Are We Underselling The Potential Of Blockchain?

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There is a lot of hype around blockchain. It is easy to conclude that all the grand promises are far-fetched and the result of the hype machine.

This is a sensible conclusion when we look at the way technology and hype work. It is common to have the potential of a new technology blown completely out of proportion. While many technologies does deliver, at least to a degree, it is often over a longer time frame than people thought. This really gets multiplied when money is involved. Investors have a way of partaking in the hype.

Certainly, this sounds like it sums up blockchain and tokenization. Many are espousing the Utopia that is going to be created. After all, it is time for all our ills to disappear and blockchain is that solution.

This is a high bar for any technology to match. The question is can we see something that comes remotely close to this?

We often compare blockchain to the Internet. This is another logical conclusion that helps us to understand the shift that is taking place. Nobody can deny the Internet changed society and how it operates. It also penetrated the business world totally upending the processes involved there. If blockchain has similar potential, a comparison between the two is valid.

There is one point to all of this that could be pertinent. By comparing blockchain to the Internet, we might actually be underselling the potential. Instead of being over hyped, we might be looking at something that is actually under hyped.

If that is the case what is the comparison. I watched a video that spelled it out.

Blockchain is not going to have a similar impact as the Internet. Instead, it is going to affect our world in the same manner that mechanical time did. That is the potential we could be looking at.

Before the invention of mechanical time, we were at the whim of natural cycles. Everything was determined by these cycles. This made it impossible to synchronize anything. With the advent of time, we were able to structure the day around time. How much time something took was used to determine the price of something. Workers were paid based upon time and knew they were being compensated for hours worked. Trade was synchronized in a way that was not possible without mechanical time.

Blockchain has the ability to coordinate activities that could not be done before. This is all done in a decentralized manner. We can coordinate indirectly by using blockchain which ultimately organizes our collective actions. It eliminates centralized authority which is presently responsible for common standards and drives actions.

Blockchain enables us to follow the hive concept of bees. There is no centralized authority yet the entire system operates in a coordinated way.

One of the major drawbacks to centralized organizations is the goals of different parties are often not aligned. In this era, the corporation is often the entity that is entrusted as the legal authority to make decisions affected the lives of millions. Unfortunately, the corporation, and those in charge, are dedicated to increasing as much profit for their owners (shareholders).

Notice how this could be in direct opposition to other stakeholders in our economy. To start, often the environment is overlooked. This makes sense since it is often an unrepresented (or poorly represented) party. Users and workers are also equally overlooked. The needs of these parties is only taken into account when it is a way to more profitability.

Good P.R. can help the bottom line.

The idea of radically altering the incentives we operate under is a major paradigm shift. Through tokenization, we can see parties such as the environment represented. In addition, there is an economic component that is added which previously was impossible. Consider how much of our world fits into this situation. We do not, from an economic standpoint, value taking care of the elderly, teaching someone a second language, picking up trash, or upvoting someone on social media unless it is a job someone is paid to do. With tokenization, all of this does have economic value.

We are now looking at the possibility where we can synchronize the actions of a community in an economic manner. What was previous not viewed as a contribution, can now be quantified and incentivized. How much does this change from the present GDP model?

Whether we are seeing the over hyping of blockchain or not remains to be seen. One thing that I feel certain about is that we have only begun to realize the potential that exists with this technology.

How it all unfolds will be interesting. It is going to be a wild decade.

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