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Stipe
Stipe

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User should understand blockchain technology?

Blockchain has been around since 1991. A lot of people relate blockchain to Bitcoin and think Satoshi Nakamoto invented it. What Satoshi did was he combined several existing technologies into one masterpiece, as no one had done before.

In the 1980s at BellCore, there were two colleagues, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, who realized that everything was going to become digital, and digital records can be easily changed. So, the idea of having a need to have immutable records was born. In 1991, they finished their work, but it showed the world and its current technology development was not yet ready for it. So, it waited for many years to get picked up.

Blockchain technology is more than crypto. Important thing to know is it can be used not only in cryptocurrencies world, but almost everywhere. Why it's not already used in all other aspects of our digital services is another pair of shoes.

This technology is often thrown out there as buzzword in regular conversations by the business people who may not understand it, but they want to be part of the train that might acquire them some earnings. That is ok, not everyone should be a technologist.

There are two sides: those who create it and those who use it.

Those who create it are engineers, and they should know how it works. But should user know how it works?


Today you are using internet, tv, mobile phone, but do you bother to understand the foundation technology behind the internet, TCP/IP. Do you wonder how your tv converts a digital signal into an image? A tech called DSP. Or have you ever questioned your mobile phone and how the tech behind it enables you to talk and receive messages, GSM/4G/5G, probably no, and you are still an everyday user of all of these three. It's so common and easy to use that you now take it for granted, as if you are entitled to them.

That should be the goal of engineers: To implement blockchain technology into products that are useful for you, and the only thing that should matter is that the product you are using is useful and easy to use.

The assumption that understanding the technical details of a technology is essential for its adoption is misleading. Lack of technical knowledge has not stopped the mass adoption of tv/computer/internet/mobile phone. People are generally indifferent to the mechanics of technologies as long as they serve their needs effectively.

Therefore, leave the details of the problematics to those who are working on finding solutions, everyone else should wait to see if there will be a useful product that they would use.

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