, but to reduce it to a chain of blocks is extreme reductionism. Bitcoin's soul is not a blockchain. But if you remove the blockchain from Bitcoin, you get something empty.
Why resent the "blockchain"?
I believe that the best conceptual models will lead to better results. Writer George Orwell believed that the words we use directly affect how we see the world. He even hinted that erasing words from common usage can eliminate what they refer to, the concepts they need to represent:
“The goal of Novoyaz is not only to express the worldview and thinking of the supporters of Angsots, but to make all other ways of thinking impossible. It was assumed that when the News will be established forever, and Staroyaz will be forgotten, the heretical thought - that is, a thought incompatible with the principles of Angsots - becomes literally ineffable, as far as the thought depends on the word. ”
According to the theory, if one removes the word “freedom” from common usage, then the desire for freedom will disappear. In addition, Orwell was convinced that a careless language is evidence of confused thinking and is used to slip unprovable statements to an unsuspecting reader.
My argument boils down to the fact that, by raising the chain list to the elevated status of the “blockchain”, we overestimate it. Hinting that Bitcoin is just a blockchain or just a source of more interesting basic technology, we are doing Bitcoin a disservice. Constructing invented “blockchain” in popular consciousness, we contribute to careless thinking at the expense of accuracy.
Blockchain downplays the importance of an incredibly important and valuable innovation — a monetary system with minimized trust — and detracts from it, forcing it to benefit, real or imagined, in managing corporate supply chains.
Further path requires honesty
Supporters of controlled or corporate blockchains: Be honest about what you are creating. If you are creating a database controlled by a consortium of subjects with prior authorizations, do not assert or pretend that it will have the same reliability characteristics as systems designed to exist in a much more hostile environment. Imagine how you would present your systems if Bitcoin was not invented.
Leave the public blockchain alone. You do not compete with them. Your systems have completely different goals. If you insist on the name "blockchain", I advise you to give a very precise definition of what you mean by "blockchain", and make sure that you do not mix your systems with open, public blockchains.
IT specialists: Stop making fun of people far from technology for using the term “blockchain”. You do not see the main thing. They do not mean the data structure, so it makes no sense to say: “Just use MySQL”. Blockchain, for good or for ill (definitely, for bad), has become a term commonly used to refer to the entire system — economic and social — and not just the data structure.
Regulators: Please do not try to define “blockchain” or create norms regulating blockchain. You will fail, not because of your lack of insight, but because the term “blockchain” is so semantically scattered that it is impossible to determine it. Definitions should be specific and useful, but also general enough to cover all members of a group. However, these requirements are tearing the blockchain apart. This term is used in a too general sense to be useful.
Instead, it’s worth making a distinction. Recognize that the legislation covering cryptocurrencies is probably unable to simultaneously cover tokenized securities, “utilitarian tokens” and controlled blockchains. Private or corporate blockchains are not just “Bitcoin in a different wrapper” - they are completely different. In fact, they have nothing to do with Bitcoin.
To everyone else: Please avoid using the term “blockchain” at every opportunity. Let's invent new terms that are specific enough to be useful and properly describe what they mean. To describe uncontrolled, open networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, I now use the term “public blockchain”, but I would like to use another term that does not rely on this word with the letter “b”. If you still insist on using it, then I like Peter Todd’s definition most of all: “Blockchain is a chain of blocks”.
Such direct, minimalist use partially relieves the term from conceptual weight. Ability to implicitly promise surprising coherence, reliability and uninterrupted work is eliminated. The more honestly your definition of “blockchain”, the less suitable it is for impressive press releases. The blockchain, as defined by Todd, is just a way to organize data. And this is very much at odds with how this term is used today.
I am convinced that in 5-10 years, looking back at the popularity of the “blockchain”, we will come into slight confusion. This term will seem to us as obsolete as "surfing the world wide web" or "information superhighway." Consider this an open call for a replacement term. It's time to move on.
