NewsBlocks is not just something we thought up to capitalise on the blockchain trend. To us, “blockchain” is not a buzzword, but a technology that matches the evolution of our business.

Back in 2013, we created software that allowed contributors to add and verify news to Newslines without having to go through a central authority. Now that’s known as a ‘consensus protocol’. At the same time we considered using Bitcoin to pay contributors, but the technology was not advanced enough (we ended up using PayPal and paid its 3% fees).

By late 2017 we realised that the technology had caught up to, and exceeded our earlier vision, and we started to investigate how we could issue a cryptocurrency to handle micropayments.

Then, when one of our advisers said that we had to go further than simply using the token for payments, we had an epiphany: What if instead of keeping Newslines’ data for our own use, we created an open database of news data that anyone could use to create their own apps?

NewsBlocks primary innovation is not blockchain or Machine Leaning — it’s that news is data. Everything else follows from that. If you collect data from people you don’t necessarily trust, how do you verify it? How do you make sure all the data follows the same format? How do you make sure that no-one can take control of the data and censor it? How do you make it tamper-proof? Blockchain technology makes all this possible.

We are not using “blockchain” as a buzzword to try to lure investors or to portray our project as something it is not. We are not trying to ‘reinvent journalism’. We are not using the blockchain because we ‘believe’ in it. If a more useful technology comes along for our purpose we will use it. We are using the blockchain because it is useful.

The question anyone who doubts our use of blockchain should ask is:

What other technology allows the creation of a tamper-proof, failure-tolerant, censorship-resistant archive of all the world’s news, that has been converted into data and independently verified, and that anyone can use to create news applications?

We are not against criticism. We invite anyone, journalists or otherwise, to try to find problems with NewsBlocks so we can either defend our approach, improve our thinking, or abandon areas that we thought might work, but won’t.