Technologies of Blockchain, Part 4: Conclusion – Bankless Times

In Parts 1-3, we briefly touched on some of the historical basics of blockchain from computer science and mathematics, including their sub-topics such as distributed systems and cryptography. Specific arguments in both categories were consensus mechanisms, fault tolerance, downsizing, zero knowledge tests, etc.

Part 1: The Foundations

Part 2: Distributed systems

Part 3: cryptography, downsizing and consent

Obviously, this short series does not do justice. The history of computer science and mathematics is rich, with many interconnections and addictions. The goal of this series was to provide just enough to state that the technologies that enhance the blockchain (public or private) were built on a well-established basis of various topics with the contribution of real scientists both of the & # 39; industry that of the academic world. The graph below illustrates the broad strokes of development, showing clearly how current blockchain technologies are based on a wide spectrum of historical developments.

Blockchain Technologies – Historical Chronology

Conclusion
As you can see, a huge development that has taken place for almost half a century has made the modern blockchain possible. Bringing together these technologies – almost all based not only on techniques but on deep mathematical foundations – in a coherent whole in the form of a bitcoin application was undoubtedly a huge success in itself

Going forward, we must keep in mind the initial motivation for each of these technologies, their strengths, their limitations and determine how to create different architectures based on business needs. A good example of this is to mitigate the anonymity requirements, strengthen security, incorporate the appeal, improve security and incorporate the enormous complexity of regulatory compliance in securities transactions. Making such trade-offs does not detract from the need for public and decentralized blockchains. On the contrary, this reinforces the use of "horizontally" blockchain technology in many sectors and use cases.

In the near future, we expect to see some blockchain innovation to improve performance and scalability, which is a special challenge for public blockchains. On the same lines, there will be new consensus mechanisms that will become mainstream (such as the pole test). By consensus and validation, blockchain researchers are studying the efficient implementation of zero knowledge tests and specific variants such as zkSNARKs.