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Blockchain: everything you need to know about the new Internet

The crypto universe is complex and is getting even more complicated with each passing year as the technological components of its ecosystem (e.g. bridges, sidechains, parachains, layer-2s, etc.) continue to evolve. Similarly, narratives about cryptocurrencies are also becoming more extravagant with time as new coins and tokens enter this chaotically self-organized ecosystem; unleashing a twisted competition of ideologies.

To add to this, most governments’ stern outlook on cryptocurrencies has brought forward sensational political dimensions that have steadily bifurcated into conspiracy theories and polarized worldviews.

As a result, cryptocurrencies mean different things to different people. Often the harsh sectarian nature of some of its most zealous supporters has aroused both suspicion and aversion in the minds of novices, who would probably like to know more if not for all the seething cauldron of upheaval.

The disappointment of love

This phenomenon is reminiscent of the anti-establishment movement of the 1960s. Critics have pointed out that the excessive soporific enthusiasm of some of the strongest supporters of the counterculture ironically ended up turning its revolutionary sentiment upside down. As its offshoots proliferated in the form of new-age spiritualism and an ultra-glamorous marketplace for advertising agencies to peddle caricatured facsimiles of ideals such as self-realization and freedom, the soul of the counterculture dissolved into the very forces it vowed to eradicate.

The disenchantment that many express with such failed revolutions has been at least partly attributed to childish idolatry that has exacerbated political dialogue, thus hindering viable political change. Today, similar reactions are stirred up in the minds of cryptocurrency newbies who sometimes find themselves eavesdropping on passionate discussions popping up in the burgeoning blockchain and cryptocurrency space. This is a shame, because some of the conceptual foundations on which blockchain technology is based are actually quite promising and far beyond the boundaries of selected special interest groups.

Blockchain: the next phase of the Internet

Throughout history, humans have wielded the impressive power of technology, confronting its dangers and reaping the rewards. Our relationship with tools and machines, and our constantly proliferating desire to compute vast oceans of data and information leaching through this anthropogenic world, have characterized the very essence of our evolution.

The emergence of the Internet at the end of the twentieth century generated a rapidly accelerating chain of computer networks that we have come to know as the world wide web. Since then the constant evolution of the Internet has generated enormous excitement and interest in the fields of social sciences, mathematics and physics. Real-world applications of this interdisciplinary research are relevant to almost all sectors of human societies as our world continues to become increasingly interconnected.

Among other things, the Internet is basically a communication network that is probably also an example of a ladderless network. This means that it obeys the statistical phenomenon of the distribution of the “power law”, in which relative changes in the attributes of one node generate proportional changes in other connected nodes on the network.

Moreover, as the size of a non-scalable network expands, the intrinsic properties that define its collective behavior tend to remain the same. These traits give robustness to networks without scalability and make them susceptible to complexities emerging over time. One of the key features of scale-free networks is the “preferential connection”, which leads to the selection of highly connected nodes called “hubs”. Such infrastructure supposedly makes the Internet less vulnerable to random attacks, but highly prone to attacks targeting more centralized hubs.

A case for decentralizing the Internet

With the rapid evolution of the Internet in the twenty-first century, critical issues related to the monopolization and centralization of businesses began to emerge like sitting ducks. Regulatory bodies that exert massive control over major internet hubs certainly raise questions regarding data ethics and privacy, among other threats to democratization and net neutrality.

With the growing trend of digital metaverses, non-fungible symbolic art, and virtual spaces for work and education, these concerns are certainly becoming more urgent. The impulse to use open source blockchain technology to update the current web and maintain true decentralization therefore makes a lot of sense. The blockchain, with its distributed, peer-to-peer infrastructure, offers a viable solution to address the inevitable vulnerability of hub nodes that inevitably concentrate centralized power. In fact, this feature has often been cited as an example in favor of cryptocurrencies in bypassing centralized financial institutions from playing the role of corruptible intermediaries.

Warnings for Blockchain

One of the
technical limitations of the blockchain network has been scalability. Recently the introduction of lightning network technology has allowed the community to address this problem by somehow endowing the emerging properties of scaleless networks to the blockchain. The Lightning network also enables a more efficient manifestation of the trust-free attributes of the blockchain, allowing for greater privacy and security along with faster transaction times. It will be exciting to see how this new iteration of the network evolves as more nodes and links are added.

However, it should be noted that the scaleless model of the internet has also been challenged by research pointing out the scarcity of rigorous data and empirical measurements to support it. The fact that the Internet, for starters, is a largely decentralized distributed system makes it less compliant for conducting accurate data measurements.

In addition, the implementation of the blockchain layer on the current Internet is still very much underway. The lack of a critical mass of users is one of the main obstacles to achieving the desired benefits of scale-free networks. Despite this ever-changing terrain, blockchain technology is here to stay, suggesting that more research and education in this area is critical to democratically facilitating the future evolution of the internet. I personally find these scientific dimensions more exciting than ideological debates. In fact, perhaps they are more pertinent to the social relevance of a technology like the Internet.

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