"Decoding Bitcoin & the Blockchain" entries

Editor’s note: this post originally published on the author’s website in three pieces: “The Blockchain is the New Database, Get Ready to Rewrite Everything,” “Blockchain Apps: Moving from the Jungle to the Zoo,” and “It’s Too Early to Judge Network Effects in Bitcoin and the Blockchain.” He has revised and adapted those pieces for this post.

There is no doubt that we are moving from a single cryptocurrency focus (bitcoin) to a variety of cryptocurrency-based applications built on top of the blockchain.

This article examines the impact of the blockchain on developers, the segmentation of blockchain applications, and the network effects factors affecting bitcoin and blockchains.

The blockchain is the new database — get ready to rewrite everything

The technology concept behind the blockchain is similar to that of a database, except that the way you interact with that database is different.

For developers, the blockchain concept represents a paradigm shift in how software engineers will write software applications in the future, and it is one of the key concepts that needs to be well understood. We need to really understand five key concepts, and how they interrelate to one another in the context of this new computing paradigm that is unravelling in front of us: the blockchain, decentralized consensus, trusted computing, smart contracts, and proof of work/stake. This computing paradigm is important because it is a catalyst for the creation of decentralized applications, a next-step evolution from distributed computing architectural constructs. Read more…