why blockchain?

why blockchain? why does it matter?

blockchain at its core is about one thing: decentralizing power.

it’s about the idea checks and balances, to an extreme. it’s about guaranteeing checks and balances.

it’s all about data.

who owns your data? who has complete and total power over you?

well what is your data? it’s everything you do on the internet, it’s your identity, it’s your money, it’s everything about you.

it’s your social security number, your phone number, your money, it’s you.

and who has access to all that data? the government

as a Canadian or American, you have good reason to trust that your government won’t abuse their complete and total power over you.

after all, if they tried to delete all records of your ssn, you’d find records of it at services you’ve used (applications to schools, jobs, etc.)

however the government could intimidate schools, past employers, etc. to delete all records of you

and if you don’t have loyal, close friends and family to back you up, you might have a hard time taking the government to court

ultimately, they could just kill you, without getting in trouble because they have the guns

and if you didn’t have a chance to grab the ear of an effective journalist, then you’re goin’ out, silently

who would know? who would notice you?

bob lazar is an American who claimed to have worked at s4, an area 51-like place where he claims ufo’s are stored and studied.

he told news reporters that he attended cal tech and mit for college. when the reporters contacted cal tech and mit to confirm this, the schools said lazar never attended them. the reporters reached out to friends who confirmed that he attended cal tech, but they couldn’t find anyone to confirm mit.

this is where blockchain comes into play.

if bob lazar attended mit and cal tech, the people running those schools were the only ones that could confirm his attendance there. they were the only ones who could verify that data, and if the government called and told them to not verify that data, they’re expected to obey, so bob lazar is out of luck.

but what if there were a diploma blockchain? diplomas are generally something that no one wants to hide. it’s typically not sensitive data, so what if you stored them on a publicly visible blockchain that anyone can download/view?

you could create software that would allow only accredited colleges to post data to a blockchain. you could create a website and send login credentials to the deans of every American college. the deans could login and upload photos of diplomas. then whenever anyone wanted to verify their diploma, all they’d have to do is go to this website and search their name, and a photo of their diploma would pop up.

bob lazar goes to check this website to prove that he graduated from mit and cal tech. however, the government tapped his phone, so they heard about his relationship with the news reporters. they called you and said, if you don’t delete all photos of bob’s diploma’s from your website, we’re gonna k*ll you.

you said, oh shit, i don’t feel like dying right now, so you deleted the records.

bob lazar appeared on tv and called you a fraud. said, that scared puppet deleted my diploma photos.

you declined to comment, but if you were forced to comment, you’d have simply said, there were never any records of bob lazar in your online database.

but what if your website wasn’t solely operated by you? what if you weren’t the only one who had access to the database? what if all the schools held a copy of the database, maybe there are 5,300 colleges that use the website.

what if they each maintained a copy of the database, so that each time a college uploaded a photo, every college downloaded a copy of it.

does the government have the resources to contact and order every college to delete those records before bob lazar and the reporters can call three or four to back him up?

let’s say as soon as the government hears that bob lazar is talking to reporters, they seek to discredit him by deleting all records of his diplomas, so they immediately send emails to every college and start calling every single one of them as quickly as possible.

sounds like there’s a chance bob and the reporters could get a few morally upstanding colleges to share copies of their database with them. that sounds like enough to convince the public that bob DID indeed attend MIT and Cal Tech.

but what if it’s not?

what if the government has a way to immediately contact each dean and order them to delete bob’s records from their copy of the database.

now bob has pissed the government off, and they’ve shown their ability to discredit him.

what else can the government do? they can erase all their records of bob’s social security number! they can delete all records relating to his driver’s license, his birth certificate. now what? bob can’t leave the country. maybe he has no family, and his friends that attested to his cal tech attendance were sent death threats by the government.

then he goes home to find that his house is being seized by the bank he had his mortgage with. they have records that say a person, Linda Welsh, had a mortgage for this house, but she failed to make her payments so they’re taking it.

so now only the government, bob lazar and his cal tech friends know what really happened. the government had the diplomas deleted. the deans won’t say anything because they’re scared of the government. the government workers won’t say anything because they’re scared of the other government workers.

so bob has to sleep at a homeless shelter and make plans to start life without documents.

but what if everyone had a copy of the database? what if it weren’t just the schools?

bob wouldn’t have even thought twice about proving his diplomas, he would’ve just appeared on camera and been like, yeah just check your copy of the database, i went to mit and cal tech, everyone would be like, oh heck yeah he did.

but is that technically feasible? no. millions of photos of diplomas would take up way more storage than your computer has. not many people could save that much data. and for what, diplomas?

but hwat they could potentially save would be hashes of the data. each digital photo can be stored as a file, which can be converted to binary (1s and 0s). Each photo would have a unique binary representation. Then that binary would be translated into something smaller, maybe like a 32-character hash. So each photo could have its own, unique, 32-character hash. so then we could all just store these hashes on our computers, and it’d take a lot less space.

now maybe we all have copies of this database with hashes in it. we know the algorithm that took the photo and converted it to the hash, so if bob sends us the photo file, we can run it through the algorithm to see if we get the same hash.

the algorithm can be so complicated, that it’s impossible to take the hash and try to backtrace through the algorithm to reverse-engineer the photo, but it takes less than a second to run the photo through the algorithm and see if we get the same hash we have stored in our database. we didn’t know the hash we had stored from Mar 4, 1973 (ais89rkdlow02roe87f7492jf8812ks) was a hash of bob’s photo, but now we do!

but why would we all store millions of diploma hashes on our computers?

well why does anyone store millions of bitcoin transactions on their computers? probably because they want to make money.

(why blockchain? — part 2… coming soon)