Blockchain Movement | EphronTech – Blockchain Solutions
“We make the net work” used to be a slogan of Sun Microsystems. Repeated many times by its then visionary and fearless leader Scott McNealy, it placed the emphasis on the Internet and how their servers are powering the backbone of it. Sun combined with their Java fueled the internet from both hardware and software perspective of the “Net” indeed.
Then came Salesforce.com. “No Software” said Marc Benioff, the legendary founder of the platform, giving birth to the SaaS (Software As A Service) model. The concept was further expanded and deeply discussed when Marc Andreessen famously said “Software is eating the world”, referring to not just the SaaS nature of the delivery but also the onslaught of all the gig economy based ventures. He knows about Software, not just because he created the Netscape browser but he also proceeded to start and run LoudCloud, the very first cloud computing data center that did not go very well.
Every technological innovation adopted by masses of people always presented new opportunities for scammers that rely on short-term hype and criminals who plan long-term conjobs. And invariably, all that hype would eventually be brought back under control and criminals punished.
A few examples :
* Allowing telephone carriers to let third-party service providers bill their consumers gave birth to “cramming”, a practice to add small charges for bogus services.
* From Phishing to Nigerian inheritance to spreading ransomware by attachments, email scams are well known.
* Domain name renewals by sending official-looking invoices is a scam targeted towards small businesses, run often by individuals who are not tech-savvy.
Blockchain had an amazing and crazy start with the release of BitCoin. We never envisioned a distributed ledger tech (DLT) platform sync’ed across the world can create such a massive value. Our conventional understanding of money being a “store of value” was shattered. We never thought of money movement without, someone in the middle. If Bitcoin were a hype, it would have ended with a quick and pain-free death. It continued to mature and was adopted for legitimate business purposes. At the same time, it also became notorious as the “currency” for every possible illegal trade or activity, from drug/gun sales to prostitution rings on the dark web. However, the notoriety became of the litmus test for BitCoin and it not only passed with flying colors but spawned many improved DLTs, each competing with the other for power and features. Ethereum, specifically, is a critical milestone in the blockchain journey.
Knowingly or not, Lubin avoids uses the word “movement” instead of “revolution”. The textbook definition of revolution is that it often involves bloodbath leading to abrupt changes whereas movement is about transferring ideas of transformation from a small group of people to a large group of people. There is a reason why Civil Rights is called a “movement” as opposed to French “Revolution”.
Applying that to the context of technology innovation, the oil is a revolution; the automobile is a revolution and the internet is a revolution. Discovery of oil led to not only safer heating of homes but also conserving whale population. Automobiles changed the way human society lived. Internet disrupted so many areas of commerce and life.
Blockchain, on the other hand, is a movement and will change the foundation of many things in a positive way. It will take time but it will happen, many will not notice the change but the undercurrent of this movement will change the way we interact globally.
To be continued, stay tuned with EphronTech | Blockchain Solutions