The blockchain was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Ten years later, we still discuss it as "the technology that will change the world." What is this if not an artificially created HYIP? For comparison, in the first year of PokemonGo's existence, the game was downloaded by 750 million users, and even after that we are not saying that augmented reality changed the world.
Blockchain and fusion
Why don't we just come to terms with the idea that the blockchain (with all its objectively strong and interesting sides) is simply not that important? Blockchain expectations are overrated. In particular, it is also because it is still not clear exactly what urgent problem this technology solves. Of course, I assume that buying drugs on DeepWeb with Bitcoin is more convenient and safer than using a credit card registered in your name. But in general, payment cards work great, and there is no obvious incentive to replace them with something new.
Few blockchain evangelists follow the path: "problem - how to solve - oh blockchain!" As a rule, the way is the opposite: we have cool technology, what can it be applied to? Through this, I associate the blockchain not with the Internet or a steam engine, but with controlled thermonuclear fusion, which was designed to solve all the energy problems of mankind, but over 40 years of its existence has not come close to solving this problem a single day (and therefore now investments in renewable even the sky-high budgets of ITER exceed the energy sector by an order of magnitude).
Data security = reliable blockchain infrastructure
Another caveat about blockchain: it doesn't offer as amazing security as we would like to think. The number of scandals in the blockchain industry significantly exceeds the traditional "unreliable industries" (and the tragicomic story with the smart contract The DAO, and forced hard-fork NXT, and hacker attacks on crypto exchanges and wallets). It is likely that these are growing pains, and the appropriate infrastructure needs to be developed to make the use of blockchain more reliable, convenient and faster.
But the need to develop a blockchain infrastructure (in the form of organizations that provide operations, verification of participants, exchange of cryptocurrencies, execution of contracts, etc.) levels out exactly the majestic promise that blockchain technology seems to give to the world: that it is possible to build global transactions without the use of traditional institutions (banks, notaries, stock exchanges, government regulators).
If you trust blockchain infrastructure, then you don't trust in blockchain, but in the adequacy of the infrastructure. Just as now you trust the National Bank, which regulates payments, in the blockchain world you trust, for example, the Etherium consortium, which is the environment for the implementation of the same crypto payments only. It is more than likely that you have neither the time nor the ability to personally verify whether a particular blockchain algorithm is working correctly, or if it is just another The Dao who lost money due to an error in the code.
In the end, you just trust whoever wrote the particular algorithm and authenticates the user or transaction to you. That is, for an ordinary person, belief in some institutions is simply replaced by belief in others - “crypto-institutions”. What's the difference? This is a matter of taste, not "system".
Blockchain bike
Does the blockchain promise us “smart contracts” that will be executed automatically and that will not cause controversy? But humanity has already come up with a tool for "smart contracts" - in fact, human writing, which was needed in order to draw up agreements and write laws. It was definitely better than verbal agreements. But then there were documents of thousands of pages, lawyers, arbitration, courts and the state as a tool to enforce contracts.
Now we seem to have blockchain contracts. But they will also need thousands and thousands of lines of code, qualified programmers, crypto-exchanges and arbitration mechanisms. After all, enforcing a contract is much more than a "blockchain record that cannot be faked." Proven by black notaries and fake registrars in the real world.
How will blockchain save, for example, from having two deals for the sale of an object? And what exactly will change dramatically then? Actually, why can anonymous Internet users, who, perhaps, check algorithms, be trusted more than banking supervisors or the government? Of course, you can come up with some kind of procedures for testing the algorithm and the inspectors themselves, to make sure that there are no enemy intelligence spies among them. But in the end, we will simply reproduce the same procedures and rules of the game that exist now, which will become a kind of quasi-government on the Internet.
Trust in society = reduction in transaction costs
Finally, real people are different from homo economicus, who should value this theoretically more efficient world without bankers and bureaucrats. Real people don't read code. They don't even read the contracts they sign. And also - they don't use PGP encryption with a public key, upload their photos and GPS tags to the Internet, write what they eat for breakfast and get into cars with strangers (and they call this a great achievement of progress - Uber!). These are all signs of trust in society, which is an important tool for reducing transaction costs, which allow not checking every counterparty.
After all, I am not a skeptic about the use of technology, quite the contrary. Technology is like a hammer. If they try to tighten the screw, the result will be disappointing. But you won't find anything better for hammering in nails. So let's use the hammer for its intended purpose and stop arguing that it has a responsibility to change the world.
I would really like to see the debate around the application of blockchain technology move from appeals and slogans to finding specific applications in those areas where we can apply it and get results. Find an unresolved problem or ineffective human behavior - and if blockchain saves the day, that's great!
