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"The current Internet is based on a feudal economic model," says Dennis Avorin, a Malta-based technology policy expert who explains how ownership of the Internet is in the hands of a few large companies. "We usually pay them by giving away our data for free, and in return we get free searches, free emails, and so on."
It serves as a good introduction to the discussion of Avorin on why the "feudal model" of the World Wide Web will be broken by Blockchain, perhaps the word of the year 2018 to move from the worship of the Maltese government to the world. altar of digital rapture.
Techno-evangelists and crypto-princes gathered in Malta from all over the world this year to attend the October Delta summit and the Blockchain summit in Malta during the week when the Maltese government published a series of laws for regulate distributed accounting (DLT) technologies such as Blockchain itself. With the Labor administration that is now billing Malta itself as "Blockchain Island", in addition to the PR there are the consequences of the real life of the Blockchain revolution and the reason why the DLTs are so important.
So, why is the Internet today defined as a "feudal" system and is DLT its liberator?
Think of it this way: imagine a government server containing all your identity data – if you want to pass on that data to say, your doctor, then you have to ask the government to release this information to the doctor. This is a centralized way of organizing data.
But a distributed ledger is a database that is not managed by a central administrator and that can not be changed by any user without an agreement between all the other users. It is a new way of organizing the discovery, evaluation and transfer of data or units of value.
Proponents say that this is what is meant by decentralized Internet. And Dennis Avorin thinks this is not a hyperbole, but in fact it should be interpreted literally.
"The way the Internet has evolved is similar to how humans have gone from being free to live the earth for free, to seeing most of them become private property, along with everything that they could produce ", says Avorin.
It cites as an example the way pro-Catalan nationalist sites were judged illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court to allow the authorities to block them.
The way to block them was to block their transmission of data on the web, which are those letters at the beginning of all Web addresses that represent the rules that regulate data transmissions: HTTP or hypertext transfer protocol.
"The alternative DLT to HTTP is called interplanetary file system or IPFS, it's different from HTTP because it's a peer-to-peer method for storing and sharing hypermedia (that is, things on the internet) So, unless we interrupt the infrastructure on which the Internet operates by cutting wires … IPFS is out of centralized control and can not be turned off by large service providers, "says Avorin.
And this is how the Catalan websites touched the Spanish block during the Catalan independence referendum. The sites were replicated on IPFS by the Catalan Pirate Party, allowing them to continue to be accessible.
"This is one of several ways in which DLT can change the Internet," says Avorin.
Take Google as an example. Avorin says that in exchange for free web searches and free webmail, Google acquires our data to sell them to companies on the web. So, just like the feudal model, or manorialism, we are free to work on the land of the "common" Internet as long as we return the gentleman to nature.
So what happens when the Internet is decentralized? "Manorialism in Europe gradually disappeared when the process known as the enclosure movement began to enclose and privatize the previously opened system.The movement of the enclosure was the main force behind the birth of private land ownership and the beginning of the capitalism ", says Avorin.
In this same vein, Avorin states that individual users become the owners of their data on the web, now enclosed in DLT systems, where private property is guaranteed by the code itself. "Users will be able to monetize everything from their cat videos to their own consumer data in ways that are impossible today," says Avorin.
So when any transaction, for example, is recorded on a blockchain, that transaction is made known through the chain that connects users to each other. And it is not possible to tamper with a blockchain, which is why trust is integrated into the system rather than guaranteed by a "central owner" of the data.
All decentralized
You will find supporters and critics the same way as the blockchain. Perhaps the most authoritative critic is Clinton's adviser, Professor Nouriel Rabini, of the NYU's Stern School of Business, who called blockchain "nothing more than a glorified spreadsheet."
Practically as the feudal allegory of Avorin, the blockchain has become what Rabini claims to be "the synonym of a libertarian ideology that treats all governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions and currencies of the real world like evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed ".
With registers without authorization and without the need for credible institutions such as a bank as an intermediary, the importance of trust in the social contract that people have with the government seems to be nowhere in the blockchain society.
In fact, Rabini states that there is no company under the sun that would renounce any proprietary and valuable information for a decentralized peer-to-peer ledger such as the DLT. Why should you? "No serious institution would ever allow its transactions to be verified by an anonymous sign … it is not surprising that every time that" blockchain "was piloted in a traditional environment, it was thrown into the trash bin or turned into an authorized private database is not other than an Excel spreadsheet or a database with a misleading name. "
But in addition to reinventing the Internet, Avorin is convinced that blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize other aspects of modern life, especially when combined with other technologies such as cloud computing, which allows users to store their data on "cloud" servers instead of on IT-site services and Artificial Intelligence.
"From the simplification of supply chains and the use of smart contracts, to better administration of public registers or even automated traffic systems and self-driving cars, almost all sectors benefit from the widespread use of DLT.
"It will also enable people to regain control of their data, such as medical health or school records, and use them in ways that would not have been possible in the past … DLT will improve the monitoring of intellectual property rights, as well as reinforce the concept owned in the digital sphere – in particular, media companies have a lot to gain from the DLT revolution, "says Avorin.
In fact, with the largest cryptocurrency grants that have already opened offices in Malta, Avorin said it is difficult to call the introduction of the laws "nothing but a success".
"The move is important because it has given entrepreneurs and investors the confidence to continue contributing to the growth of the industry, because many of the disruptive projects in the DLT space require years of development and substantial investment before they can be applied in real business cases. I believe that until now we have only seen the beginning of Blockchain Island. "
However, the Maltese government has stated that the most significant challenge facing Malta by becoming a digital innovation hub has been the development of a labor force with the right skills, which is why a post-graduate scholarship fund was set up. emerging laboratory technologies to encourage the exploration of emerging technologies.
"Keep in mind that this space is currently unregulated worldwide and it is precisely this lack of regulation that has helped to abuse it," Secretary-General Silvio Schembri told Malta Today. "Malta is even exceeding the fifth anti-money laundering directive, demonstrating how seriously we take on our role as a jurisdiction".
