Governments of the World Need To Stop Seeing Blockchain As a Technology, And Rebuild Trust in a…

Governments of the World Need To Stop Seeing Blockchain As a Technology, And Rebuild Trust in a Digital World

We have a problem just now, in that many governments around the world just see Blockchain, Distributed Ledgers, Tokenisation — call it what you want — as just another series of technology that they have to adopt, and set up mechanisms for their industry to integrate it into new products.

But it’s not, and if governments see it this way, they will fall behind, as it’s the creation of a new trusted world, which where trust integrated into every single part of it, and where the rights to privacy and consent are properly integrated. With the hack of BA, we see a 20th Century world, and where we have ended-up patching together our systems. How can it be that there is the potential to discover the CVV numbers of 100s of thousands of people, and for more than two weeks?

Our new world will embed trust, and create a new machine which spans the world or could encapsulate local communities. It will be one which can properly identify every citizen uniquely, but also respect their privacy in whichever way they want. And smaller nations around the world are moving, and they are moving at scale.

We are now building a new machine that will make the Internet work properly. While blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledgers, tokenization, and all the others things that we could be a part of this new world, it is mainly about properly defining identifies, roles, consent, trust, and all the other things that make our world work. This will properly map our flaw ways in our physical world properly into a more trusted digital world. Our new world will thus be built around cryptography and smart contracts — the debate is over, we now need to rebuild virtually our whole digital world, in order to stop the continual threats around the protocols we created in the 1980s. And, too, are legal infrastructure needs to change, and where a wet signature, these days, has as much credibility than be telling the world that I am Bruce Scheiner.

And so I worry that our governments just see the building of the new world as another “buzz” technology, and if they throw some money at it, some will stick. But it needs to go much deeper, and where every single part of our world need stronger trust, and for citizens to be a the part of this design. Currently, you are a username and a password on Google’s database. In the future, you should have your own identity, and you should have complete rights to be part of whichever world that you want to be part of.

And so it is to smaller nations around the world that we see a real adoption of building a trusted world. Just last week the Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev outlined that they were establishing a “Digital Trust” fund [here]. This was NOT to fund new companies, who will go off and make some more money for taxes, but integrate blockchain into government projects such as healthcare, education, and cultural areas. They have also defined new legislation which integrates blockchain into areas of public life, and eases the way for it to have a route into the provision of public services.

Along with this Uzbekistan has a target of 2020 for the integration of blockchain methods within the public sector, along with defining mechanisms for international clearing facilities as well as lending and trade finance. Basically, the country is readying itself for a clean sweep of its old ways, and make way for the new.

In the UK, we set up expert committees to discuss how blockchain could affect our legal infrastructure and do little about actually changing our existing laws to support change.

In building this new world, small is beautiful. A large nation will often take a long time to turn its old ways — if ever — as there is often resistance to change. We need to change soon, and it is not just pilots in our government programmes or select committees, but large-scale integration of trust. We require new thinking, and we need to make sure that our old ways change soon.

To me, it all boils down to using cryptography properly. Over the past decade we have been prototyping with Bitcoin, Ethereum and DAG and finding better ways to build a digital world, but now need to scale out from everything we have learnt, and remodel our world in a digital space. For just now, we are still tripping along with files, folders and forms — and which are just basically our office of the past created in an operation system. We have fallen into a Microsoft viewpoint of the world.

We are lucky enough to work with the DHI in Scotland, and looking at new ways of creating a trust architecture, and our vision is one which properly puts the citizen at the core of their world. We also have a new identity research lab — Blockpass ID Lab — and which will be launched in September 2018. In there we will be building new worlds, and our PhD students are already working on this. Please be part of building this new world, and tell our governments that this isn’t a technology, but it is the future.

As long as I have no meaningful interaction with health providers and councils, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

As long as I sign my name on a legal document, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

As long as I receive a piece of paper which contains my right to vote, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

As long I require to go along to community halls and discuss ideas that get lost along the way, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

As long as I have to continually inform public services about where I actually live and what my email address is, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

As long as we have no digital health record for our kids and which is owned by parents, I will feel I am in the 20th Century.

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