From a technical perspective, blockchain is essentially an immutable distributed database. It utilizes several core technologies, including distributed ledgers, consensus mechanisms, cryptography, and smart contracts, ultimately solving the issue of trust in networks. We have already explained these concepts in detail in the technical section earlier.

Beyond that, blockchain—much like the internet—is not just a technology but also a model and a way of thinking. If the internet represents efficiency and centralization, then blockchain embodies transparency, trustworthiness, and decentralization.

A decade ago, when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper, the DNA of blockchain was determined. Back then, the goal was to foster greater trust between people and to decentralize power, which is why blockchain technology exhibits features like transparent and trustworthy data and a decentralized network. However, in its early days, Bitcoin was merely a creation of the cypherpunk community and couldn’t influence a broader audience.

It wasn’t until 2015, with the emergence of Ethereum, that people truly began to believe: blockchain is a model, much like the early internet, with the potential to disrupt and restructure various industries. But this expectation was overly ambitious. Only after the blockchain revolution of 2017 and the subsequent bubble burst in 2018 did blockchain truly mature into a viable application model.

Today, blockchain is bringing new changes to the world: for instance, the $69 million NFT artworks and the trillion-dollar decentralized financial (DeFi) markets are unique scenarios pioneered by blockchain. Beyond that, blockchain can also penetrate areas where traditional internet struggles, such as copyright, user data, and gaming. So change is happening, and it’s believed that blockchain, much like the internet once did, will truly transform the world in the future.