Blockchain technology is all the rage right now for geeks, anarchists, gamblers and corporate executives, with a vast spectrum of motivations and visions for future use cases. And while a diversity of participants and ideas is fantastic for the development of the blockchain ecosystem, many fail to grasp the original intention and core design of the technology.

With yet another global financial meltdown in 2008, Bitcoin launched shortly thereafter to great fanfare from cryptoanarchists and libertarians who wanted to relinquish control of the monetary supply from the central banks.

Satoshi Nakamoto and other cryptoanarchists understood the potential for blockchain beyond basic financial transactions. But it wasn’t until Ethereum launched in 2015 that a Turing-complete solution became a reality.

The distributed, decentralized, public and open design of blockchains are inherently anti-authoritarian; espousing protopian dreams of a free and decentralized society. But we’ve been here before with the cyber-utopian idealists of the early internet and world wide web.

Just as the internet of today is now dominated by centralized monopolies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon; blockchain technology could just as likely result in a future crypto-authoritarian dystopia. But of all future possibility threads, I think the core design and economic drivers of blockchains will converge toward a positive, decentralized future for all of humanity.