A SOLUTION TO THE "BROKEN INTERNET"?
BLOCKCHAIN
Intro
While identity theft and fraud are ubiquitous in the digital age, some claim that Blockchain technology seems promising as a solution to the digital identity issues.
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Blockchain was invented around 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto to serve as an agency for the bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency, which does not require a bank, an intermediary or an administrator to send digital cash from user-to-user on a blockchain network.
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ABOUT
Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is the name that was used by the unknown person or people who created Blockchain
Fred Wang
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Founder of Mars Finance
The voices of talking about Blockchain is spreading all over the world, in every country and in every industry
Mars Finance is a Chinese news and reports platform specialized in blockchain and cryptocurrency.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a digital ledger shared by users who can distribute information and come to a consensus that the information recorded on blockchain is verified because of blockchain’s three key features.
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The three key features are: it is decentralized, it is irreversible, and it is unhackable. Every distributor owns a copy of the information stored on the decentralized network and the information is stored chronologically on Blockchain so it is non-rewritable. Since there are endless copies of the digital ledger and changing transaction information needs verification from every copy owner, information stored on the blockchain is also barely hackable.
“It is called blockchain because transactions are posted into these data blocks and they are chained together,” Craig Rudes, founder of Long Island Blockchain, said. Long Island Blockchain is an organization focusing on blockchain and cryptocurrency news and trends on Long Island, New York. “It really has that catch but ‘distributed ledger’ is also what it is called, it’s just not as fun to say.”
Timeline
Potential benefit in the mortgage industry
Proponents say that blockchain could be used in the mortgage industry and make the process of applying for a mortgage more efficient.
“Getting a mortgage is so difficult,” Rudes said.
The blockchain’s decentralized characteristic and self-sovereign identity enable borrowers manage their own online identity and to apply for a mortgage by simply authenticating and transferring their information from the same automated database and sharing it with their lenders rather than collecting information from their bank, insurance company and property lawyer, achieving complete ownership of their digital identity and effective information communication.
Competitive business advantages for small Navigation companies
Small mapping companies like Carlife and GoWithMi are helping consumers gain ownership of their personal location data and enable them to sell the information on blockchain to other marketers in order to profit.
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Companies like Facebook and Google sell users access to marketers and gain profits so that marketers can advertise their services and products on users’ social newsfeed.
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“Your entire life is on sale,” Kaitlyn Tiffany, consumer technology and internet culture reporter, said in her article “Advertisers can easily track you, your kid, your doctor, and the president” on Vox.
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Unlike under the current internet infrastructure where users have to use a unique ID to login to Facebook and use another different ID to login into their bank account, blockchain offers users a more comprehensive profile ID and users on blockchain has control over their own digital identities rather than having companies like Facebook or Google manage their digital information.
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“I could see this happen in the future,” Christopher Abate, founder of Long Island EOS, said. Long Island EOS is a group that dedicated to building a community in support of EOS cryptocurrency on Long Island. “For instance, when Facebook asks for my bank information, they have to ask me through blockchain for it and I will verify the information and sell it to Facebook instead of just letting Facebook taking my personal information through the current internet.”
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Personal information on a blockchain goes to a main digital identity channel for each user and the user owns their personal information. A user could confirm these identities to the banks, to Google, to Facebook, and to other entities.
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“Without Blockchain, no small companies have the ability to challenge big companies like Google map in China,” Dong Li, Founder of GoWithMi, said. The mapping company aims to put users in charge of their online presences through the implementation of blockchain technology instead of handing over the ownership of users’ digital identities to marketers.
Dong Li
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Founder of GoWithMi
Without Blockchain, no small companies have the ability to challenge big companies like Google map in China,
180 executives from 15 territories think China will be the most advanced with blockchain in the future
Source: PwC’s 2018 survey of 600 executives from 15 territories
https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/blockchain/blockchain-in-business.html
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Stony Brook, NY 11790
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How far along are companies with blockchain?
Eliminate fraud and bots and possibly build a trustworthy voting system?
Russian hackers were accused by the U.S. Justice Department to be involved in hacking into emails and computers tied to the democratic party and spreading false information about the election across different social media platforms during the 2016 United States presidential election, according to the CNN’s “2016 Presidential Campaign Hacking Fast Facts.”
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“The internet right now is not incentivized to act correctly,” Rudes said. “You can act maliciously and poorly to benefit yourself.”
Rudes said that Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election would be less possible if the voting system is employed under the blockchain network.
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“That (false information that influenced the 2016 U.S. Presidential election) happened, and that happened because the internet is broken,” Rudes added. “They (false information on media) were able to influence the mass market by representing themselves as someone else.”
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In October 2018, Twitter suspended approximately 1,500 pro-Trump anonymous robot accounts for spreading false information about the November midterm elections and liberal activists.
These NPC accounts are unidentifiable and programmed to spread untruthful information and to influence the midterm election, according to Kevin Roose’s article “What Is NPC, the Pro-Trump Internet’s New Favorite Insult?” on New York Times.
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As every user on in the blockchain network owns an identifiable and trusting profile, Blockchain is said to be resistant to fraud.
Each transaction completed on Blockchain is recorded chronologically and publicly, verified by both trading parties. Therefore, everyone on the blockchain could come into a consensus to trust that information.
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“By being a distributed model, you need to incentivize people to act appropriately and accordingly,” Rudes said.
Facing the issue that people could anonymously spread false but impactful information under the current internet infrastructure, Blockchain seems like a solid promise for verifying identities because whenever new information is recorded or a transaction is about to be made, two parties could verify each other’s identities and properties in order to help the deal completed. This decentralized and distributed technology could theoretically be used to publicly verify every voter and every vote during the election, but even blockchain proponents say that is years away.
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“You can’t jump too far ahead,” Rudes said. “We had the internet since the 1990s, but we haven’t done the voting system on the internet yet because there's too much parallel in it. The same goes to the Blockchain technology: the promise is there, everything points to this being an opportunity to fix our IT, data and internet infrastructure, but you can’t do it until you vet it.”
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Rudes said that blockchain is still a relatively new technology and it will take time for businesses and individuals to fully master it.
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As promising as it might seem, Blockchain has its weaknesses just as the current internet. The general public is uneducated about Blockchain and legislators have yet to come up with a regulation for the market.
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“If someone were to put some sort of inappropriate data, such as child porn, on the blockchain, and everyone who possesses a copy of that data from the blockchain is the owner of the data,” Michael Marzovilla, site builder and project manager for Long Island Drupal Users Group, said. “so everyone is going to jail.”
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The advantages of this decentralized network could also be used against users on the network and some say that the only way to avoid a situation like this is to regulate the blockchain network and educate the general public about it.
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“The mass adoption of blockchain is going to happen in the future,” Michael Marzovilla, predicted. “But it is going to be the same as how people use the internet today but not that many people could tell how HTTP requests work.”
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Users acknowledge that they could take control of their online presences through the blockchain technology but they don’t necessarily have to know the infrastructure behind it.
Pros
Increased transparency
Accurate tracking
Irreversible
data
Cost
reduction
Cons
Complex
technology
Regulation
needed
Hard to implement
Competing Platforms
about
My name is Jack and I am currently a senior student at Stony Brook University. I study Business Management (Marketing) and Journalism (Broadcast)
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I chose Blockchain as the topic of my senior capstone class because I heard my peers talking about Bitcoins trading. I was curious about the popular cryptocurrency and did some research and reporting on it. I was fascinated by the technology (Blockchain) behind Bitcoin and I reached out to a few sources who currently reside on Long Island, New York.
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I was also able to attend Mars Finance Blockchain Summit 2019 in New York City. I get to talked to several company heads and learn more about the technology.
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The project lasted a semester long and I decided to illustrate the idea of how blockchain works through animation. The project contains a visual piece (video), a text piece and a web presentation.
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Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions regarding the story or the technology itself!