Advantages of decentralization – Blockchain Technology

We have already talked to you on more than one occasion about Blockchain technology. Decentralization is one of the main characteristics of this technology. In this post, our colleague Diego González, Blockchain Expert, tells us all the advantages of decentralization.

The advantages of formally defining agreements through smart contracts are only really powerful, in my opinion, if these smart contracts are executed in a distributed system. What does this mean? A system with a high degree of decentralization in which the horizontality of the relations between nodes guarantees the immutability, the transparency and the permanent character of the persisted data.

Public blockchain networks, also called “permissionless” in English, have the advantage that there are no nodes with filtering power, they are decentralized networks. All nodes are the same and no one needs to authorize you to be part of it. That is, anyone can mount a new node, a new “server”, and become part of the network.

Decentralization basically consists in the fact that operations that have historically required the figure of an intermediary can now be carried out directly between peers. Let’s say that decentralization empowers the citizen, the user, the client, replacing the blind faith that the client had to have in a supplier or the citizen in an institution. That blind faith is replaced by a service that provides certainty. The certainty that the system is doing what it claims to do and that tomorrow it will continue to function independent of institutional changes or political changes. That certainty is an inherent part of the system. If two individuals want to exchange assets, sign an agreement, perform a financial operation, share files or hold a conversation, the decentralization of technology allows them to do so without a middleman, without an intermediary, without anyone in the middle of that communication. This eliminates the bottlenecks equation, possible censures, data manipulation, breach of contract and, ultimately, eliminating what we said before, acts of faith.

Of course, the distributed technologies we usually refer to as “decentralization” are still at an early stage of development, for example, we’ve been using bitcoin for a decade. Much remains to be improved, but at least today we can already say that they allow cost reduction, minimize the presence of human errors and emancipate users from those historical dependencies generated by intermediaries.

If you want more information about the use of blockchain technology in document and invoice certification, contact us. We will be delighted to help you!