Bitcoin Masterclasses #3 with Dr. Craig Wright: Sharing the One Central Source of Truth
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“What we want is one source of truth” – and don’t be afraid to use terms like “central repository” in the blockchain world. Sometimes this is necessary for data control and security. To find out what this means, watch session 3 of the third series of Dr. Craig Wright’s The Bitcoin Masterclasses series, held recently in Zurich.
That said, you can still have multiple decentralized copies of the same original record as long as you can prove that all copies are the same as the original. (After all, that’s what the blockchain is, right?). Just as you can send Bitcoin from anywhere to anywhere, blockchain also makes it possible to attest the validity of records from anywhere to anyone. That’s a big efficiency gain.
In this session and the other sessions in this series, as well as previous Bitcoin Masterclass series, you will receive valuable real-life training, with many real-life examples, from the inventor of Bitcoin himself.
An interesting point about this latest The Bitcoin Masterclasses is that it is less about Bitcoin technology itself and more about the processes that ensure that the data processed on the blockchain is as accurate as possible. In these cases, Bitcoin is just the “plumber” that makes it work. And just like regular plumbing, it can be used correctly…or not.
Teacher of the life of Craig Wright
Dr. Wright tends to teach as a series of anecdotes from past work experience or daily life. Although his employment history is varied, the stories ultimately revolve around finding new efficiencies, checking records with a fine-toothed comb, or identifying “outlier” records that ultimately lead to failure. There are definitely a lot of “hmm, I never thought of that before” moments.
This session begins with one such anecdote about Mumbai traffic – which, coupled with excessive paper-based bureaucracy, caused huge delays in shipping physical goods. Attestation from anywhere means that a process that once took hours could be completed in seconds.
Another story comes from the New South Wales Police Force, where any officer was once able to access all database records. As expected, this power was occasionally abused. But by keeping a log of access records, auditors (like Dr. Wright) could notice when something was abnormal. As he has said a few times in this series, investigators tend to notice deviations and anomalies in normal routines first.
Back to designing new processes, but as we mentioned, the situations described here are more on the periphery of blockchain or processes that complement blockchain by integrating with it. The blockchain allows for more granular data (think inventory counting, but where each individual item has a unique identifier that records its entire history, rather than a number that designates a box of items or a type of item).
The idea is to take all this data and “map” it across multiple transactions. This is something that can be done with tokens. Tokens can be shared and exchanged, grant or revoke access permissions, and allow access to some data but not others. In this way, the only source of truth can exist without making everything visible to anyone.
“The same way people move Boring Apes, we just want to move data,” Dr. Wright said.
As mentioned before, you also need external processes that guarantee that every human link in the chain behaves correctly by keeping the data records accurate. Dr. Wright notes that rewards and incentives are just as good for this as rules and regulations—another thought that may have gone into Bitcoin’s original design.
See: Subject reviews Here, the applications are made possible by blockchain
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New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin – originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto – and blockchain.
