Why I care about blockchain
I am a new member of the blockchain community. I paid a small amount of attention but never had more than a mild, passing interest in the architecture of the blockchain for many years. I just never expected crypto currencies to win out over government issued currency. I saw Bitcoin as a speculative investment and a useful tool for illicit trade, not much else. Of course, I missed out on a huge earning potential and was ignorant of the underlying fundamental technology.
At the beginning of 2018 I started listening to YouTube personalities in the crypto space. I started to understand that Bitcoin isn’t just hype and actually represents a huge added value to the global financial ecosystem. What I was entirely surprised to discover was a striking resemblance to the organization of the natural world. It is this similarity with such enduring systems as biology and thermodynamics that convinced me finally that blockchain is here to stay.
Market Forces Aren't Always Everything
Market theorists and libertarian anarcho-capitalists have been touting the utility and superiority of crypto-currency for years. They correctly point out that decentralized, trustless, pseudonymous, deflationary currency is an enormous improvement over the centralized, inflationary, and corrupt monetary system currently in place around the world. In addition to removing the impact of centralized corruption in a market place it is now possible to transact at huge distances in a very short time with enormous security. From a market demand perspective this is more than enough to ensure an enduring legacy.
However, I remain unconvinced by purely utilitarian arguments because people are generally more emotional than rational. Just because something is cheaper, safer, and faster doesn’t mean it will get adopted. Furthermore, it disrupts the status-quo by disempowering traditional authority figures, and illuminates uncomfortable questions such as inflationary money printing and crony capitalism. Therefore it is likely to face organized opposition from traditionally conservative power structures like central banks, governments, and media.
Examples of Mass Ignorance
History is full of obvious improvements that were ignored or actively opposed instead of being readily adopted. Did you know that women give birth lying on their backs because it is easier for the attending physician? Gravity pushes the baby down against the birth canal wall increasing strain on both mother and baby. This increases birthing times and the rate of complications. Of course, this isn’t seen as a problem because expensive and risky medical interventions can be added in response to the higher risk. Legend has it that this tradition was started when King Louis the XIV got a rise out of observing the birthing process. Since it was difficult to see everything with the woman in a more upright position he insisted on the position we now see as normal being used. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.77.5.636
In a similar anecdote, the first medical doctor to discover the importance of hand washing was stripped of his license and committed to the mental asylum by his colleagues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
It wasn’t until the 1980's that a widespread organized effort to standardize hand-washing in hospital settings took place! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK144018/
If a new technology is going to resist suppression and get adopted it must withstand the immense social pressure seeking instead to maintain the status-quo.
Life Organizes Itself Like a Blockchain
DNA is now a term that almost everyone is familiar with. It is composed of a long chain of amino acids that bond together in three pair sequences called alleles. Each one of these triplets encodes for a single amino acid yet lies dormant unless it is decrypted by reactions between epigenetic and nuclear proteins responding to environmental conditions. The core code of DNA is enveloped by epigenetic proteins that regulate its expression. Together they interact with cellular proteins that copy, edit, replicate, and translate these cryptographic keys into usable proteins and cellular behavior.
Viewed close up like this biology is organized as a long chain with blocks of information. Each individual chain represents a history of all the changes a species has undergone over time. It is meticulously copied through a cryptographically secure method, verified for accuracy, and stored in every cell of every member of that species worldwide. DNA is a distributed, publicly available, information code; or one might be forgiven for saying, a blockchain.
Life and blockchain also resemble each other from a larger perspective. All living organisms share a common ancestor. If we map out the evolutionary relationships between different species, we end up with a diagram known as “the tree of life.” By tracing the branches back from modern day animals, plants, and bacteria we come to places where the lines connect in the form of an ancestor. If we continue following these lines back far enough we will theoretically arrive at a point where all the lines meet together at the first living organism on Earth with a genetic code inside its primitive protoplasm.
Bitcoin is this progenitor “organism” on the blockchain tree of life. Over time, Bitcoin has forked spawning descendants or branches on its tree of life like Litecoin, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Cash. Life is very persistent. It has rebounded from super-volcanic eruptions, total freezing over of the planet, meteor and comet impacts. By borrowing self-organizational techniques seen in biology we can be sure that Bitcoin and blockchain technology will be capable of surviving almost any eventuality.
Blockchain and the Inanimate World
Physics and Mathematics describe and formalize our understanding of the natural world. Some of the first laws of physics indicate that no energy, information, or mass are ever lost. Just converted from one form to another and the sum total in the system remains equal throughout. In other words, every exchange of energy/mass between any points in the Universe is recorded in a public and distributed way through conservation of momentum/mass/energy. Given enough time and calculation power, we could measure the energy level and movement of every tiny speck in existence. By reversing the arrow of time in this calculation, we could “rewind” the entire Universe to its very beginning. An approximation of this is how the concept known as the big bang was realized.
One way to think about the thermodynamic state of anything is as a very complicated ledger. When matter is converted between different states or to energy/information the total balance of the ledger does not go up or down. However, the complex mathematics of modern physics describe how the correct balance is subtracted from the original state and added to wherever that mass/energy ends up. In fact, one could go as far as saying that the entire Universe is a widely distributed and publicly available ledger; one that actively records and preserves information about every distribution of resources that has ever taken place in a cryptographically secure fashion that has yet to be altered by any outside actor. Once again, we see a striking resemblance between Blockchain technology and the fundamental nature of reality itself.
Blockchain Forever
With such strong correlation between fundamental operating principles of living systems, physical systems, and now Blockchain software, I am fully convinced of its staying power. If Blockchain technology only solved difficult problems of the modern financial system, it would be worthy of note already. Since it does thatand also has implications for the balance of power between individuals and centralized authoritarian actors, it draws my interest. Since it is also organized in the same way as life and the known universe, it will be durable enough to withstand direct attack by powerful institutions. Blockchain technology is not just a force to be reckoned with nor a social movement to be leashed and tamed. Blockchain technology is one of those rare developments in human history like fire, the wheel, iron, agriculture, flight, and the internet. It has the quality of inexorability. It will expand and endure, establishing itself as a pillar of future society.