دانلود کتاب مبانی بلاکچین – مقدمه‌ای غیرفنی در ۲۵ مرحله + ۵ مرحله فراتر از مبانی

The Napster case teaches us that peer-to-peer systems have the potential to reshape entire industries through a simple idea: replacing the middleman with peer-to-peer interactions. In the music industry, traditional studios and their marketing and distribution channels, which acted as middlemen between artists and consumers, have been replaced by peer-to-peer file-sharing systems. The major characteristics that made the music industry so vulnerable to replacement by peer-to-peer systems are the immaterial nature of music and the low cost of copying and transferring data. The power of peer-to-peer systems is not restricted to the music industry. Every industry that mainly acts as a middleman between producers and customers of immaterial or digital goods and services is vulnerable to being replaced by peer-to-peer systems. This statement may sound a bit abstract, but you may discover many middlemen for immaterial and digital goods and services around you once you have recognized the largest of them: the financial industry. What is the money in your bank account or on your credit or debit card? Is it really money? The money you own was turned into immaterial bits and bytes long ago. Only a small amount of money exists as physical banknotes and coins. The vast majority of the world’s money and assets exist as immaterial bits and bytes in the centralized IT systems of the financial industry. Banks and many other players of the financial industry are just middlemen between producers and consumers of immaterial bits and bytes that make up our money and our wealth. The act of borrowing, lending, and transferring money from one account to another is just the transfer of an immaterial good operated by middlemen, also called intermediaries. It is amazing how many middlemen are involved in seemingly simple transactions (e.g., transferring money from one bank account to another in a different country), with up to five middlemen, each with their own processing time and fees. As a result, something as simple as transferring money from one bank account to another in a different country can take a long time to process and incur high transaction costs.3 In a peer-to-peer system, the same transfer would be much simpler and would take less time and cost, since it could be processed as what it is—a transfer of bits and bytes between two peers or nodes. The advantage of peer-to-peer systems over centralized systems is direct interactions between contractual partners rather than indirect interactions through a middleman, resulting in less processing time and lower costs. The advantages of peer-to-peer systems are not restricted to money transfer. Every industry that mainly acts as a middleman between producers and customers of immaterial or digital goods and services is vulnerable to being replaced by peer-to-peer systems. As digitalization continues, more and more items of everyday life, as well as an increasing number of immaterial goods and services, will benefit from the efficiencies of peer-to-peer systems. Advocates of peer-to-peer systems argue that almost all aspects of our lives will be affected by the emergence of digitalization and peer-to-peer networks, such as payments, money saving, loans, insurances, as well as issuance and validation of birth certificates, driving licenses, passports, identity cards, educational certificates, patents, and labor contracts. Most of them already exist in digital form in centralized systems run by institutions that are nothing but middlemen between natural suppliers and customers.