Are we putting too much trust in blockchain?
Apr 23, 2018
On April 23, 2018, the National Magazine of the Canadian Bar Association published an article on blockchain. Some compare this to the advent of the internet. It’s unclear, however, if some of blockchain’s more stubborn obstacles, like scalability and governance, will be cleared any time soon.
According to Hanna Halaburda, a senior economist at the Bank of Canada and visiting professor at New York University: “It’s not proven either way. It may never work. Right now, we don’t have the technology that cuts out the middleman. Getting rid of trusted third parties is actually very difficult.” The big hope is that this technology will eventually allow for the removal of all gatekeepers.
But even after several years, developers haven’t yet managed to work out some vexing problems that are putting the breaks on mass adoption of blockchain. Apart from scalability, the limits on possible transactions, another systemic challenge is the massive energy drain of the most popular consensus and verification system. The fact that no one entity is supposed to be in charge makes problems much trickier to solve, particularly when taking into account the various cultures of participants.
Review the full article on National Magazine's website.
