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When we think about the blockchain, more often than not, we see it as a place to keep, store, and exchange cryptocurrencies – most often bitcoin – when the blockchain has evolved into something more. Initially designed for digital currency, the tech community has discovered even greater potential uses, such as the blockchain becoming a distributed database like Google Docs for enhancing security or even decentralization. Most astonishing is the discovery that blockchain technology could someday become the backbone of a new type of internet by allowing digital information to be distributed, not copied.

“The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions, but virtually everything of value.” 

– Don and Alex Tapscott, authors of Blockchain Revolution

The blockchain is undeniably an ingenious invention and brainchild of a person or group of people best known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi possessed such foresight that adaptions and applications via blockchain technology could serve us for many years into the future. For a better understanding, let’s address the above-mentioned possibilities, starting with blockchain used as a distributed database.

Picture a spreadsheet duplicated thousands of times across a network of computers. These computers are known in the tech industry as “nodes,” an integral part of blockchain technology.  Now, imagine this network of nodes regularly updating the spreadsheet. That is the blockchain, which should make it easier to imagine how nodes updating spreadsheets are the same as any other reconciled database. Except that a distributed database has millions of nodes working simultaneously, with no centralized version of the information, is open to the public, and easily verifiable, providing conditions that make hacking or corrupting the blockchain nearly impossible and certainly far more secure than previous methods.   

Before Google Docs, we sent Microsoft pages and spreadsheets back and forth through email, editing and updating along the way. However, tracking changes made by multiple users at a time nearly defeated the purpose. Then came Google Docs, a free web-based application where documents and spreadsheets could be created, edited, and stored online in real-time. They are also private or shared with friends and co-workers, and any authorized user with a full-featured web browser can access the document with an internet connection. The blockchain allows for parallel application development and is currently being tested in the form of legal contracts and shared ledgers because of its security. 

Invented in 2008, the blockchain has operated without significant disruption. To be clear, problems to date were caused by human error, inside hacking, or mismanagement, not flaws in its underlying concept. The ability to store blocks of identical information across a network that is not controlled by any single entity and no single point of failure is revolutionary and, indeed, a mechanism for bringing and keeping everyone at the highest degree of accountability. The blockchain network lives in a state of consensus that automatically checks in with itself every ten minutes. This self-auditing ecosystem reconciles every transaction, embedding it into public blocks for transparency. Corrupting or altering any unit of information on the blockchain would require enormous computing power necessary to override the entire network, essentially obliterating the value of Bitcoin. What’s the point if there is no value? 

All of the above brings us back to blockchain’s underlying cause for success – decentralization. Today, a global network of computers uses blockchain technology to manage the database that records Bitcoin transactions jointly. Decentralization means the network operates on a user-to-user, or peer-to-peer, basis ensuring its network contains Bitcoin and not any central authority.

Indeed, considering the above, then taking into further consideration that what we may know now about the blockchain and how it may serve us in the future is just the tip of the iceberg. By enabling peer-to-peer payments, blockchain creates a shared economy, opening the door to direct interaction between parties for supply chains, file storage, crowdfunding, smart contracts, and governance. This form of networks in mass collaboration is the answer to tech and publicly adopted developments and will most certainly become the next wave of technology.