Since its publication in November 2008, Bitcoin, and more specifically Blockchain, its underlying technology, has become a true revolution.

As in any new technology, a priori, great potential, a speculative bubble has been generated around it. A myriad of "small" companies have launched into the adventure, some with vague promises, other pure chatter, others with flagrant scams ... But all have launched into this arena where many young developers have joined a creative process without limits dazzled by others who have quickly become billionaires. Such has been the debauchery that large corporations and even governments have invested many resources to know, and in some cases control, a technology that could be a threat to their relative comfortable present.

 

And in this Blockchain ecosystem there are speculators on the one hand, those who seek quick money and on the other, dream hunters. Those who seek utopia, descendants of the cryptanarchists and perhaps children or grandchildren of the Cyberpunk movement, who advocate a fairer economic system that includes the outcasts of the current financial system, and even go further in search of a happy world governed by autonomous and decentralized systems and corporations.

There are several ramifications of this technology based on the orientation of its use cases:

Apart from all this, what many agree in affirming is that it does not solve all the problems and that the correct definition of its use case is one of the main pillars to achieve an efficient or successful implementation of this technology in real use cases. .

What does seem clear is that everything revolves around decentralization and some voices have risen heatedly against. Time will tell whether with foundation or only with the outrageous anger that arises from defending the status quo of a social, political and economic model not exempt from perversions, and that one guesses, if not exhausted, if deeply worn out. Others, apparently the most numerous, are dazzled, by diverse and not always altruistic reasons, by the promise of a democratically governed world in a decentralized way based on immutable rules. For an organizational model that promises the absence of corruption and equity protected by cryptography. I believe that this message has penetrated with force in a world full of equality or tired of corruption and injustice.

I recognize the reason of those who defend the current system. That regulation and rules are necessary. That a world governed by "computer code" can be very different from what we could happily guess a priori when we think of incorruptible systems, because these same systems have the coldness and rigidity that, under certain circumstances, can make them extremely unfair. These systems do not allow negotiation, or mediation and this seems necessary as long as reality can not be, in its "infinite" diversity, infallibly regulated on the basis of computer systems, or at least, not based on those that exist currently. Because by playing to create the perfect rules we can be slaves of our own creations. But I also recognize, and I feel great sympathy, towards those who want to change things: the nonconformists and idealists who struggle to demonstrate that a better world is possible ... and technology I believe can be an effective tool for this.

But has this whole revolution come about casually or spontaneously? A quick glance at the past shows us that this has not been the case. Without detracting the merit of Nakamoto, we must also recognize the opportunism of the moment in which Blockchain technology was born and the influence of many people who, more or less directly, have contributed to its creation. The political, social and economic moment can not be disdained. Corruption in the same entities that watch over our security and protection, has shown that it can lead to a crisis as global and deep as 2008, and this was the appropriate breeding ground for Bitcoin to emerge in 2009 and perhaps so that the Digicash de Chaum would not triumph in 89.

Apart from this, Nakamoto's publication, which has given rise to what we now know as Blockchain, demonstrates in an elegant and brilliant way how to design an electronic commerce system that solves, in a case of eminently practical use, two fundamental problems that dragged their possible predecessors: on the one hand to resolve the consensus between unreliable parties (or how is known in the field of distributed computing the problem of Byzantine generals), with a practically impregnable incentive system, and on the other hand, the problem of double spending that guarantees that a digital good (easily reproducible without limits) can be controlled without the existence of a third party of trust. But not all the concepts that are presented in the initial writing of Nakamoto (and that have been revealed in real cases in the implementation of Bitcoin and other innumerable subsequent cryptocurrencies), are the invention of this "author". The very name of Blockchain as a cryptographically secure block chain is a term coined by Haber and Stornetta more than 20 years ago. Smart contracts were already proposed by Nick Szabo in '94 (Ian Grigg went a step further and tried to overcome the chasm between legislative and ICT with Ricardian contracts). The b-Monel of Wei Dei, mentioned by Nakamoto in his publication. The bit-Gold itself, again from Szabo, which has great similarities with Bitcoin but 10 years before. The P2P networks demonstrated as a reality with the Napster of Fanning and Parker, without which Bitcoin would be impracticable. The development of cryptography, of course, without which none of this would make sense ...

A global vision of the technologies, relevant people and organizations, that have contributed to this ecosystem, will allow us to understand much better the impact or the strength of the Blockchain technology or its derivatives. And that we have tried to show in the following link: a brief chronology of Blockchain that includes some of the technologies, relevant people and organizations that have contributed significantly to the emergence and evolution of this technology. Not all of them are, but they are all of them.