Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/intuitive-trust-blockchains-next-frontier-492a02cbc44?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Dan Reus <img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/770/1*HXPuVDDYKuqXhWPSPWhF6g.png">Image from Nicky Case’s “Evolution of Trust” — found at <a href="http://ncase.me/trust/">http://ncase.me/trust/</a>
NOTE: For a two minute overview of what blockchain is, check out the Institute for the Future’s video <a href="https://youtu.be/r43LhSUUGTQ">here.</a>
<h4>Blockchain Hype</h4>
You’re probably getting tired of hearing about how blockchain — the distributed ledger technology that enables “trustless” transactions — is going to disrupt everything from banking to clothing and food. Certainly the hype is there, and there’s a lot of potential. After all, it’s the technology that’s made a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin go from non-existent to a total value of over $100 Billion in less than ten years — spreading that wealth amongst a lot of early adopters.
As a result, we now see proposals to put nearly everything on a blockchain to de-centralize it and create new value, especially through the idea of an Initial Coin Offering, or ICO, a way to generate capital to fund these enterprises. Unfortunately, already these are running into problems as regulators struggle to keep up with a Wild West of well-intentioned and perhaps less-well-intentioned innovators, early adopters and speculators.
Can blockchain survive all this?
Of course. It’s like asking whether databases can survive. Any technology is just the implementation of an idea, and the idea survives as long as its relevant.
Will blockchain be relevant?
That’s a different question, and in my mind, a far more relevant one. Blockchain so far has spread and become relevant (at least to startups, developers, venture investors and other people on the “bleeding edge”) because they get it. They’re far more likely to be holding a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and have probably watched as the value of their holdings has steadily increased even through volatility. They’ve seen lots of deals based on blockchain get funded (validated by the market). They’ve followed the hype as visionary people from organizations as diverse as the Federal Reserve and Walmart have decided to explore it. Their personal blockchain experience is via hundreds of stories that transactions on blockchain can be more trustworthy and far more efficient (and profitable to both parties) than ones mediated by legacy institutions with all their biases and inefficiencies.
<h4>Blockchain So Far: Preaching to the Choir</h4>
Here’s the problem, though. Whether they know the terms or not, these people are also well exposed to ideas like encryption, public and private keys, network effects, disintermediating middlemen, privacy and digital rights, and information asymmetries through their daily life in the tech, venture and/or startup world — a privileged position. They are able to make informed decisions on whether to trust the blockchain because they understand (or believe they understand) the potential benefits and risks and have the means to risk a little to potentially reap a reward. They trust the blockchain because they’re predisposed to and the risk is relatively low to them at their lifestage and in their situation.
Once we move past this ideal group of early adopting, tech literate people with disposable income, we’re going to run into a problem — TRUST. Just because people with one perspective on the world trust a system doesn’t mean that others can or that it will be perceived to be in their best interests even if it is. <a href="https://twitter.com/ncasenmare">Nicky Case</a> illustrates brilliantly through gamification how hard it is to build trust (and how quickly it is eroded) in the excellent <a href="http://ncase.me/trust/">The Evolution of Trust</a>. In my own <a href="https://medium.com/healthfurther/metronome-tech-alignment-and-trust-in-healthcare-63cb0f1797a6">experience</a> developing Metronome, a blockchain-based healthcare platform, it became apparent that trust was more important than the technology that mediated it. The value of a system comes from the trust it demonstrates — and only then can it generate positive network effects.
<h4>Trust Eats Technology</h4>
This is the big thing — in order to make something trusted so it’s used, it has to demonstrate trustworthiness. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/arts/onora-oneill-berggruen-prize.html">award winning philosopher on trust Onora O’Neill</a> explains in her <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/onora_o_neill_what_we_don_t_understand_about_trust">great TEDxHousesOfParliament talk</a>, you can’t buy trust or manufacture it on your own. Trust is the result of interactions where both parties have demonstrated trustworthiness. <a href="https://medium.com/@rachelbotsman">Rachel Botsman</a> goes even further into the details, describing how in our economic systems, trust is the currency that make them work and that without it, they fail.
If you can’t buy trust with the capital your VC’s invest in you, and you can’t manufacture it on your own, how will all these blockchain projects ever have enough to succeed? Are they all doomed to failure?
It turns out that trustworthiness, character, transparency, integrity, governance, and designing experiences and underlying systems that communicate and deliver these qualities becomes the imperative in a blockchain company or product. Rather than an MVP first product that validates a value proposition to iterate on it, maybe you need to start with an MTP, a first product that clearly demonstrates trustworthiness that you can build on.
<h4>Trust Comes from Designing Trustworthy User Experiences</h4>
Since trust is emotional, we have to design our systems to communicate it that way. All the cryptocurrency investors could build their trust in blockchain over dozens of Wired, TechCrunch and WSJ articles and tweets from those they follow over the ten years or so that Bitcoin and others have been building value. The early majority, the next group we need to trust blockchain if its to make an impact, don’t have that experience. They decide to use or not use an app or product in an instant in an app store or on a mobile site — evaluating trust in a few square inches of screen and in a moment before swiping to something else. Blockchain innovators will only have a few seconds to demonstrate their trustworthiness. And they will have to repeatedly do so in every way people interact with them both in their products and in their communities and in the media.
Blockchain apps will need to instantly communicate trustworthiness — an intuitive challenge — if they’re ever to be able to prove their economic value.
Just remember, trust is painstaking to build, nearly impossible to re-build.
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<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/intuitive-trust-blockchains-next-frontier-492a02cbc44">Intuitive Trust: Blockchain’s Next Frontier</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">Prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Intuitive Trust: Blockchain’s Next Frontier

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