Edward Snowden Explains Blockchain to His Lawyer — and the Rest of Us
What is the question for which blockchain is the answer?
In a word: trust.
Decentralization
So, databases, remember? The concept is to bundle up little packets of data, and that can be anything. Transaction records, if we’re talking about money, but just as easily blog posts, cat pictures, download links, or even moves in the world’s most over-engineered game of chess. Then, we stamp these records in a complicated way that I’m happy to explain despite protest, but if you’re afraid of math, you can think of this as the high-tech version of a public notary. Finally, we distribute these freshly notarized records to members of the network, who verify them and update their independent copies of this new history. The purpose of this last step is basically to ensure no one person or small group can fudge the numbers, because too many people have copies of the original.