Web3 Series: The Story of Blockchain

Recently, I sat through a Blockchain 101 presentation from a self-styled expert who promised to make sense of the convoluted topic. “Blockchain is immutable,” he told the group as I discreetly browsed dictionary.com. “It’s decentralized.” (Okay?) “It’s a distributed ledger.” (Meaning what, exactly?) “You can’t hack it.” (Why not?) The list of blockchain’s characteristics grew longer, but he never got around to directly answering the central question: What exactly is it and what makes it special? The presentation dragged on for several sad minutes, culminating in a whimper as an attendee broke the awkward pause, following a solicitation for questions, with a halfhearted, “Thank you so much. This was very helpful.” She was being kind. Here is the story this feeble expert should have told. <h1>The double spending problem</h1> From the early days of the internet, visionaries imagined the possibility of peer-to-peer digital payments in which one individual can pay another directly without the need of a third party to facilitate the transaction. In the physical world, this is simple enough. I want to pay you a hundred dollars. I take a hundred-dollar bill and hand it to you. Now you have it and I don’t. Voila. <a href="https://medium.com/slalom-business/web3-series-the-story-of-blockchain-e48f9fc8a9ac">Learn More</a>