The overwhelming majority of the mobile users have no even elementary concept of how their gadget works. Native APIs, programming stacks, development frameworks, standards, protocols, programming languages all are the dark for the users. The more or less tech-savvy ones learn the characteristics of their gadgets in the scope of data that the manufacturers indicate in the in-box manuals. Users are convinced that Android 7.1 is better than Android 6.0. They may guess that an FHD 5.5” screen looks better than an HD 5” one. They suppose that an octacore processor is faster than a quadcore one.
The only thing that all users must know how to do exactly while using smartphones is how to tap/swipe on the screens. And this is really the greatest achievement of the entire mobile industry. The fact that an average mobile user is relieved of the necessity to know Golang or Kotlin for using Android-based smartphones, for instance, provides the unprecedented extent of acceptance of mobile devices by the global public.
Kids and grannies, professors and imbeciles, geeks and lamers all are absolutely equal against the usability of the contemporary smartphones. I just stand applauding the whole mobile industry for that.
The mobile developers is another pair of shoes. They must comprehend the tinniest peculiarities of both the software and hardware they deal with. The digital giants and true professionals keep their researches in secret. They share their knowledge at the specific devcons discussing only those aspects of mobile development that cannot affect their competitive advantage. The developers compete with the other developers, not with users. The developers’ conferences and meetups gather programmers, not housekeepers. The mobile users do not care about the programming stack upon which their Uber mobile app is built. And this is the right approach to how things should go.
And now let’s see what happens in the blockchain industry. Assume that I’m a founder of a blockchain-based project, a decentralized application which addresses one of the social problems. The business model of the project belongs to the sharing economy. Let’s say this is an Uber-like project dedicated to the employment and security segments.
Why the hell I’m repeatedly asked about my background in developing smart contracts and the Solidity language proficiency? Why does nobody ask Jeff Bezos and Travis Kalanick how good they are in JavaScript, React, and Swift since their enterprise mobile apps are built upon those technologies?
Neither me as a founder of my project nor the future users of my DApp need any reason for writing the Solidity code ourselves. There are many professional developers who can be hired to accomplish such an assignment, and whose task is to convert my business idea into the lines of code working on blockchain.
What is the dominating discourse in almost all media resources dedicated to blockchain? What are the subjects that the existing educational blockchain-related websites are trying to explain to a wide audience? Hard forks, soft forks, SHA256, Plasma, Casper, Chinese ICO ban, “Bitcoin is a fraud”, smart contracts, block size, ASICs, BTC-E, proof-of-work, proof-of-state, proof-of-whatever-else…
But where is there room for an average end user? The contemporary blockchain discourse focused on the technological issues is leaving the social aspects almost aside. The so-called blockchain gurus along with a quite limited blockchain community are stewing in their own juice using a specific technical discourse for setting up an entry barrier for the rest population. It seems, that only an intimate knowledge of the blockchain technology can help people to join the elite club where the technology which is conceived as the future of the internet is kept in the narrow framework of the hyper-specific blockchain discourse.
Ask the first random person in the street what s/he knows about blockchain and “Bitcoin is a bubble” appears as the most frequent answer. Why is it so? Because a wide audience listens to what public populists such as JP Morgan CEO talk. The majority of people does not even know who Vitalik or, for example, Naval Ravikant is. They have never heard about the VIPs of the elite blockchain club. This is because the club’s regulars do not follow the golden rule of the social media copywriters, “write like a human”.
How many blockchain professionals able to use simple words talking about blockchain do you know? Off the top of my head, I can name only David Siegel. In his unprecedented “The Token Handbook”, he managed to explain the token’s nature through the comparison of two garbage bags!
How many talented writers writing about blockchain for the average people do you know?Off the top of my head, I can name only Daniel Jeffries. In his recent brilliant post on Medium, he explained the relationship between people and banks with regard to the cryptocurrencies.
How many public figures emphasizing the social transformation capabilities of blockchain do you know? Off the top of my head, I can name only Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, the founder of Bitnation. She describes the idea of the blockchain-based Internet of Sovereignty in such a manner that even the least tech-savvy person can easily comprehend it without much difficulty.
When blockchain gurus are asking each other on Twitter why the present ICO hype is so crazy I see only one simple explanation there: just because token issuers do not overload the public with the technical details of their projects offering easily graspable solutions providing token holders with the means of crypto speculation. This is when the right methods are used for miserable objectives, unfortunately.
Many may argue that blockchain is in the infant stage of development now, and the specific forums like Bitcointalk and the code repositories on GitHub are the right places where blockchain should grow up. However, the main purpose of the kindergartens and schools is the proper social integration of kids, right? Then how can we provide the social integration of blockchain having it locked up?
The entire blockchain community should recollect for whom this big deal is and who should benefit from blockchain after all. When we all recognize an average end user as the final beneficiary of blockchain, the other different approaches to blockchain popularization will appear most likely. Our ultimate goal should be following the mobile industry’s KISS (keep it simple stupid) method to make blockchain-based projects one-click / two-swipes-like accessible. Let’s make blockchain attractive and understandable for common people and the billion-users network effect will not be long in coming.