Echo: Blockchain and the Evolution of Mechanical Clocks

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Ethereum enthusiasts (ID: ethfans)Chinese translation）

, Author: Tony Little, translation & proofreading: Min Min & A Jian, reprinted with authorization by Odaily.

The mechanical clock created a whole new category of economic organization, opening up not only new possibilities, but also beyond anything previously imagined. — Blockchain Economics: An Introductory Guide to Institutional Cryptoeconomics (

Chinese translation

When someone with a business background asks you "what is a blockchain", point to your watch. To understand blockchain, people often draw an analogy to the Internet - but I think it's best said that blockchain is the next stage in the evolution of mechanical clocks.

Clocks are to time what blockchain is to data! Before getting into that, let’s take a look at what mechanical clocks bring to the economy, and how blockchain can propel mechanical clocks to the next level.

Fundamentally, a clock is an intermediary that allows everyone to agree on increments of time. We trust the clock. Imagine what human life was like before we could measure time in a reliable way. Before the invention of clocks, the most reliable markers of time that nature gave us were the rooster, the highest point of the day for the sun, and sunset. Each sign will change according to the position and viewpoint of people.

Mechanical clocks opened up new ways for us to manage trade, freeing us from geography, production and transportation, and fundamentally changing the way we do business.

As long as the participants share the same clock, they are all acknowledging that the same source of information is broadcasting to them changes in time, for example, the entry and end dates of a business contract, or the shipment and arrival dates of goods. Ultimately, shared clocks could enable global economic collaboration. When the clock was first born, who could have imagined what new markets it would create?

Blockchain is also an intermediary that allows mutually distrusting participants to reach consensus on data. Before the blockchain was invented, data silos, expensive and unreliable interfaces, and asymmetric data organization models together formed the most reliable database. But the content and structure of the sources people trust varies, and so does the "truth" they derive.

Blockchain promises to open up new ways of doing business and trade and fundamentally change markets. If participants share the same blockchain, it means that they recognize the same data source that cannot be tampered with, which can greatly reduce the cost of verification (asset relationship), that is, verifying who holds the asset or whether it meets specific contract conditions cost. Blockchains provide a digital view of the past that all participants can quickly and cheaply view without asking what "version" other participants in the network see. Now, everyone is thinking hard about what new markets blockchain can bring.

A mechanical clock does not store data from the past, it only represents the present. Blockchain does not represent the present, but aggregates data from the past. In order for the state of a certain data to be recognized by a chain, it is necessary to go through a consensus process of postponing data writing (this is like in a conference room, a group of auditors are reviewing multiple ledgers, and then creating a master ledger) , however, once the data is written, each participant can verify whether the past data has been tampered with through complex mathematical formulas (cryptography). Like a well-functioning blockchain, mechanical clocks are actually highly decentralized (i.e., there are many people providing accurate time; in addition, people also run their own timers).

Another point that may confuse blockchain beginners is the difference between public and private chains. The difference between the two mainly lies in the restrictions on network participants, which is also similar to mechanical clocks.

An open (permission-free/public) network is open to all and uses cryptocurrency as a reward to incentivize those involved in securing the network. Ironically, the less participants trust each other, the more secure the data will be, as each participant works to ensure that there are no "bad actors" in the network. With a mechanical clock, trust is easily established among the participants, since the final arbiter of truth is the designer of the master clock, approved by all participants. If you're running late for an important meeting, you'll feel the organizational power created around a mechanical clock.

Today, closed (permissioned) networks are somewhat embarrassing and more challenging to usability. Imagine if you created your own "time" construct and tried to get a group of people to use it. Since the common practice is to use traditional business contracts to "artificially establish trust" between participants, if these contracts are not written in correct code and put on the network so that all participants can understand the relationship, they cannot be compared with traditional business contracts. Competition creates friction. Those trying to create a more centralized blockchain model often find that blockchain is not that useful because of privacy concerns (eg, in healthcare) unless they can create the right set of incentives. Again, the same goes for mechanical clocks, and if you can't agree on the current time cheaply, it might be cheaper to hire an intermediary to inform everyone of the meeting time (imagine those who ride fast horses to and from kingdoms to send Messenger of invitations to the prom).

Just like a person wearing a watch occasionally checks the time with the master clock, I believe that people will refer to a large, trusted blockchain in the future to improve trust, even if it is just a private chain that is regularly uploaded to a public one. Fingerprints (hashes) of data on a network (e.g. Ethereum) (also contributes to trust).