--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 031
+title: Bitcoin as infrastructure [iv]
+date: December 26, 2014
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: tech
+---
+
+Also read: [Part I][1], [Part II][2], [Part III][3].
+
+## Part IV: Examples and conclusion
+
+While I've come to this idea of Bitcoin-as-infrastructure on my very own more
+than half a year ago, I very much doubt it's a new one, and I doubt even more
+that it was a new concept back then. In fact I had stumbled upon examples
+illustrating it some time after finishing [the first part][5] of this series.
+This only made me realize further that the possibilities involving Bitcoin are
+still largely left to exploration even now, five years after Bitcoin's
+inception and the now famous [Bitcoin paper][6].
+
+In retrospect I believe I would have been much more inspired to call this
+concept "blockchain as infrastructure". That's not to say that Bitcoin itself,
+as a financial system, is not interesting; quite the opposite, in fact: while I
+personally don't believe that bitcoins and Bitcoin are meant to remove existing
+currencies, much like the Internet hasn't removed phones, for example, it is,
+to say the least, disruptive and it will change the way we think about money,
+payment, banking and so on. As I mentioned at the very beginning, I am not very
+familiar with finance, but there are already services for betting[^12],
+securities exchange[^13] and gaming[^14].
+
+The blockchain, however, can be used for much more than transferring money. As
+money are proof of wealth, one could in theory devise a blockchain-based system
+for proof of other things, from authenticity of documents (which could in turn
+be used for making digital contracts) to "proof of process", such as the idea
+employed by [NotaryChains][10].
+
+One of the early blockchain-based ideas that I've encountered was [twister][11],
+a microblogging service inspired, as you might have already guessed, by
+Twitter. Twister is in fact a hybrid system, using a blockchain for user
+registration and authentication, and BitTorrent (especially its Distributed
+Hash Table) for the distribution of actual messages. I doubt it's gained very
+much momentum, but it's being [actively developed][12], which is a good sign,
+if nothing else. There are other, more general, blockchain-based communication
+protocols, such as [BitMessage][13], but they're even less popular at the
+moment.
+
+A favourite of mine is [DNSChain][14], a naming and public key infrastructure
+system that claims too many features to list here; in particular, the security
+features are very interesting: Man-In-The-Middle attacks are theoretically
+unfeasible[^15] and practically impractical; the hierarchical Public Key
+Infrastructure chain of trust is replaced with the blockchain; domain seizures
+are limited to network resilience, and so on. I like the idea very much and I'm
+very curious if they'll manage to deploy it.
+
+There are many other such projects, providing either infrastructure (e.g.
+[Bitcloud][15], [OpenLibernet][16]) or just a better interface to
+blockchains/cryptocurrencies (e.g. [Bitcore][17]). Some are interesting, while
+some are trying to achieve too much in my opinion. For example, [Ethereum][18]
+looks like a very promising solution for application development, aiming to
+create a programming language for this purpose. It might fail, but I'm fairly
+sure that it won't be the first attempt, and if not this one, then some other
+project will do things the right way.
+
+At the very end I would like to restate the potential of Bitcoin, or the
+blockchain, call it whatever you like, to become another layer in the backbone
+of the current computing infrastructure. I prefer to see it as such, and I
+strongly believe that it should be seen as such, because the possibilities
+behind it are definitely worth exploring, discussing and implementing into
+something better than what we have today. Time will eventually tell if I am
+right, of course, but then again, that's not what matters.
+
+[^12]: Such as [BitBet][7] and my personal favourite, [War of Life][8], which
+unfortunately went down meanwhile.
+
+[^13]: If you're involved in some way or another in Bitcoin, you must have
+heard of [MPEx][9] by now.
+
+[^14]: Those seem to be focused mostly on betting games, but using Bitcoin as
+an in-game currency has real potential, since from a point of view bitcoins
+aren't much different from Linden dollars or InterStellar Kredits, to name only
+a few so-called "virtual currencies"
+
+[^15]: If you run a node, which one wouldn't expect most people to do, I
+suppose. The main idea is that if you keep a copy of the blockchain on your
+hard drive, you'll never have to go through an external DNS provider, while
+network resilience should guarantee that no one messes with everyone's domain
+records.
+
+[1]: /posts/y00/01f-bitcoin-as-infrastructure-i.html
+[2]: /posts/y00/022-bitcoin-as-infrastructure-ii.html
+[3]: /posts/y01/027-bitcoin-as-infrastructure-iii.html
+
+[5]: /posts/y00/01f-bitcoin-as-infrastructure-i.html
+[6]: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
+[7]: http://bitbet.us/
+[8]: https://btc.waroflife.com/
+[9]: http://mpex.co/
+[10]: https://github.com/NotaryChains/NotaryChainDocs
+[11]: http://twister.net.co/
+[12]: https://github.com/miguelfreitas/twister-core
+[13]: https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page
+[14]: https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain
+[15]: http://boingboing.net/2014/01/17/bitcloud-bitcoin-like-system.html
+[16]: http://openlibernet.org/index.html
+[17]: http://bitcore.io/
+[18]: https://www.ethereum.org/
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff