According to one of the winners in our writers contest — pantsme — there is only one thing that keeps blockchain from entering our daily lives.

Blockchain technology has a long way to go to reach mass adoption. Nonetheless, its potential to disrupt every aspect of our lives is becoming more apparent each day.

Blockchain technology deals with trust.

Due to the unavailability of technology throughout history, we have put our trust in centralized entities such as governments, institutions and companies. Blockchain changes this paradigm.

It can create trust where there is none. A public, open blockchain platform can enable two parties to agree on something, for instance exchanging money, by allowing them to perform a transaction independently from a centralized entity. A transaction in real-time, on a global scale and for a very low fee.

Since trust is fundamental to almost every aspect of modern life, blockchain can in theory have a significant impact. In practice, however, the mainstream needs to experience actual use cases of the technology to really understand its disruptive potential.

Trust in Mathematics

With the advent of the Ethereum blockchain, a thing called “smart contract” became popular in the cryptocurrency space. A “smart contract” is essentially a computer program that can run on a global, decentralized network of computers — its code available for anyone to inspect.

These programs enable automatic information, financial value, digital property or asset transfers based on data/time or a wide variety of real-world events.

One can utilize this open-source technology to cover invoices for vendor payments, ascertain the origin and transit route of various goods, or prove the uniqueness of an item in both the digital and physical world.

The transparency and efficiency of public blockchain infrastructure can move the focus of our trust from error-prone human beings to mathematics and physics.

The Digital Infrastructure of the Future

There are already a number of projects out there which have identified the enormous potential of permissionless (and permissioned) blockchain infrastructure. æternity is one of them.

The team and community behind the project are building a “blockchain 3.0” platform, meaning a platform created for security, efficiency, scalability, and ease-of-use. They want to enable any developer, entrepreneur, or company to make use of the advantages that blockchain has to offer. æternity is being developed to make good on the promises of blockchain technology. The core platform and dev tools will make imagination the only limiting factor when it comes to possible use cases.

Conclusion

I end this quick update on what a blockchain is and what it can do with my idea about what will take the technology to the mainstream.

I think that is imagination.

We need easy-to-use decentralized apps (dApps)that make the unique value proposition of blockchain very easy to understand by a mainstream audience. The dApp needs to fully utilize the technology and must be impactful.

Maybe the next election in your country will be much more transparent because every vote was cast through the blockchain in a provably secure manner. Maybe you are able to use your PC or mobile phone to check the entire journey of the food you ate for dinner last night. I am really not sure what that killer application will be, but I guarantee you that blockchain technology will become part of your everyday life — whether you know it or not.

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