What is Blockchain?
Be honest. It may be the new disruptive technology, you do not boit anything blockchain ... Promised, we explain it in 7 questions.
The block ... what is it? Blockchain technology is the new digital fad of the year 2017. Because its applications are multiplying and we realize that it poses multiple problems, technical, social, societal and legal: "Roman law did not anticipate the blockchain "quipped Nicolas Capt, a Swiss lawyer and specialist in media and new technologies law.
But the most serious is that all those who talk about it do not measure the operation or the consequences. "The blockchain now runs the risk of becoming a simple buzzword, brandished as a symbol of ultimate disruption without being really understood by those who speak", can read in the foreword of the book The Blockchain decrypted , the keys of a revolution, proposed by the start-up Blockchain France, published by Netexplo.
So, do not take the risk of seeing this term used wrongly: here are seven questions to understand what we're talking about when we talk about blockchain (and tell you a little about the coffee machine Monday morning). To read from point 1 to point 7 in order not to lose the thread.
1 How is this technology revolutionary?
It "could change the world", headlined The Economist since last October. It's "a revolution" for Liberation. One thing is certain, it looks fucking disruptive this story. But what is this thing?
It is an information storage and transmission technology, a digital data management protocol. A big database, what. Until then, nothing extraordinary. What changes the situation with the blockchain is that it is:
Transparent: everyone can consult all exchanges, present and past.
Without a control body or trusted third party: it is based on peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges.
Tamper-proof and secure: unlike more traditional databases, it is "distributed". That is to say that different copies exist simultaneously on different computers called "nodes" of the network. What to avoid that the blockchain can be hacked (see point 3).
As the mathematician Jean-Paul Delahaye writes, imagine "a very large notebook, which everyone can read freely, for free, on which everyone can write, which is impossible to erase and indestructible."
2 How does this "chain of blocks" work?
If you have carefully read point 1, you have already understood that a blockchain is a transparent, secure and control-free digital database. Okay, but why "blockchain" or "chain of blocks"? The transparency of this technology is based on the fact that every exchange made between its users since the very creation of the blockchain in question is registered there. These successive exchanges are recorded in the form of "transaction blocks" which, put end to end, thus form a "chain". Hence the notion of chain of blocks. It was not so complicated finally.
3 How is the blockchain so "unfalsifiable"?
Replicated to all nodes in the network - re-read point 1 if you do not understand this first sentence - the registry could only be falsified if more than half of these nodes were corrupted simultaneously. "Since its creation, the blockchain of Bitcoin has never been hacked," say the authors of The Blockchain decrypted, the keys to a revolution.
Distributed, and not centralized, the database is also doubly secure. Firstly by a so-called "asymmetric" cryptography system. Do not panic, the term sounds barbaric, but it simply means that you need two different keys (private, public) to submit a transaction in the blockchain. Then, the validation of the exchanges in the form of blocks (to re-read the point 2 if need) is subjected to a process dubbed "mining". But remember, there is no trusted intermediary or central authority when it comes to blockchain. The "miners" responsible for verifying the validity of block-by-block transactions are private individuals who are paid to provide the computing power of their processors (see this graph, published in The Deciphered Blockchain, The Keys to a Revolution). You are spared the mathematical problems that these computers must solve to actually validate the transactions. In the Bitcoin blockchain, this technique is called "Proof-of-Work". "Huge computer farms have thus emerged", explains Clément Jeanneau, co-founder of the start-up BlockchainFrance. Because the miners gathered in pool.
4 What is the relationship with bitcoin?
if blockchain and bitcoin are regularly associated, it is that the blockchain technology is "the virtual infrastructure on which the bitcoin is based", "the protocol describing the operation of the network on which this currency circulates", defines the book The decrypted Blockchain , the keys of a revolution. It was born at the same time as the first bitcoins, in 2009. As a reminder, the first transaction with this currency, in May 2010, was the purchase of ... two pizzas. But back to our sheep: if the bitcoin can not exist without the blockchain, the opposite is not true. And it has a much bigger potential.
5 Who invented the blockchain?
Its inventor remains unknown today. We only know his pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamo. Is he an individual? Is it a group? Regularly, some claim the paternity of bitcoin and therefore blockchain technology. In May, Australian Craig Wright told the BBC to be the famous Keyser Söze of bitcoin. But summoned to provide indisputable proof, he gave up. "I know you'll never believe me, I'm sorry," he wrote on his blog. The mystery remains
6 How can the blockchain uberize Uber?
It would have the potential to "uberize Uber" according to The Digital Factory. The book The Deciphered Blockchain, the keys to a revolution even speaks of "ultimate disintermediation". It's nice these grandiloquent expressions, but what does it mean exactly? It's simple. The decentralization of this technology calls into question the usual role of trusted third parties. Including banks!
Exit the intermediation platforms at Uber or Airbnb, for example. With blockchain technology, users will be able to conduct peer-to-peer transactions directly with a driver or lessor, with (almost) no commissions or intermediaries. "Airbnb-killers" and "Uber-killers" based on this technology are already in development. The big players in the collaborative economy would do well to be wary …
7 The blockchain, how much does it cost?
6 billion euros of savings per year in the world. That's the promise of blockchain technology according to a Goldman Sachs Investment Research study. A projection limited to cash transactions. You can imagine how much savings could be made if technology interfered in the sectors of the collaborative economy, energy, insurance ... A revolution, I tell you.