As a technology, blockchain will never be fully understood by the masses, and that is okay!
With this perspective, it appears that using the level of understanding around the technology as a proxy for public consciousness infiltration (and more broadly, general market awareness dispersion) is not the best measure to watch.
Like many have already said, and I tend to agree with, blockchain is going to be much like the internet when it comes to people understanding how it functions; everyone uses it every day and comprehends its importance.
Yet, ask any given person to explain exactly how it works and they will come up short in explaining it. And this is okay, not everyone must understand how it works so long as it does work and it provides a benefit.
Also, just like the internet, what matters most is that the blockchain based system(s) functions quickly and efficiently. However, unlike the internet, this system is going to be driven by a majority that will be privacy-centric and eager for transparency.
Private, yet transparent? That’s right. It must be a utility service in which the user can participate in, yet reduce his/her exposure to cyber risk and, ultimately, compromise of personal information.
Simultaneously, the utility service must be transparent in the sense that it is fully distributed and decentralized so that no minority group can concentrate resources to influence the entire service’s consensus (e.g. much unlike fractional banking, the IMF, BIS, and the concept of central banking in general).
What is fascinating to me is that although blockchain, digital ledgers, digitals assets, cryptocurrencies and the like have all received their fair share of attention, the real innovation is going on behind the scenes and it will continue to do so moving forward. This is just how these things work, and attempting to explain each step of the process may be the equivalent of trying to educate a construction worker on the intricacies of how the internet functions: there are likely more fruitful endeavors out there worth focusing our resources towards.
The masses will be along for the ride as passengers during this transition where our society’s utility infrastructure backbone is migrated to a blockchain-based operating system. They will be voting with their wallets, and so long as the system works faster (convenience), reduces friction (cheaper), aids in transparency, mitigates cyber exposure, and produces win-win deals blockchain will become a utility just like the internet has.
Yet, that may only be the beginning of what will become a much longer story, and it is a fool’s task to try and predict where the evolution of an emerging technology will ultimately lead in a world as dynamic as ours.
“Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.” — Marc Andreesen