Oct 21, 2021
What is a blockchain?
The blockchain is a sort of account book, or ledger, which is also digital, diffused and immutable. On the blockchain all the transactions happening amongst members of the network.
What is a ledger?
📖 The ledger is an accounting register which contains all the transactions organized in lines. In Italian, these lines are called “mastrini” (now blocks). This system was invented, the 14th century, by the Italian friar, mathematician and economist: Fra Luca Pacioli. (Pronounced Paciòli with the accent in the ò)
Fra Pacioli, who was also a friend of Leonardo Da Vinci, invented a simple and accurate system of keeping accounts by applying the double entry that is still used today all over the world. 🇮🇹 Italian pride!
What does it mean that the blockchain is digital, diffused and immutable?
→ Digital. The blockchain is like a database located on servers connected to each other through the web.
→ Diffused. All those who are part of the network can see and verify all transactions. It is as if we could see all the books that Fra Luca Pacioli kept in his archive and verify everything.
→ Immutable. Attention! Here lies the difference that turns the table.
The Blockchain ⛓ 🅱️ cannot be modified by network participants. Basically it’s like when lines that are in the chain they stay there forever. This is the thing that makes the real difference between blockchain technology and other accounting technologies. Nobody can lose a ledger, nobody can erase a block and nobody can falsify a past ledger. There is a world to discover on this issue.
What are the implications?
Lots of them. I’ll tell you more soon if you are interested.
Thanks to blockchains a widespread accounting system is being created. The guarantor of the accounts becomes the network itself. In the financial world it is as if we were saying that we no longer need the bank as we used to before.
Some say that the end of the banks, another Italian invention 🇮🇹, is beginning , but I think it is an exaggeration. Banks will certainly change and so many aspects of global economies will change thanks to the use of blockchains but I don’t see why we need to be so dramatic.
In my opinion we are moving from the sharing economy to the diffused economy which could even be better.
To celebrate this post I decided to create my first NFT (Non Fungible Token) on OpenSea. You can make your offer here: cryptopacioli.com
