Joshua Ellul

Blockchain as the Truth Machine

Who are you? Do I need to know to interact with you? Can I trust you? Should I trust what my peers say about you? Can I trust my peers more than existing centralised structures? Over the past decades, many have been advocating for greater privacy and more decentralisation; self-sovereignty whilst at the same time guarantees of fair use of common goods — and sometimes such goals are pull in different directions. Blockchain has provided the first means of recording history, events and data in a tamper-proof and decentralised manner — a machine that will always provide a truthful representation of the past (data). In this talk blockchain will be investigated as a truth machine that can provide a solution to such goals.