Dr. Gavin Wood speaks on October 21, 2017 at TEDx Vienna.
He outlines the relationship of institutions vs. computation and record balance, noting that traditional institutions are based upon authority.
As an example, governments rely on the military for their authority. Others rely on civil law, backed by governments, for their authority.
This is how society has worked for centuries.
There have been improvements: Instead of books for storage, we use computers.
Further, it’s difficult for small businesses to interact without trusted authorities.
However, outside of their authority, the institutions are of no use.
Blockchain obsoletes this old model.
“Blockchain solves the issue of multiparty contention without having to involve a human.”
“Trust is no longer needed to contentiously interact with a third-party.”
This is the first time this has occurred in history.
We’ve been able to commoditize trust.
In the future trusting an opaque institution, a middleman, with our interests, will be viewed as archaic.