Blockchain Could Be A Pathway Towards A Global Economy Says MIT’s Turning Award Winner

Silvio Micali is the recipient of the Turing Award (in computer science)(together with Shafi Goldwasser in 2012, the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science), and the RSA prize (in cryptography). Silvio’s research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudo-random generation, Byzantine agreement, secure protocols, mechanism design, and distributed ledgers.

He is the founder of Algorand which is a new foundational blockchain, developed from scratch, on totally new principles, which simultaneously guarantees true decentralization, scalability, and security.

Recently, he joined Paul Allen and Bryan Curtis on Daybreak Asia. He discusses the latest developments in blockchain technology, explaining why scalability has been such an issue. In the discussion, he claimed that blockchain can truly lead to a borderless economy.

Micali explained that blockchain systems have three properties that could eventually enable a more inclusive borderless economy. These features are security, decentralization, and scalability. The only scalability seems to be an issue now, as the other two have been fairly achieved.

For scalability, it is necessary for decentralized systems to have the same performance as centralized platforms. In general, decentralized platforms lack the speed and usability as other centralized networks. This is one of the reasons why decentralization has not been so effective to gather users and increase the number of participants.

He adds:

“Only a true decentralized system, where the power is really so spread that is going to be essentially practically impossible to attack them all and when you don’t need to trust this or that particular node, is going to bring actually the security we really need and deserve.”

Although the award winner cryptographer did not give a timeline or predictions for blockchain’s potential to be fully realized, he is optimistic about the progress the ecosystem had made so far.