We all know, some with more details, others with less, what is the Blockchain. But few know that it belongs to a family of which it is the star: the DLT family. So Blockchain is just one of the technologies, perhaps the pioneer, that tried to make a DLT.
But what does DLT mean? Formally it is Distributed Ledger Technologies, and if we lower it to a more everyday language it is Distributed Cash Book Networks.
So let's understand what is special about a DLT, so that the blockchain was the first technology to get its hands on it.
The first thing a DLT eliminates is the brokers, who may be good, reliable, transparent, but they are brokers. Until now, banks are still the ones that play the role of reliable intermediaries, being responsible for keeping records and taking charge if a security breach appears. And here comes DLT with its first special feature: it is the DLT that becomes the security element, because the technology is strong enough in those terms to dispense with people in the management of security.
Maybe this about the intermediary and the security you already knew somehow. But few relate this to the fact that a cryptocurrency represents anything we can think of in encrypted form.
A cryptocurrency can be a concert ticket, an institution, a contract, a medical history, a grape harvest, a magazine subscription, a supermarket purchase, and so on infinitely, or anything that needs an immutable record, safe and reliable.
And here is another great feature of a DLT: it gives any of the previous examples the chance to be programmable and behave automatically according to what has been preset in the application.
And if we talk about applications, you have to understand what DLTs do in relation to Applications. An App that uses a DLT (or blockchain) for its records, has the potential to be a Dapp, that is, a decentralized application. Still the great majority of all the services that we know are executed in private servers of large corporations. My wish, and I hope that of the majority, is that all those services end up having their decentralized versions, which will no longer belong to those large corporations, nor necessarily to private companies, but to communities of all kinds, with its own governance and voting rules.
Finally, it is worth going back to the crypto world for a moment, and bring the trending magic word DeFi, to see how a DLT operates in the same way. If we need a money loan, today we go to a bank or a finance company, or we look for a family member or generous friend. In the case of the bank, we know that it is a monopoly, a concentration of power, and in the example of family or friends, trust between people is present. This is where DeFi, always through its origin of functionality, a DLT, provide us with simple and safe ways to eliminate the broker and human trust when we ask for or loan money.
It is only a matter of time (not much more in my opinion) so that the use of DLT, and its favorite star, the Blockchain, becomes massive and daily, and thus brings us closer and simplifies our lives.
As always, research, read, learn, enjoy, follow me (the less important one) HERE... and with or without DLTs, be happy!