My view on blockchain

New platform

It is maybe not apparent at the first glance, but blockchain itself is a very promising new technology, that can allow for numerous applications that couldn't be created anywhere else. Blockchain as a platform offers distributed data storage, as well as a completely free way to interact with these data - reading, writing and updating them. The whole platform is cryptographically secured, which brings almost certain guarantee, that everything will perform as intended.

Negative opinion

Nowadays the general public has a rather negative opinion about the word Blockchain. It is caused especially by speculative manias in connection with cryptocurrencies, where a lot of people lose their money. Mass media also do not help it, in their articles they mostly focus on these economic and investing questions, usually without any analysis of the underlying technology.

Obviously some critics about blockchain and cryptocurrencies are right - nobody really understands it, it is hard to use, it is very expensive to operate and usually demands huge amounts of electricity and equipment. These critics are right in today's point of view - what they forget to mention, however, is that this technology is still in its very early days and and will very likely be developed and improved in future years.

Future development

Blockchain as a technology is not so much different from the Internet in its early days – the expectations for the platform are simply too huge, and so everybody is unsatisfied with the current state. Blockchains will not improve overnight, it will take multiple years or even decades to gain widespread adoption. One funny fact is, that compared with the development of the internet, we now have the internet itself, and it seems to be really increasing the speed of innovation and development of new technologies – so maybe we will not have to wait for so long.

Conclusion

I see blockchain as a new powerful technology, that has a potential of improving a lot of services, helping a lot of people and generally making our world a little bit more free and fair, with making platforms, that are accessible to everyone, without any restrictions. I would also say that the speculative bubbles in cryptocurrencies are not necessarily a bad thing - yes, people will lose money, but hopefully they will learn a lesson from it, get some economic and investing literacy and probably find this new technology very intriguing. One thing is almost sure, weren't there a cryptocurrency price mania in the end of 2017, probably I would't even started being interested in this topic - and that would be a pity. From now on, I am very excited for the years to come. I hope you are too!