How Blockchain Works: Why Blockchain?

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my name is Tegan Klein I'm the

co-founder of Edge and node the initial

team behind the graph and with the graph

what Google does for the web the graph

does for blockchains and organizing data

my name is Cynthia Haas and I'm the

director of the world of women

Foundation world of women is a

collection of 10 000 women all across

different backgrounds variety of skins

traits and we are a community that

Champions inclusion and diversity in the

web through space my name is Charlie Lee

I'm the creator of Litecoin one of the

alternative currents fees to bitcoin I

was playing around with the Bitcoin code

base and decided to create my own

cryptocurrency and it was a fun side

project and it took off

when you buy something with a credit

card when your groceries are labeled

organic when you see verified identity

on social media or when you vote all of

these things they depend on trust how do

you know that the money was transferred

that the food is actually organic that

the person is real or that your vote is

counted ultimately you trust records

managed by Banks companies and

governments

but these days many people wonder if

they can trust companies governments or

any form of centralized power with the

rise of misinformation what if we could

build a system of trust that didn't

depend on a central entity what if we

could keep track of things like money or

property in a way that anyone could

audit the data without putting a company

or government in charge

that's possible today using the

technology called blockchain

blockchain is a new way of storing

information across internet where

everyone can participate with blockchain

data can be decentralized and

distributed nobody owns a blockchain but

everybody can use it and verify the

information on it this technology is the

Innovation behind cryptocurrencies like

Bitcoin it has other potential use cases

which we'll get to in a later video but

first let's look at how the problems of

trust have been solved in the past

since the earliest of human societies

we've invented different ways of

building trust by keeping track of

information and transactions

like who owns this Farm

how much do I owe you for the milk what

are the laws of the land

humans started using shells or precious

rocks to keep track of transactions and

these became the earliest forms of

currency as we moved from tribes to

villages to cities we needed to keep

track of property and laws this led to

the early invention of numbers in

writing

isn't that incredible

we didn't invent numbers for math class

we didn't invent the alphabet to write

books

we invented them to keep track of land

livestock debts and taxes

and of course we've come a long way

since then currency has evolved from

shells to coins to banknotes to Digital

Data writing has evolved from clay

tablets to paper to digital formats

along with inventing writing and numbers

we've also invented a new way to

establish trust because all of these

ways of preserving records They still

depend on trust that's why the laws of

the land were set in stone to make sure

nobody would change them

but how do you trust something even if

it's set in stone

for example you might have a clay tablet

that says you own 100 cows but how do I

know that you didn't make that number up

that's why we invented trusted seals

stamps and signatures

and with all of these inventions we've

authorized and put our trust in a

limited group of people organizations or

governments with the special power to

verify our records that's the one thing

that has never changed over thousands of

years and new technologies these systems

only work if we trust the organizations

and authorities that verify the records

and this brings us back to the

blockchain

blockchain is the first technology that

allows us to record information without

needing to trust a central Authority

it's a digital way to store and verify

information that is set in stone without

needing a stone or a seal or a bank or a

government the information on a

blockchain is saved on a distributed

network of computers so long as these

computers are independently managed in

theory no individual or organization can

take down the network or corrupt it

this is like a form of writing that

can't be counterfeit or destroyed it

enables a new form of trust the first

use is Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a digital currency that

safely tracks transactions in ownership

without needing to put trust in any bank

or government but that's only one

example a blockchain could potentially

be used to track ownership of real

estate to establish contracts to

authenticate documents and to verify

document was created on a certain date

it's now theoretically possible to do

all of these things and

blockchain technology still has a long

way to reach its full potential and its

future is a topic of regular debate some

believe that this is the future with the

potential to democratize who has power

and authority in human societies others

think it is a giant scam with no other

purpose in the rest of this video series

we'll look at how this technology works

and then we'll explore different points

of view

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us

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