Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World

by Don Tapscott

Along comes blockchain technology. Anyone can upload a program onto this platform and leave it to self-execute with a strong cryptoeconomical5 guarantee that the program will continue to perform securely as it was intended. This platform is public, not inside an organization, and it contains a growing set of resources such as digital money to incent and reward certain behavior. We’re moving into a new era in the digital revolution where we can program and share software that’s distributed. Just as the blockchain protocol is distributed, a distributed application or DApp runs across many computing devices rather than on a single server. This is because all the computing resources that are running a blockchain constitute a computer. Blockchain developer Gavin Wood makes this point describing the Ethereum blockchain as a platform for processing. “There is only one Ethereum computer in the world,” he said. “It’s also multiuser—anyone who ever uses it is automatically signed in.” Because Ethereum is distributed and built to the highest standards of cryptosecurity, “all code, processing, and storage exists within its own encapsulated space and no one can ever mess with that data.” He argued that critical rules are built into the computer, comparing it to “virtual silicon.”