Blockchain Chicken Farm

if blockchain is DNA, Bitcoin is a distinct species. Blockchain is a special kind of distributed record-keeping system that uses cryptography to prevent records from being falsified, eliminating the need to trust a centralized authority to verify records. For example, since food-safety inspection records in China are subject to falsification, instead of there being one canonical record owned by one organization that could be tampered with, a number of records could exist. These records could be distributed among many people: the farmer, the local inspection bureau, the end consumer. If these records are coordinated and kept in sync through a system, people could trust this distributed system rather than a central government authority to deem food safe. If one bad actor at the local inspection bureau did try to fudge the register, the system would reject the change, making it nearly impossible to falsify a record. The special thing about this system is that the distributed record keepers wouldn’t have to trust one another; they may never even have to interact with each other, instead letting the technology mediate. This system of coordination and enforcement is blockchain—immutable, tamperproof records that have a range of mechanisms built in to prevent bad actors. To me, this system sounds ideal at first blush. But the technical implementation of such a system creates a different reality. In blockchain, a set of records is called a block. Multiple computers, or nodes, hold a list of prior records. Each block of records is mathematically chained to the previous block of records. In order to link the blocks, a “hashing function” has to be performed by computers: guessing random numbers to solve a math problem, a task that requires enormous amounts of computing power and electricity. After this hashing function, blocks are then on the blockchain, and this is transmitted to all the other computers on the network. Since the blocks are all mathematically chained together, to falsify a record would mean having to redo all the work for subsequent blocks on the chain, requiring so much electricity and resources that falsification is disincentivized.