Blockchain — what it means for you.

A blockchain contains transactions written to a decentralized, permissionless, trustless, immutable ledger governed by software.

Impact:

• Think no middleman in financial transactions- charge card merchant fees go away.
• Banking w/o a bank- you hold/custody your own assets securely, privately, making payments peer-to-peer with merchants and individuals.
• Loans- negotiate an online loan defined by blockchain software- no fees, no waiting, no loan company/bank needed.
• Lending- earn interest on your extra capital -“be your own bank”. This provides funds for loans for others.
• Bootlegging/counterfeiting products. Supply chain blockchain guarantees EVERY step of specific food products from farm to retail store since it’s recorded on a blockchain ledger. Each step/stop is available for review. No more bootleg products.
• Eventually- buy a house from your phone. View title, history, etc. of property on a blockchain platform and make your bid. The blockchain verifies your funds/credit and makes the sale.
• Peer-to-peer financial transfer of any currency w/o virtually no fees or middlemen from your digital wallet to theirs. Think Venmo, PayPal, etc. w/o middleman or fees or having to trust them with your transaction (this can be done now, buts takes knowledge).
• Decentralized social media where you own and control your data (unlike Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
• Buy tickets online w/o a “service” or “convenience” fee.
• No worries about your personal info getting hacked like Target that had centralized servers allowing a single point of attack.
• Voting system on a blockchain- no fake ballots are inherently possible. You could anonymously see all the votes in your neighborhood, county, state, etc. to confirm the news.
• All your personal app data no longer hosted/owned by a third party company- Ring videos, FitBit, etc. are all stored on company’s server, leaving you with no privacy. With blockchain your data is your own. No one else can view it, alter it, etc. because it’s decentralized and encrypted.
• Email data is all owned by your provider! They can see it all. Yahoo! and Gmail keep a copy of all your emails, thus no privacy. This can lead to censorship.
• Your Internet Provider sees and stores all your web/streaming traffic- again no privacy. This can lead to censorship.

Here’s one blockchain project’s vision and how it will benefit people: JASMY.

It’s been said by our founding fathers, “With freedom comes responsibility.” If you lose your login credentials there’s no Customer Service to call as they don’t know and/or can’t access your credentials/data. So keep your credentials private and secure.

All these features are “trustless” since it’s governed by software- no need to trust people in the middle of your transactions, or to confirm each party’s adherence.

Unhackable/secure because your data is not stored on a central server- it’s distributed on multiple computers/servers around the world.

Immutable because once written to the ledger (a ‘block’ of info) it cannot be changed or deleted.

Decentralized because it’s not stored on a company’s centralized servers that they control.

Addendum: Summarized History of the Internet

Web 1.0 – the initial Internet was created primarily for academia and the military. They would upload documents and all you could do was read only. The past.

Web 2.0 – anyone can now post and upload content to the Internet. This is the Internet you know and use. The present.

Web 3.0 – a decentralized Internet- applications are decentralized; there’s no central authority/company/single host who owns and controls your data and grants you access/permission to use it. Apps and data are managed, operated, and stored on computers around the world, removing a single point of attack for hackers/bad actors. Currently available now in a limited capacity and where we are headed.