Author Information: Gregory Sandstrom, Arena Blockchain, gregory.sandstrom@gmail.com.
Sandstrom, Gregory. “Is Blockchain an ‘Evolutionary’ or ‘Revolutionary’ Technology, and So What If It Is?: Digitally Extending Satoshi Nakamoto’s Distributed Ledger Innovation.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8, no. 3 (2019): 17-49.
The pdf of the article gives specific page references, and includes the full text of the article. Shortlink, Part One: https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-47f. Shortlink: Part Two: https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-47m
Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr / Creative Commons
“If you cry ‘Forward!’ you must without fail make plain in what direction to go. Don’t you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary they will go in directions precisely opposite?” – Anton Chekhov
“I’m better with code than with words though.” – Satoshi Nakamoto[1]
Did Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, actually invent anything new that had not previously existed before? Should people stop referring to a ‘blockchain revolution’ and instead call blockchain a ‘technological evolution’ that happened gradually and was caused randomly by environmental pressures rather than the intentional acts of a unique inventor? These basic questions make up the core of this paper, along with the suggestion that an alternative way of describing blockchain development makes considerably more sense than using the concept of ‘evolution’ in the digital era.
While it is unoriginal to ask whether blockchain distributed ledger technology should be thought of as an ‘evolution’ or a ‘revolution,’ since many people have asked it already (see bibliography below, including texts and videos), in this paper I’ll go a step deeper by looking at what people actually mean when they refer to blockchain as either an ‘evolution’ or a ‘revolution,’ or rather inconsistently as both at the same time.
In short, I’ll distinguish between their colloquial, ideological and technical uses and ask if one, both or neither of these terms is accurate of the changes blockchain has made, is making and will make as a new global digital technology.
Introduction: From the Book of Satoshi
In the Foreword to The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, libertarian Bitcoin activist Jeff Berwick wrote: “Bitcoin has changed everything. Its importance as an evolution in money and banking cannot be overstated. Notice I don’t use the word ‘revolution’ here because I consider Bitcoin to be a complete ‘evolution’ from the anachronistic money and banking systems that humanity has been using—and been forced by government dictate to use—for at least the last hundred years.” (2014: xvii)
While I don’t really understand what he means by a ‘complete evolution,’ Berwick’s attention to the difference in meaning between ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ regarding Bitcoin nevertheless sets the stage for this exploration of blockchain technology, as we consider its current development trajectory. Which term is more suitable?
Worth noting, nowhere in Satoshi Nakamoto’s collected writings is either the term ‘evolution’ or ‘revolution’ to be found. Berwick’s interpretation of ‘blockchain evolution,’ framed within his worldview as an anarcho-capitalist, is thus of his own making and not one that derives from Nakamoto himself. I’ll touch on why I believe that is below. Also of note, the book’s writer and compiler of Nakamoto’s writings, Phil Champagne, states that, “Bitcoin, both a virtual currency and a payment system, represents a revolutionary concept whose significance quickly becomes apparent with a first transaction. … Bitcoin has therefore clearly sparked a new technological revolution that capitalizes on the Internet, another innovation that changed the world.” (2014: 2, 7)
Champagne closes the book stating, “Satoshi Nakamoto brought together many existing mathematical and software concepts to create Bitcoin. Since then, Bitcoin has been an ongoing experiment, continuing to evolve and be updated on a regular basis. It has, so far, proven its utility and revolutionized the financial and monetary industry, particularly the electronic payment system, and is being accepted worldwide.” (2014: 347) The use of both ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ in past and present tense shows a debate exists even within this one book about which term best fits blockchain’s current and future status in society.
This paper will look closely at the difference between these two terms as they relate to blockchain, largely staying away from speculation about cryptocurrencies, i.e. digital tokens, crypto-assets, and/or crypto-securities. It will primarily serve to catalogue the way people have used these two terms with respect to blockchain and cryptocurrency and ask if they are suitable or unsuitable terms. In conclusion, I offer an analysis of why the distinction between these two terms matters as different ways to describe change-over-time and assess an alternative model to analyse and discuss these changes called ‘digital extension services.’
Reflexive Background and Context
To set the background and context, let me write reflexively about why I am writing this paper. Over the past 15+ years studying the topic, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on how the term ‘evolution’ is used outside of the natural-physical sciences, in theories such as ‘social and cultural evolution,’ ‘evolutionary economics’ and ‘technological evolution.’
I wrote a master’s thesis comparing the concepts of ‘evolution,’ ‘extension’ and ‘Intelligent Design,’ and have published more than 20 papers and delivered more than 30 presentations at international conferences outlining and exploring the limits of ‘evolutionary’ thinking as well as promoting the notion of ‘human extension’ in social sciences and humanities[2].
My interest in this paper is to clear up what appears as massive public confusion and oftentimes puzzling equivocation about various types of change-over-time, especially non-evolutionary changes such as revolution, development, emergence, and extension. Some people think there is no such thing as a ‘non-evolutionary’ change since all change must be ‘evolutionary,’ in response to which I would like to set the record straight.
There are undoubtedly some people who will consider this paper and having written it to be a complete waste of time and for them, it’s best to stop reading at the end of this sentence. However, others may find in this exploration a key distinction towards gaining even a small bit of insight and perhaps some understanding into the considerable differences between biological change-over-time and technological development[3], innovation and planning, the latter which generally fall outside of the meaning of ‘evolution.’
Notably, I find it somewhat humorous for having studied this rather arcane social epistemological topic quite closely for many years to be able to write this paper now. It’s meant that I’ve had to lock horns repeatedly with ideological (young earth) creationists, Intelligent Design advocates and evolutionists on many occasions along the way[4]. What I have discovered is that sometimes choosing the right term matters and sometimes it doesn’t; some people want to use a term to mean whatever they want it to mean[5] and it’s most often not worth taking the time in trying to stop or persuade them.
When I learned in 2016 that blockchain technology is about more than just cryptocurrency, and that it also has potentially significant and far-reaching implications for a variety of social, cultural and educational uses, it simply made sense to bring some of the knowledge I had gathered as an associate professor and researcher into my study of distributed ledgers, which is what leads to this text.
In Q3 2017, I asked and answered myself on Twitter as follows: “Is blockchain really evolving of its own accord? No.” I copied that message to the Managing Director of the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) in Toronto, Hilary Carter, who I had met that summer at the Blockchain Government Forum in Ottawa. She replied: “Agreed! Evolution is a series of beneficial genetic accidents. Blockchain and the development of the community is entirely intentional.” (24 Sep 2017) That exchange happened after I had recently arrived in Yangon, Myanmar, first to teach, then to work as Director of Blockchain Innovation at an educational technology startup company. I had many new things and needs to focus on and didn’t think about it too much further at that time.
However, after returning to Canada in 2018, I later raised this topic again directly in conversation with Carter[6]. While she still stands behind the view that blockchain is indeed a revolutionary phenomenon and that its development is based upon the various intentions of its builders and creators, she also suggested that, “the blockchain ecosystem is [an] evolution,” that it is in a state of maturation, and that, “no one is controlling it.” It is the latter contention that I’d like to take up again now and ‘unpack’ during the course of this paper.
Carter’s view, to which I will return below, raises an important question about how blockchain was invented, as well as the way that blockchain ecosystem development is currently being planned and executed, and both how and why people are aiming for social scalability and public adoption. Also, it raises the question of what then counts as the ‘blockchain revolution’ that BRI founder Don Tapscott wrote a book about with his son Alex in 2016.
To me, Carter’s original comment that blockchain development is ‘entirely intentional’ is obviously correct and requires no further commentary for validation. However, it also signifies that there is at least some type of ‘control’ when it comes to actual blockchain technology building, even if the trajectory of distributed ledgers aren’t being controlled, nor are they entirely predictable, by any single person or company, anywhere in the world.
My prior research in sociology of science had shown that while the term ‘evolution’ is used by not a few people in a basic colloquial sense simply as a synonym for ‘change,’ it can also be used, and not rarely, in an ideological sense that draws on ‘cultural evolutionary’ theories in SSH or in the case of technology, one that adheres to the so-called ‘laws of software evolution[7]‘ (M. Lehman). It is the latter usage of the term ‘evolution’ that I wholeheartedly reject and think has caused great damage to human self-understanding and initiative.
Let it be clear, however, in stating this that I am not one of the ‘new evolution deniers’ (Wright 2018) pursuing an anti-biology or anti-science blank slate ideology that doesn’t acknowledge change-over-time, which is evident in many ways across a range of cultural issues. Rather, I’m a dedicated social scientific researcher and more recently community builder of blockchain technology who rejects the notion that ‘no one is in control’ of what is being developed (i.e. ‘unguided evolution’).
Likewise, I strongly reject the misanthropic worldview that claims ‘there is no purpose[8]‘ (Dawkins) in change-over-time. I oppose both of these positions as dehumanising. So, with this context provided, the following sections present my research findings into how other people use the terms ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ with respect to blockchain technology.
Equivocating Between Evolution and Revolution
“Bitcoin is a completely new narrative. It alters everything, and in 20 to 30 years from now, people will not recognise the world we are in because of Bitcoin.” – Craig Steven Wright (2019a)
Many writers on the topic of blockchain switch back and forth equivocally between ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution,’ apparently without much rhyme or reason, not carefully distinguishing between them. Rather curiously, this includes the Tapscotts. “We strongly believe that India has the potential to lead the blockchain revolution[9],” said Don Tapscott in 2018.
And there are indeed many places where Don and his son Alex use the term ‘revolution’ to describe blockchain in their 2016 book, which I will outline in the following paragraphs. They write, “Like the first generation of the Internet, the Blockchain Revolution promises to upend business models and transform industries. But that is just the start. Blockchain technology is pushing us inexorably into a new era, predicated on openness, merit, decentralization, and global participation.” (Ibid) This type of language continues throughout the book, which explains why they gave it the title they did.
However, they also use the term ‘evolution’ to describe technological change. “The Web is critical to the future of the digital world,” they say, “and all of us should support efforts under way to defend it, such as those of the World Wide Web Foundation, who are fighting to keep it open, neutral, and constantly evolving.” (Ibid)
They quote Blake Masters, who states, “Bear in mind that financial services infrastructures have not evolved in decades. The front end has evolved but not the back end. … posttrade infrastructure hasn’t really evolved at all.” (Ibid) Likewise, they cite Joseph Lubin, who says:
“I am not concerned about machine intelligence. We will evolve with it and for a long time it will be in the service of, or an aspect of, Homo sapiens cybernetica. It may evolve beyond us but that is fine. If so, it will occupy a different ecological niche. It will operate at different speeds and different relevant time scales. In that context, artificial intelligence will not distinguish between humans, a rock, or a geological process. We evolved past lots of species, many of which are doing fine (in their present forms).” (Ibid)
The Tapscotts in this vein also consider human-made technology itself, not just biology, as an ‘evolutionary’ phenomenon. They thus label one of their chapters, “The Evolution of Computing: from mainframes to smart pills.” (Ibid) “Unlike our energy grid,” they say, “computing power has evolved through several paradigms. In the 1950s and 1960s, mainframes ruled—International Business Machines and the Wild ‘BUNCH’ (Burroughs, Univac, National Cash Register Corp., Control Data, and Honeywell).
In the 1970s and 1980s, minicomputers exploded onto the scene.” (Ibid) They continue this line of thinking, suggesting that, “Driven by the same technological advances, communications networks evolved, too. From the early 1970s, the Internet (originating in the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was evolving into its present-day, worldwide, distributed network that connects more than 3.2 billion people, businesses, governments, and other institutions. The computing and networking technologies then converged in mobile tablets and handhelds. BlackBerry commercialized the smart phone in the early aughts, and Apple popularized it in the iPhone in 2007.” (Ibid)
Yet at some point unstated, they switch back to ‘revolutionary’ language, suggesting that, “We’re beginning the next major phase of the digital revolution.” (Ibid) They cite Michelle Tinsley of Intel, who “explained why her company is deeply investigating the blockchain revolution: “When PCs became pervasive, the productivity rates went through the roof. We connected those PCs to a server, a data center, or the cloud, making it really cheap and easy for lean start-ups to get computer power at their fingertips, and we’re again seeing rapid innovation, new business models.”
Just imagine the potential of applying these capabilities across many types of businesses, many untouched by the Internet revolution.” (Ibid) In short, their view is that “the technology is always evolving and designs are ever improving.” (Ibid) This encapsulates their equivocating meaning of ‘blockchain revolution,’ from one of the most widely cited texts in the field of blockchain technology.
Carter followed up with me after receiving the first draft of this paper to clarify her position. She explains, “We’ve evolved from single-purpose peer to peer electronic cash to Ethereum to private distributed ledgers to Cryptokitties. Everything is intentional. Evolution post-Bitcoin is more a figure of speech to reflect that blockchain systems have changed[10].” She continues, saying that, “Blockchain was no accidental software that emerged from the first generation of the internet.”
This sentence brings in another ‘change-over-time’ term with the notion of ’emergence,’ that adds to the linguistic feature of this analysis. Carter concludes that, “maybe ‘matured’ is a better word [i.e. than ‘evolution’] – because of the creativity of humans, not because of fortunate digital coincidences.” This explanation from the current leadership of the BRI helps to make sense of the variety of ways that people around the world are now speaking about the ‘growth,’ ’emergence,’ ‘maturing,’ ‘development,’ ‘advancement,’ ‘expansion’ and other ‘change-over-time’ metaphors to describe what is happening with distributed ledger technologies.
But What Are the Meanings of These Words?
Moving on to another writer and public figure, managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde similarly switches back and forth between ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ in seemingly an unsystematic way. She confirms that, “the fintech revolution questions the two forms of money we just discussed—coins and commercial bank deposits. And it questions the role of the state in providing money.” (2018)
She continues, however, saying, “I have tried to evaluate the case this morning for digital currency. The case is based on new and evolving requirements for money, as well as essential public policy objectives. My message is that while the case for digital currency is not universal, we should investigate it further, seriously, carefully, and creatively.” (Ibid)
One of the most prolific speakers and writers about blockchain, Andreas Antonopolous (2017), believes, “Over time, the way transaction fees are calculated and the effect they have on transaction prioritization has evolved. At first, transaction fees were fixed and constant across the network. Gradually, the fee structure relaxed and may be influenced by market forces, based on network capacity and transaction volume.” (2017: 127) … “Beyond bitcoin, the largest and most successful application of P2P technologies is file sharing, with Napster as the pioneer and BitTorrent as the most recent evolution of the architecture.” (Ibid: 171) He states that,
“the bitcoin network and software are constantly evolving, so consensus attacks would be met with immediate countermeasures by the bitcoin community, making bitcoin hardier, stealthier, and more robust than ever. … In order to evolve and develop the bitcoin system, the rules have to change from time to time to accommodate new features, improvements, or bug fixes. Unlike traditional software development, however, upgrades to a consensus system are much more difficult and require coordination between all the participants.” (Ibid: 256)
Further, he argues that, “Consensus software development continues to evolve and there is much discussion on the various mechanisms for changing the consensus rules.” (Ibid: 266) We thus see a major focus on ‘evolutionary’ blockchain change.
Yet in the final paragraph of the book, Antonopolous says, “We have examined just a few of the emerging applications that can be built using the bitcoin blockchain as a trust platform. These applications expand the scope of bitcoin beyond payments and beyond financial instruments, to encompass many other applications where trust is critical. By decentralizing the basis of trust, the bitcoin blockchain is a platform that will spawn many revolutionary applications in a wide variety of industries.” (Ibid: 304) The future of blockchain, therefore might be revolutionary based on many ‘evolutions’ of the technology.
In Life after Google: the Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy, George Gilder flip-flops back and forth between evolution and revolution with little apparent consistency, speaking about “the root-and-branch revolution of distributed peer-to-peer technology, which I call the ‘cryptocosm’,” (2018: 44) then stating that, “[t]he next wave of innovation will compress today’s parallel solutions in an evolutionary convergence of electronics and optics.” (Ibid: 58)
He suggests that, “[a] decentralized and open global rendering system is foundational for disruptive services and platforms to evolve from the post-mobile world of immersive computing, just as the open web was formed in the creation of Google, Amazon and Facebook.” (Ibid: 205) However, he also notes that, “Far beyond mere high-definition voice, 5G is the technological infrastructure for a coming revolution in networks. It enables new distributed security systems for the Internet of Things, the blockchain ledgers of the new crypto-economy of micropayments, and the augmented and virtual reality platforms of advanced Internet communications.” (Ibid: 231)
Gilder’s language seems to sometimes be more about appearance than substance, as he writes, “In the evolving technological economy, shaped by cryptographic innovations, Google is going to have to compete again.” (Ibid: 239) Further explaining, he notes that, “The revolution in cryptography has caused a great unbundling of the roles of money, promising to reverse the doldrums of the Google Age, which has been an epoch of bundling together, aggregating, all the digital assets of the world.” (Ibid: 256)
One key formulation renders his ideological views visible, reflecting his affiliation with the Discovery Institute: “The new system of the world must reverse these positions, exalting the singularities of creation: mind over matter, human consciousness over mechanism, real intelligence over mere algorithmic search, purposeful learning over mindless evolution, and truth over chance. A new system can open a heroic age of human accomplishment.” (Ibid: 272) Gilder seems to have no difficulty both denying and accepting ‘evolution’ at the same time, regardless of the fact that everyone agrees both ‘minds’ and ‘matter’ are involved in developing technologies.
Uncertainty Too From Financial Technology Leaders
Hanna Halaburda writes for the Bank of Canada (2018), saying, “The market’s excitement about blockchain technologies is growing and is perhaps best summarized in the increasingly popular slogan ‘blockchain revolution.’ It is estimated that the blockchain market size will grow from US$210 million in 2016 to over US$2 billion by 2021.” (2018: 1) Later in the paper she uses both terms, suggesting that,
“The broadening of the meaning of ‘blockchain’ to include smart contracts, encryption and distributed ledger could simply reflect the evolution of a term in a living language. However, precision matters for estimating costs and benefits, or even for predicting the best uses of blockchain technologies. Smart contracts, encryption and distributed ledger each bring different benefits. And since they can be implemented independently, an optimal solution for a particular application may include only some of these tools but not others. This may matter for the future of the blockchain revolution.” (Ibid: 5)
In conclusion, she accepts the same terminology as the Tapscotts, saying, “The blockchain revolution has brought distributed databases to the forefront and may result in wider adoption and new ideas for their use.” (Ibid: 9)
Andrea Pinna and Weibe Ruttenberg (2016) write that, “Over the last decade, information technology has contributed significantly to the evolution of financial markets, without, however, revolutionising the way in which financial institutions interact with one another. This may be about to change, as some market players are now predicting that new database technologies, such as blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), could be the source of an imminent revolution.” (Ibid: 2) “It is not yet, therefore, clear whether DLTs will cause a major revolution in mainstream financial markets or whether their use will remain limited to particular niches.” (Ibid: 32)
Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, Mark Walport (2016) suggests, “The development of block chain technology is but the first, though very important step towards a disruptive revolution in ledger technology that could transform the conduct of public and private sector organisations.” (2016: 10) He continues, “Regulation will need to evolve in parallel with the development of new implementations and applications of the technology” (Ibid: 12)
However, he also distinguishes a ‘revolutionary’ dimension to the technology, saying, “We are still at the early stages of an extraordinary post-industrial revolution driven by information technology. It is a revolution [that] is bringing important new benefits and risks. It is already clear that, within this revolution, the advent of distributed ledger technologies is starting to disrupt many of the existing ways of doing business.” (Ibid: 16)
And then he reverts back to evolutionary language, saying, “The terminology of this new field is still evolving, with many using the terms block chain (or blockchain), distributed ledger and shared ledger interchangeably.” (Ibid: 17) He emphasizes that, “M-Pesa challenged the notion that value transfer for exchange transactions had to be done through banks, and leapfrogged several developmental stages. But these innovations still rely on an existing hierarchical structure, using proprietary technology and trusted intermediaries. Though the change improves customer convenience, and significantly reduces costs to users and customers, this is evolution rather than revolution.” (Ibid: 54) Walport is one of the few voices insisting that changes in blockchain development are happening at a rather slower than rapid pace, which seems to determine his choice of terms.
Sam Town makes clear his preferred terminology between the two notions, stating, “While the ICO as it exists today may be gone tomorrow, the blockchain brings evolution, not revolution.” (2018) Here he seems to be suggesting that while ICOs may not last long as a credible method of fundraising, at least not without more stringent regulatory oversight, that nevertheless blockchain distributed ledger technologies will indeed have lasting and significant impact on finance and economics.
Does Evolution vs Revolution Matter?
Ugur Demirbas et al. (2018) also write to intentionally distinguish the two terms, saying, “In summary, while digital transformation shows disruptive influence on individual elements, its overall effect is rather evolutionary than revolutionary. The impact of DT in the context of the overarching corporate sourcing strategy is an incremental change than a disruptive creation of something completely new.” (2018: 8)
Again we see an explanation given that ‘evolutionary’ is preferred because of the pace (slow) and type (incremental) of change or the people’s aims and goals involved in developing the technology. They also indicate ‘disruption’ and ‘something completely new’ in their meaning of ‘revolutionary,’ which we will look at again below.
Jagjit Dhaliwal (2018) says that, “We all know that the Blockchain technology is revolutionizing our future by providing distributed networks, allowing peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries. We have come a long way in a really short period of time from the inception of Bitcoin, one of the first cryptocurrencies based on Blockchain technology.”
He continues saying that, “Everyone is curious about which platform and cryptocurrency will win the race. The DLT landscape is changing rapidly and evolving really fast. I won’t be surprised if some of the solutions in this article will [sic] extinct soon.” Dhaliwal thus likewise shows that the pace of change impacts his choice of terms, though it is unclear how ‘rapid change’ and ‘fast evolution’ differ from ‘revolutionary.’
In a paper curiously named “The Evolution of Blockchain Development” (2017), the team at Alibaba Cloud similarly suggests that, “Blockchain as a technology has evolved rapidly in the past decade.” They continue, however, by appealing to readers: “Let us discuss a few major innovations that have revolutionized this field[11].” This is yet another example of the confusion in using the terms ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ when there is no clear explanation of what differentiates one from the other.
Megan Ray Nichols weighs in on the ‘revolution’ side, when she says, “blockchain is serving as a critical component in a major revolution that also includes rapid prototyping, lean manufacturing, 3D printing, & now blockchain-facilitated manufacturing & supply contracts.” (2018).
This and several of the examples above certainly do not refer to a ‘political revolution’ or ‘scientific revolution,’ but rather to an incoming ‘technological revolution’ that is supposedly happening all around us with ’emergent’ or ‘nascent’ new technologies, including, but not exclusive to blockchain. The hype surrounding blockchain with expectations in the near future, however, often seems to far exceed evidence of what has changed so far because of it.
Don Tapcott responded in an interview with McKinsey that, “the blockchain, the underlying technology, is the biggest innovation in computer science—the idea of a distributed database where trust is established through mass collaboration and clever code rather than through a powerful institution that does the authentication and the settlement[12].”
We have, of course, heard this kind of suggestive language before, so it’s not like predictions about ‘revolutionary technology’ are entirely new. One example of this harkens back to what Fred Brooks asked in 1975, if “technical developments that are most often advanced as potential silver bullets … offer revolutionary advances, or incremental ones?” (1975: 188) While not a few people have expressed inflated expectations for distributed ledger systems, we are still nevertheless waiting for a clear example of widespread usage of blockchain to be able to assess the variable speeds at which adoption can and likely will eventually take place.
With that basic background, we will now look at largely colloquial uses of the term ‘evolution’ as it relates to blockchain technology development.
Colloquial Usage of ‘Evolution’ for Blockchain Technology Development
A remarkable pattern among technology writers is to apply the term ‘evolution’ in what appears to be a basic colloquial way, suggesting no theoretical underpinning or technical meaning, and with no ideological implications. Instead, for these cases, the notion of ‘evolution’ is basically just used as a synonym for either ‘change’ (i.e. over time), ‘development,’ ‘creation’ or some kind of a general ‘process of history.’
Brigid McDermott, vice president of IBM blockchain business development, states:
“We’re asking companies to join to help evolve the solution and guide and steer its direction.”
“We’ll do PoCs [proofs-of-concept] later down the line.[1]” In this case, the verb ‘to evolve’ is meant in the same way as ‘to create,’ ‘to build’ or ‘to develop,’ without the notion of a natural genetic population, implication of a ‘struggle for life’ or ‘survival of the fittest,’ rates of mutation, variation, or other notions usually connected with ‘biological evolutionary theory.”
The Commonwealth of Learning suggests that, “When it comes to educational innovation, blockchains and ledgers are likely to lead to evolutionary gains[2].” While it is not entirely clear what they mean in this short report, we are likely supposed to gather a sense of ‘progress’ or ‘advancement’ in what they imply and suggest blockchain will lead to in the field of education.
Margaret Leigh Sinrod writes about blockchain for the World Economic Forum (2018). “The fact that banks are investing in this [blockchain] technology may sound fairly paradoxical,” she says, “given the context in which it evolved and gained traction.” In this case, the term ‘evolved’ seems to simply signify ‘history,’ i.e. that ‘something has happened’ and that blockchain now continues to persist as a phenomenon.
Dennis Sahlstrom similarly tells us that, “the evolution of blockchain arrived with Ethereum, created by Vitalik Buterin, which was an improvement of Bitcoin. This evolution added a further element which is the ability to build decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts to ensure that deals, transactions, and many other tasks can be performed without intermediaries.” (2018)
Here we see ‘evolution’ used as a way to symbolise a historical fact, again that ‘something has happened,’ thus indicating a new ‘stage’ of blockchain that also was ‘created. This approach might be confusing to people who accept a more technical meaning of ‘evolution’ as distinct from ‘creation’ or ‘intentional planning,’ almost sounding as if blockchain has taken on a life of its own.
John Dean Markunas from Power of Chain Consultancy continues this anthropomorphic language, suggesting that, “The [blockchain] technology itself will continue to evolve along with a wide variety of creative applications developed on top of it, similar to the development of the internet and world-wide-web[3].” This usage, while it signifies persistence and continuity, appears particularly confusing since the term ‘development’ is also used referring to the Internet, which other people claim has led to a ‘revolution’ in human society, as seen above.
Tadas Deksnys CEO and Founder of Unboxed writes that, “Though the future of ICOs is vague, the blockchain industry is still evolving and presenting new opportunities[4].” Again, we see here the notion of both history and continuity and that there is some kind of on-going process of unspecified speed, type or significance.
These are all common examples of people involved in or writing about the blockchain industry who suggest that blockchain demonstrates an ‘evolutionary’ rather than a ‘revolutionary,’ ‘developmental’ or otherwise ‘non-evolutionary’ process of change-over-time.
Frederik De Breuck (2019) says that, “its capabilities and platforms (both public and private) are rapidly evolving and blockchain and distributed ledgers remain for me (and many others) two of the most promising technology evolutions of recent decades for their potential to transform both society and enterprises.”
He uses other change-based concepts as well, such as emergence and extension, in the latter case saying, “[w]e think next year will see the ongoing evolution of these complex trust architectures and their extension beyond their organizational boundaries, into both ecosystems and society.” (Ibid) This language basically indicates something supposedly important is happening with blockchain, a description that it is growing and reaching more people in a community, network and/or ecosystem.
Reflections of What May Be Historical Precedents
Jesus Leal Trujilo et al. in their Deloitte paper (2017) base their logic in the ‘evolution’ of digital ecosystems, writing, “Our study appears to be the first empirical attempt to understand the evolution of blockchain using metadata available on GitHub … Our findings could help firms improve their ability to identify successful projects and opportunities based on how the blockchain ecosystem is evolving.” (2017: 2)
They also address the time period in terms of stages of development, saying, “At the current evolutionary stage of blockchain technology, it is likely to be in a developer’s best interest to develop, or watch the development of, blockchain solutions on open source. Blockchain appears to have a better chance to more quickly achieve rigorous protocols and standardization through open-source collaboration, which could make developing permissioned blockchains easier and better.” (Ibid: 5)
They continue, “The data scientists of Deloitte developed and honed a methodology to analyze and organize GitHub data in order to better understand the evolution of a young, possibly transformative technology and its ecosystem.” (Ibid: 15) They conclude saying, “It is our hope that these findings can arm the financial services industry with the data it may need to not only better identify successful projects and opportunities based on how the blockchain ecosystem is evolving, but to become influential participants, themselves, in how blockchain evolves.” (Ibid: 15) Thus, the promote both the development and so-called ‘evolution’ of blockchain technology based on the language of ‘ecosystem’ that loosely mimics biology.
The Systems Academy suggests about blockchain technology that, “over the past years it has been evolving fast, from the original Bitcoin protocol to the second generation Ethereum platform, to today where we are in the process of building what some call blockchain 3.0. In this evolution we can see how the technology is evolving from its initial form as essentially just a database, to becoming a fully-fledged globally distributed cloud computer.”
They add to others in this paper who suggest that, “The development and adoption of the Ethereum platform was a major step forward in the evolution of blockchain technology[5],” suggesting a kind of ‘progress’ narrative that switches between ‘development’ and ‘evolution’ and indicates improvement rather than replacement or destruction of the old system.
Stapels et al. flip back and forth between ‘development’ and ‘evolution,’ stating that, “blockchains are still a rapidly evolving technology, with ongoing developments, especially to improve scalability and confidentiality. Globally, governments, enterprises, and startups are exploring the technology/market fit in a wide variety of use cases and for a wide variety of requirements and regulatory demands.” They also suggest a present lack of knowledge towards building and maintaining trust among blockchain users, saying “There is still much that is unknown about the development of trustworthy blockchain-based systems.” (2018: 1)
Bryan Zhang writes in the Foreword to Rauchs et al. 2018, that, “the landscape of DLT itself continues its swift evolution.” Again, we see the suggestion of a continuity of some kind, as if we are in a historical period of flux and change with the rise of DLTs. In conclusion, the authors state that, “Nearly 10 years after Bitcoin entered the world, the DLT ecosystem is still in early stages: it is constantly evolving and characterised by relentless experimentation and R&D.” (2018: 92)
This usage doesn’t necessarily imply that Bitcoin arrived on its own without a creative inventor or network of users, but rather that it’s simply in a process that has yet to reach its conclusion and thus should be thought of as impermanent or temporary.
ElBarhrawy et al. (2017) “Here, we present a first complete analysis of the cryptocurrency market, considering its evolution between April 2013 and May 2017.” (Ibid: 2) They then suggest there is a theoretical underpinning one can use to study this historical period involving cryptocurrencies. “By adopting an ecological perspective, we have pointed out that the neutral model of evolution captures several of the observed properties of the market.” (Ibid: 7)
In this approach we again see usage of the term ‘evolution’ to mean ‘history,’ yet in a broader way that combines economics with ecology and push the idea of ‘ecosystem’ thinking that is also front and centre in much of the ideological blockchain evolutionism below.
Contact details: gregory.sandstrom@gmailcom
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“How the Blockchain Revolution Will Decentralize Power and End Corruption | Brian Behlendorf” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv-XR6gXfLI
“Interview for Bitcoin And Blockchain Evolution Podcast – Sarah Herring – “Evolution – There is a Revolution coming!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZJsFotDdg
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“The Blockchain Evolution” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeyeKXmqQn8
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“The Blockchain Revolution | Rajesh Dhuddu | TEDxHyderabad” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrnvX92vlu8
“The Blockchain Revolution by Talal Tabaa – ECOH 2018” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvRJ1kEQ2so
“The Blockchain Revolution Changing the Rules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTgG8XzcVC0
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“The blockchain revolution, the ultimate industry disruptor” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hEiHR-K_KY
“The Blockchain Revolution: From Organisations to Organism | Matan Field | TEDxBreda” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSbseTJWfY
[1] Nov. 14, 2008. https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/12/
[2] Your author of this paper received his degree in ‘Sociological Sciences’ from St. Petersburg State University in Russia, after a dissertation defense at the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in 2010.
[3] “The gap between biological evolution and artificial systems evolution is just too enormous to expect to link the two.” – Meir Lehman (In Williams, 2002)
[4] It is most likely that none of the authors cited in this study was thinking about ‘young earth creationism’ as a position that they aimed to oppose by using the term ‘evolution.’ Similarly, no theory of ‘Intelligent Design’ as an alternative to ‘neo-Darwinism’ is at the heart of this paper’s rejection of ‘technological evolutionary’ theories.
[5] “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” – Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking-Glass, 1872)
[6] Private conversation 07-02-2019.
[7] “In software engineering there is no theory. It’s all arm flapping and intuition. I believe that a theory of software evolution could eventually translate into a theory of software engineering. Either that or it will come very close. It will lay the foundation for a wider theory of software evolution.” – Lehman (In Williams 2002)
[8] “This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” … “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” – Richard Dawkins (River Out of Eden. Basic Books, New York, 1995: 95)
[9] https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/21/technology/canada-india-blockchain-partnership-bri-nasscom/index.html
[10] Private email, 24-02-2019.
[11] https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/The-Evolution-of-Blockchain-Development_p73812
[12] http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/how-blockchains-could-change-the-world
[1] http://fortune.com/2017/08/22/walmart-blockchain-ibm-food-nestle-unilever-tyson-dole/
[2] https://www.col.org/news/news/col-promotes-blockchain-education
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/emancipation-from-ball-chain-blockchain-john-dean-markunas
[4] https://medium.com/unboxed-network/our-journey-so-far-unboxed-airdrop-update-72b63ab52631
[5] http://complexitylabs.io/evolution-of-blockchain/
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