Usually, I use evolution. But that indicates a forward movement, and in this case, I am not so sure now! I had a thought on how the notion of trust in transactions has changed, and felt that I should document it, even if it’s in a super simplistic way!
1. It began with a producer/consumer – consumer/producer relationship in the form of barter.
2. A central currency suddenly opened up trade and now it could just be producer – consumer
3. That also meant that a middleman could enter the system, hence a producer – seller – consumer
4. Somewhere in between there was a commoditisation of manufacturing, which meant the seller, and by extension the consumer, was placing trust in a centralised, physical, non human entity (the manufacturer brand) at the point of production
5. The aggregators of manufactured product(s) sales went through consolidation cycles to form retail chains. Now the consumer was trusting a centralised, physical, non human entity (the retail chain brand) at the point of purchase as well
6. Meanwhile, sellers also started trusting centralised currency that wasn’t cash, thanks to payment middlemen (banks, credit cards, paypal etc)
7. Then came the internet. It killed a bunch of seller middlemen and set up its own. The consumer now began trusting a non physical, non human, centralised entity to transact with, using primarily centralised non cash currency mechanisms. In fact, so does the seller.
8. Enter the blockchain. We will now trust the technology for the transactions – a decentralised, non physical, non human entity.
We’re mechanising what we might call integrity. Where will we go next?
P.S. If you want to explore a few contrasting viewpoints on this subject, try
Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
The blockchain does not eliminate the need for trust and Why Bitcoin is not trustless
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