Practical Philosophy: An outsider’s mini intro of blockchain, bitcoin and beyond
A True Encounter
It was a bright and clear May day in New York City. My parents and I had traveled from China and planned to visit the Statue of Liberty. The line for tickets at Battery Park was long, and while waiting we encountered two sellers who told us. “We’ve got another nice port nearby to make your visit much easier! Only 50 bucks per person!”Sounded like a shortcut. When I was about to pay by credit card, my mother, a well-read history professor, insisted to pay by cash. According to her, cash is “more convenient and can protect your bank account from fraud.” I believe you can guess the end of the story — Waiting endlessly and anxiously at an outlying port for a ship that never existed… Even the NYPD couldn’t help because we didn’t have a record of the transaction.
This experience stuck with me, and, when I first started to learn some basic information about the blockchain technology and distributed consensus system I found myself imagining what might have transpired in a world in which such technology was widely used.
Let me tell you a different version of the story…
You and Me, One Copy Each
Nowadays, the pathway to having a trading record does not merely direct you to a bank card or innovations like scan-to-pay which based on payment media issued by banks, the digital ledger called blockchain and its electronic cash (AKA cryptocurrency later) applications have created the so far most secure way of maintaining “record” in terms of the trait of data integrity (Wu et al, 2019). Interestingly, thanks to the increasing media exposures, the first cryptocurrency called bitcoin has not enjoyed his big name in the international arena until recent years, but it is old enough to celebrate its 10th birthday in 2018! In 2008, the bitcoin whitepaper (Nakamoto, 2008) was made public.
Unlike the distasteful uncertain feelings generated when buying something from a random street vendor in a foreign country, you will feel the whole trade process a trustworthy one because the blockchain technology is designed to be very honest. The main idea of the creator mysterious Satoshi[2] wants to share the data[3], or we say “records”, of a bitcoin transaction with all the network, thereby “broadcasting” the information to not only the buyer/seller but also everybody wondering on the blockchain square under the sunshine (that is, getting connected to the internet and letting bitcoin workstation clients on your devices open). In light of the statistic on Dec. 1st, 2018, there are already 31,000,000+ online bitcoin “wallet” user accounts on blockchain.com with a steady ascending tendency day by day[4]. So theoretically, it’s impossible to reverse or even tune a result because the user is in fact interacting with the whole network rather than an individual[5]. As an interesting result, when we talk about blockchain, bitcoin, and/or its peers, we often talk about words like “decentralized ledger”, “decentralization”, and even “anarchism” in the meantime. Something decentralized indicates the collapse of the iron curtain of certain barriers (information, capital operation, etc.), and consequently, centralized entities (traditional banks, the third-party “middlemen” such as Alipay and Paypal, etc.) may have to face with a decreasing necessity of many of their existing businesses if more people see the democratic value of blockchain as well as bitcoin and want to choose another lifestyle.
Now, in the worst scenario, imagine that you are going to do business with an unknown drug dealer on the darknet (some websites you cannot find through search engines like Google). They ought to be more skeptical than the scalpers in the tourist attractions based on the fact that we can at least describe the appearance of the latter to police officers, and there should be many unprivileged uncertainties from we consumers’ side, right? On the contrary, with the above knowledge in the head, if you pay by bitcoin, you know that you will receive the delivery for sure in most cases, and it is the drug dealer that needs to worry because who can predict whether you would perform the 51% attack or not!
Nonetheless, I understand the quality of the result cannot be guaranteed, and you might challenge the technology by asking questions like what will you do if still receiving fake tickets as a disadvantaged tourist in the market. But if you see blockchain and cryptocurrency differently and view them as trust in a programmable form, I believe you will get inspired as well, Whether you like blockchain and bitcoin or not, there is the revolutionary value needed to be acknowledged in them — they play a role to create more trust and overturn our existing ways of thinking about mutual trust. The idea empowers us to step outside of a chained acquaintance society[6] where trust humbly relies on dubious authorities owned by a small portion of people divided by hierarchies, and thus we dare to exchange with strangers on earth in every corner anonymously while securely[7], privately while objectively. How modern the picture will be! And we are in this exciting era!
A Potential Application in the Workplace
Let’s talk about another real-life encounter that happened in the workplace. Not a long time ago, a group of faculty from another institute came to visit us. They were complaining about their procurement and finance systems. When they learned that we didn’t need to waste our time waiting physically in line only to get a signature approval and could purchase materials by needs rather than by fixed academic terms, they were surprised: “How do you make sure the funds are not spent at will?” Yet, you could smell the envy in the air.
The university I am working for uses an electronic system to cope with finance-related affairs. For example, employees can submit their requests and supporting materials to get reimbursed, and relevant colleagues will complete their steps online individually.
“Well, it based on records in the system, mutual supervision, and trust, I believe,” I looked at my teammates, and they smiled simultaneously.
In nature, people tend to feel good when they are trusted by others. And an organization enjoying a trustworthy vibe inside its community has had proven evidence of being better-off (Covey & Conant, 2016). However, such a human-operated electronic system isn’t always an optimal financial solution. Sometimes, employees may still expect there is a system that could save more time for them; sometimes, a transaction may be deposited to a wrong account due to inevitable carelessness, and it turns out to depend on an individual’s insecure virtues to get a refund…
Now that we have blockchain and cryptocurrency, if we could apply the technology to an organization-wide financial system, it’s literally a vivid application of justice in procedure and liberty in the labor force. In my employer’s case, professionals used to serve as, let’s say, routined tellers now have significant chances to switch and engage more in creative and innovative works. It’s such as a win (certain individuals’ professional developments) — win (better allocation of other employees’ time and efforts) — win (organizational achievements in productivity) plan!
Before that, the technical problems we need to tackle mainly involve the transaction latency (free transactions in particular), the unstable value of cryptocurrency in the world market, and how to label a transaction with end-users’ departmental titles.
Challenge in terms of the Quality of the Result
“Can we tell a different story this time if I pay through blockchain and by bitcoin?” They realize the procedural justice but cannot ensure the just results. So in terms of the result, I am afraid the answer is not. Yes, there are still many opportunities for me to pay for fake ferry tickets, it makes the NYPD even more difficult to trace back to the bad guys thanks to its superb anonymity, and the chance for me to get refunded is almost zero because the transactions are irreversible under smart contracts’ (public ledgers as applications in blockchains) secure protection.
It may not be blockchain’s duty to take care of the quality of the result originally, but to ensure its sustainable development as a promising technology, it is a point worths insiders’ while to take into considerations. Just because it’s taking the lead, practitioners cannot neglect its space of growth and shall take on more social responsibilities.
Some practitioners suggest writing laws and regulations into blockchains, and then they are able to regulate the process automatically. Notwithstanding, legislation can be so complicated that not all laws are programmable by the algorithm (or we outsiders call “codes”), and not all laws cope with affairs that can tell black and white. Not to mention the fact that there is algorithm bias exists.[8] Thus, that is why we admire supreme court justices, and that is where we can execute unique human intelligence and compassion.
Judges from the court determine what incline to social justice, the current blockchain, and cryptocurrency re-define what will mutual trust and freedom look like. And we just wait and see if two domains interact in the future. I choose to believe that a proper application of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency will lead us towards a world of greater liberty and a workplace of more creativity and happiness.
Implementation Explored
Everyone (not only so-called geeks) deserves to explore the potential applications of blockchain and cryptocurrency in their walks of life. As has already illustrated, it takes blockchain and bitcoin around 10 years to become a pair of not unfamiliar words to the general public. Their programmable appearances probably have frightened many people who do not code from taking a look, and there is actually not a grand canyon from the desk to an implementation. Today’s blockchain and cryptocurrency shall be approachable to everyone, just like the Internet, e-commerce, and scan-to-pay not long ago. They are changing and improving our working experiences, our daily life, as well as realms including politics, justice, and social good.
For example, the Chinese government starts to issue blockchain “fapiao” receipts smartly. Fapiao as a prevalent tax invoice in China is extremely crucial for personal reimbursements and tax deductions, thereby relating it to problems such as fraud and corruption.[9] With the support of blockchain, a fapiao cannot be double-used because of the provenance and immutability characteristics of this technology[10].
As an employee who serves at a university believing in “teaching benefits teacher and student alike”, my peers and I like to listen to our students. OPUS is one of the new things introduced by them. It’s a music platform that aims to “help artists generate the revenue they deserve” by leveraging the technical power of blockchain. Artists, especially individual artists, can get paid in cryptocurrency, which is calculated by music streaming in a decentralized way. You can find the OPUS Whitepaper on their website https://opus.audio/ to explore the methodologies behind. However, this seemingly new market is no longer a blue ocean, other rising blockchain music companies involve Choon, Ujo, and Voice.[11]
Another student once presented a Pecha Kucha talk on a PPP initiative named ID2020. The initiative is working on a cool universal digital identification created for undocumented people (think about today’s global refugee problem) on the earth through blockchain technology, partnering with organizations including UN International Computing Center and Microsoft.[12] To learn more about the alliance, go to https://id2020.org/ for details.
Do you know other fascinating blockchains, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrency implementations? In what approach or field do you want to apply this tool, lifestyle, or culture?
Note
- This article was written in January 2019 by Xiao Michelle Ji who was surrounded by innovative scholars and scholars-to-be in her workplace. Any opinions presented here are those of the author alone. Special thanks to Prof. Christian Grewell for enlightenment. For more systemic knowledge, go to Christian’s course page on Medium: https://medium.com/programmable-trust.
- The world is still finding Satoshi Nakamoto, the “Father of Bitcoin”. There are nine interesting facts and hypotheses about him: https://coinsutra.com/satoshi-nakamoto-facts/.
- Such data are organized in the form of “nodes” in a blockchain. And “[a] node can be any active electronic device,… as long as it is connected to the internet and as such has an IP address. The role of a node is to support the network by maintaining a copy of a blockchain and, in some cases, to process transactions…” (Retrieve from: https://lisk.io/academy/blockchain-basics/how-does-blockchain-work/nodes)
- Retrieved from: https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/my-wallet-n-users
- However, if the buyer successfully performs a skillful trick called “51% attack”, the transaction could be reversed. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-a-51-attack-or-double-spend-attack-aa108db63474
- Acquaintance society is based on close interpersonal relationships (“Guanxi”) on a small geographical scale according to Fei Hsiao-Tung, professor of sociology and anthropology. Usually, the phenomenon of this concept can be found in agricultural economics in traditional rural areas.
- Bitcoin wallets use random IP addresses to protect users’ information security. Retrieved from: https://bitcoin.org/en/protect-your-privacy
- For example, based on computer algorithms, future criminal predictions gave racially-biased estimations. Retrieved from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607955/inspecting-algorithms-for-bias/
- Retrieved from: https://technode.com/2018/06/26/blockchain-fapiao/
- As has stated in the following article, there are four characteristics of blockchain: consensus, provenance, immutability, and finality. Retrieved from: https://dev.to/damcosset/the-4-characteristics-of-a-blockchain-2c55
- This article has no interest in all the mentioned companies and organizations.
- Retrieved from: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-universal-digital-identification-and-you
References
Covey, S., Conant, D. (2016). The connection between employee trust and financial performance. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-connection-between-employee-trust-and-financial-performance.
Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Wu, A., Zhang, Y., Zheng, X., Guo, R., Zhao, Q., & Zheng, D. (2019). Efficient and privacy-preserving traceable attribute-based encryption in blockchain. Annals of Telecommunications, 1–11.
