Blockchain Revolution

Problem to Be Solved: The first era of the digital economy was about finding ways to exercise these rights more efficiently. The Internet became a medium for new forms of art, news, and entertainment, for establishing copyright of poems, songs, stories, photographs, and audio and video recordings. We could apply the Uniform Commercial Code further to do online what the code had already expedited in physical space, which was to eliminate the need to negotiate and create contracts for every single item, like a tube of toothpaste, no matter how small its price. Even so, we had to trust middlemen to manage transactions, and they had the power to deny the transaction, delay it, and hold the money in their own account (bankers call this “float”), or clear it only to reverse it later. They expected a percentage of people to cheat and accepted a certain level of fraud as unavoidable.

In this great burst of efficiency, legitimate rights got trampled, the rights not only to privacy and security but also free speech, reputation, and equal participation.

People could anonymously censor us, defame us, and block us at little cost or risk to themselves. Filmmakers who depended on revenues from syndication, video on demand, enhanced DVD sales, and cable rights to films released decades earlier found

their revenue stream drying up to a trickle as their fans uploaded digital files for others to download for free.