OKX Blockchain 60 Lectures | Episode 28: What Impact Has Blockchain Technology Brought?

Hello everyone, this is Xiaokun. In previous lessons, we covered most of the technologies related to blockchain. Today, we'll summarize those technologies and discuss the impact blockchain has brought and the challenges it faces.

The core technologies of blockchain mainly include distributed ledger, consensus mechanism , cryptography, and smart contract—these four components collectively build the foundational framework of blockchain. In a blockchain system, when the network generates a piece of data, it is first processed by the consensus mechanism. After the data receives full-network confirmation, it is stored in the distributed ledger—a decentralized database. If you want to use this data, it can be retrieved from the database and handed to a smart contract for execution, while cryptography maintains data security and ownership throughout the entire system.

Many people cannot understand why this system could potentially bring tremendous impact, or even be considered the second internet revolution. The reason is that blockchain has brought another approach to data management to our current internet world—namely, a relatively decentralized method of managing data.

Why is this the case? Because the existing data management method has a significant problem—data is held by centralized giants. In this big data era, data is both a resource and everyone's privacy. When internet technology first emerged, no one anticipated that the online world would become so vast. As a result, many internet infrastructures, such as social networking and payment services, were initially built by private companies.

Later, as the internet world continued to expand and these services began to occupy most of people's daily lives, problems emerged. These data assets are actually more akin to public resources—they contain everyone's social information, shopping information, geographic information, and more. These personal privacy matters are controlled by non-governmental private corporations, which makes it difficult to prevent these giants from commercializing this data.

However, since the internet infrastructure was built by these centralized giants, this problem is hard to solve. If we don't share our data with these third-party institutions, due to trust issues, many internet interactions between users cannot be completed—for example, online shopping. You cannot trade with a stranger without any guarantee, because what if they default on payment?

If data is shared with third-party institutions, the data is not transparent—you have no way of knowing how these institutions use your data. Over time, The Matrix could very well become reality. Thus, we find ourselves in the dilemma of centralized giants monopolizing and even misusing data, with no solution in sight.

The essence of blockchain is a decentralized database with characteristics such as data traceability, immutability, and decentralization. These features can essentially solve two problems: data opacity and the trust issue without a third party—both of which correspond to the issues mentioned above.

If existing internet infrastructures are improved through blockchain technology, and data is managed using a decentralized method, these public data resources would no longer be controlled by giant corporations but instead stored in a foundational database that truly belongs to society. This can solve the issues mentioned above. Therefore, the impact blockchain brings to the entire internet world is no less than a new internet revolution.

As things stand, blockchain is already being progressively implemented in industries with high requirements for data transparency, such as supply chain, healthcare, and charity, as well as in industries with high trust requirements, such as finance and payment services, and has already begun to bring significant changes. In the long run, governments, enterprises, and individual users may all eventually participate in the data revolution brought by blockchain.

However, blockchain technology still faces some challenges at present, such as efficiency issues, scalability problems, and interoperability issues among isolated value ecosystems. Currently, blockchain is introducing new technologies like sidechains, cross-chain , Lightning Network , SegWit, and sharding to optimize these areas. Although the actual effects remain to be verified over time, what matters most is that blockchain has opened a door for us—and we still have plenty of time to explore the world beyond it.

"OKX Blockchain 60 Lectures" is a blockchain educational animated video series jointly produced by OKX and Sina Tech. Targeting users with zero knowledge of blockchain, through articles, animated videos, and other formats, it生动的科普区块链概念 from the perspectives of concepts, technology, and applications. Through five major sections and 60 knowledge points, it vividly illustrates blockchain concepts. The content of this episode was guided by Xiong Yue, Partner at Bitlan.

Disclaimer

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