Why the Blockchain should be familiar to you

From L2R: Michael Casey (MIT Media Lab), David Andolfatto (FRB SL),
Simon Johnson (MIT) and John Schindler (FSB)

I'm freshly returned from Consensus 2016: Making Blockchain Real where I participated in a panel on "Digital Cash for Central Bankers." Michael Casey did a stellar job in crafting the session. It was fun and informative to have Simon Johnson and John Schindler as co-panelists. As we didn't get booed off the stage, I think maybe the audience enjoyed what we had to say as well. (I left the session with almost a kilogram of business cards--odd that paper is still so widely used in this capacity. By the way, some of what I had to say can be found in my blog post here.)

Today's post is more about marketing the idea of blockchain. The word sounds intimidating to many people. That's probably because attempts to explain it often make use of a highly technical trade language that few people understand. My goal here is to think of ways to communicate the idea of blockchain in a manner that will make people feel like the concept is familiar to them. Indeed, I believe that the broad conceptual idea of blockchain should be familiar to us all.

Renowned Bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos writes here:

It will take time for the idea of decentralized trust through computation to become a part of mainstream consciousness, and until then, the idea creates cognitive dissonance for those accustomed to centralized trust systems. With thousands of years of practical use, centralized systems of trust are accepted unconditionally and without much thought as the only model of trust.

It's an excellent article and I highly recommend you read it. What I want to do here is push back a little on the notion that decentralized trust systems should necessarily create cognitive dissonance. In particular, I should like to point out that we've had tens of thousands of years of experience with decentralized trust systems. Alright, so let's get started.

Consider the following scenario. You are attending a cocktail party with dozens of people present and you are asked by your hostess to deliver a short speech. Now suppose you utter something outrageous, e.g., "I think the Fed should buy the existing stock of bitcoin and store it as a foreign currency reserve!" The audience will stare at you, mouths agape (especially if you're a central banker, or a renowned Bitcoin enthusiast). You wake up the next day and regret your rash public remark. You wish you could take back what you said, but how? The only way this could be done is if you could somehow persuade the group to forget what you said. But just think about how difficult it would be to do that. Especially if the number of people in attendance was large.

What has just been demonstrated (I hope) is the power of a distributed database validated through a communal consensus algorithm. The database here is your silly statement above together with the time you made it (a timestamp). The information in this database is shared on a distributed network of brains (what you said and when you said it is imprinted forever in the memories of all who witnessed the event). The consensus algorithm here is "let's all agree to remember what was actually said (as opposed to some alternative, fabricated statement)."

A database in this form is extremely secure. It will survive intact even if some brains holding the database are destroyed. The database can be communicated to other brains (who can confirm the validity of the statement by seeing how it squares with the memories of others). If one or more people tried to fabricate an alternative history, the attempt would almost surely fail (we cannot rule out the possibility entirely, however). If your remark instead lived only as an electronic recording in a central databank, the task of re-writing history would be much easier.

Now imagine living in a primitive village. Relevant elements of the database would include observations like: [1] John had his wound tended to by Bob at date t, [2] John killed a wild pig and shared it with the village at date t-1, etc. The database in this case can be organized in a sequence of time-dated blocks X(t) = {x(t), x(t-1),...}, where x(t) is the database (block) at date t, and X(t) is the "blockchain." So, the blockchain is just a communal databank recording some relevant aspects of villagers' activities. In village economies, this communal memory typically exists in a virtual state (written records are a much more modern invention).

Notice how the blockchain described above could serve a very useful economic purpose. In particular, note that the act of consumption (medical services) in [1], John is effectively using [2] as currency. At least, this is how things work in what anthropologists describe as "gift-giving societies." And if you think about it for a while, you'll notice that the same principle is at work in the various groups you interact with on a daily basis (your friends, your family, coworkers, etc.). Much, quite possibly most, economic exchange occurs via such localized trust networks.

The problem with this ancient blockchain technology is that it doesn't scale very well. There's only so much data we can fit in our brains.  So as populations grew and as people started forming large communities, a new type of record-keeping system was needed. The model that came to dominate is one in which databases are collected and maintained by trusted third parties. Much effort is expended in keeping these private databases secure (not always successfully). It is often difficult for these agencies to communicate and reconcile their databases (as in when you try to send money from your bank account to your friend's foreign bank account overseas).

And so enter the "new" technology, blockchain. I hope I have convinced you what is new here is not the principle of the blockchain. The new technological developments are: [1] bigger brains (increased capacity for data storage and processing via computers); [2] better communications (the Internet); and [3] computer-based algorithms to serve as communal consensus mechanisms (e.g., proof-of-work).

These innovations will permit a revolution in the truest sense of the word: we are traveling back to where we began--but with planet earth as our village.

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PS. Please let me know if this was helpful or how it could be improved. After writing this post, I came across this short video: Blockchain for Dummies. Some of the comments are critical of it, but I thought it communicated the idea in a nice way.