The Most Popular Blockchain Books Are Really Bad (AKA Blockchain Education as a Public Good)

The Most Popular Blockchain Books Are Really Bad (AKA Blockchain Education as a Public Good)

June 25, 2022

The Truth Machine and Blockchain Revolution

This is a talk I gave at Funding the Commons, an event put on by Protocol Labs for the sustainable funding of public goods and open source tech.

Out of curiosity, I had tried reading a few blockchain books for the general public and was horrified at what I found. This talk pinpoints where exactly the authors of these books went wrong and explores how to fix the misconceptions, even when there is no apparent market incentive to do so.

Download all slides as a pdf.

Transcript

Blockchain as a Public Good

Hi, my name is Kate Sills, and I’m a software engineer in the blockchain industry. Today I’m going to be talking about blockchain education as a public good.

The Problem

I have a problem. Some of you might have the same problem I do. Here’s the problem: when I tell someone what I do, I often get two responses, neither of which are good.

Isn't it just a bunch of scams?

“Isn’t it just a bunch of scams?”

I put my retirement savings into scam!

Or… “Right on! I actually just put all of my retirement savings into [insert scam here]!”

The Knowledge Problem

There’s a lot that’s wrong with that, and my discomfort is the least important part. But I’d like to propose that one of the major problems is a knowledge problem. People are putting money into projects that are riskier than they realize, because they’re unable to evaluate blockchain projects. And it affects all of us, in that good projects are unfairly maligned if everything seems equally risky or scammy.

Blockchain Education is a Public Good

Let’s back up a bit. Why am I talking about this at Funding the Commons? Well, blockchain education is a public good, and I think I have a novel suggestion for how to fund it.

Elinor Ostrom's Chart of rivalrous and excludable goods

So Elinor Ostrom provides this chart in a 2010 paper. In it, we can see that for some goods, use of the good subtracts it from someone else. We call these rivalrous goods—that’s the category in the left column. Then for some goods, it’s very difficult to exclude non-payers. These are the non-excludable goods, and this is the top row. Ostrom points out that knowledge is a public good. It’s non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

Effective Education

What do I mean by blockchain education? Effective education is understanding and correcting a student’s already existing mental model.

Traditional Education

We didn’t always realize this. In the traditional view of education, education is knowledge transfer. A teacher is giving a piece of information that is transferred directly to the student’s brain. It’s almost like a data download.

Mental Models

But we’ve discovered that a data download is not how the human brain works. What we actually do is construct mental models. There’s a great paper that I’m going to reference a few times that applies what we’ve learned about mental models in cognitive science to teaching physics. In the paper, Redish points out that our mental models may be contradictory, may be incomplete, may be confused with similar things, and may be used as a heuristic to save time that would otherwise be spent thinking.

How to Change Someone's Mind

To teach is to replace someone’s wrong mental model with a new, correct model. According to Redish, the proposed replacement must be understandable, plausible, and seen as useful. And, there must be a strong conflict with predictions based on the existing model.

Blockchain Mental Models

Ok, so now that we know what we’re aiming to do, let’s try to see if we can understand the current mental models in the blockchain industry.

The Truth Machine and Blockchain Revolution

I chose to look at two books: The Truth Machine by Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, and Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott & Alex Tapscott. An economist told me that these are the books that he tells his students to read.

Blurbs for Blockchain Revolution

The books also have some incredible star power support. For example, here’s the blurbs for Blockchain Revolution. This isn’t even all of them.

Blurbs for Blockchain Revolution Part 2

I’m going to present some quotes from both of these books, and I want us to try to construct their mental models of how a blockchain works. I’m going to focus on one area in particular: digital signatures and public key cryptography.

Digital Signatures -- Signing

First, let’s briefly look at the correct model. To create a digital signature, first you have to have a private key. A private key is essentially a random number. You keep this secret. Now you can sign messages with the private key. No one else can create your signature. No one can forge it.

Not Electronic Signatures

A digital signature is not an electronic signature. It’s not a digital image of handwriting. It’s data. So the signature on the left is not a digital signature. The data on the right is a digital signature.

Digital Signatures -- Verifying a Signature

It’s important that someone can verify your digital signature. To allow someone to verify your signature, you can derive a new number from your private key. This number you can share publicly - let’s call it a public key. Anyone who has your public key and the message you signed can verify your signature.

Digital Signatures Do Not Encrypt

Digital signatures do not encrypt. You can think of it as a stamp on a document. Nothing about the document is hidden.

Signed Messages are Tamper-evident

Signed messages are tamper-evident. Because a signature is only valid for a particular message, if that message changes at all, that signature is invalid.

Blockchains use Digital Signatures; Digital Signatures Don't Need Blockchains

Digital signatures don’t require a blockchain. Blockchains use digital signatures along with a number of other cryptographic primitives, but digital signatures existed long before Bitcoin and you don’t need a blockchain for digital signatures.

How blockchains Use Digital Signatures

How exactly do blockchains use digital signatures? When you sign and submit a transaction to a blockchain, you’re creating a digitally signed message with your private key

We Can Exchange Highly Confidential Information on the Blockchain! shudders

Ok, so let’s take a look at what these very well-known books say. This one says: “We needn’t worry about weak firewalls, thieving employees, or insurance hackers. If we’re both using bitcoin, if we can store and exchange bitcoin securely, then we can store and exchange highly confidential information and digital assets securely on the blockchain.”

Wrong Mental Model -- Bitcoin is secure so store confidential info on the blockchain

Ok, so part of the mental model is an extrapolation, that because we can store bitcoin securely, we should be able to store highly confidential information on the blockchain. This is wrong, but let’s continue.

one of the most important non-currency applications of Bitcoin’s blockchain could be security itself

“one of the most important non-currency applications of Bitcoin’s blockchain could be security itself”

Wrong Mental Model -- Blockchains provide security generally

Ok, so let’s add to our mental model that blockchains provide security generally. I wonder why they think that?

Quote: Blockchain is encrypted

The book Blockchain Revolution says: the blockchain is encrypted, it uses heavy-duty encryption involving public and private keys.

Wrong Mental Model -- Bitcoin is encrypted

Ok, let’s add that. Why do they think it’s encrypted?

like the two-key system to access a safety deposit box

They say it’s “rather like the two-key system to access a safety deposit box.”

Safety Deposit Box

If you’re not familiar with a safety deposit box (I wasn’t, I had to look this up), to open the box, it requires two keys at the same time - one from the bank employee and the other from the renter of the box. So two keys to open, and it’s very secure and private. So this is the mental model they have.

Wrong Mental Model -- two keys to open

Let’s add “two keys to open” to our list.

Quote: signs public key with private key

They say that when a user signs their public key with their private key, that proves the user has control.

Quote: a signature entails combining two keys

And they also say a signature entails combining two keys.

Wrong Mental Model: two keys are combined somehow

Let’s add those incorrect ideas.

Quote: can revoke signature

Here’s some more misconceptions. In this one, they say that if we have a digitally signed message, we still can’t guarantee that the signature is valid for the message. The digital signature doesn’t give us an immutable record.

Quote: controlling a blockchain means the ability to override public keys

Here’s another one. They say anyone who controls a blockchain can “override” keys whatever that means and invalidate digital signatures.

Wrong Mental Model: Digital Signatures can be Revoked, Signed Messages can be tampered with, Control of a blockchain is control over keys

Ok, so we’ve created a mental model of digital signatures based on the quotes from the two well-known blockchain books. As you can see, much of this mental model is wrong.

More Incorrect Ideas

Unfortunately, these books aren’t just wrong about digital signatures. They’re wrong about lots of other things too. I didn’t have time to go into these other topics during this presentation, but here’s some more. They seem to think that blockchain consensus produces truth in some way, and that by providing a solution to the “double-spend problem,” blockchains can guarantee the uniqueness of assets generally.

How to fix wrong ideas

So how can we fix the wrong ideas?

Understand the mental model and replace it

Understand the current mental model. Convey the correct mental model. Tell them something true that contradicts their current model. Aka, tell them something surprising.

Reading and Critique, User Studies, Create Surprising Products

There’s a few ways we can do that. The first is basically what I’ve been doing so far, which is reading and critiquing in talks, blog posts, etc. The second is actually holding formal user studies where we bring subjects in, ask them questions, etc. And the third thing, something that I’m really excited about, is creating surprising products.

User Studies

drawing task

Here’s an example of a user study that I found really interesting. They brought about 30 people in, asked them to draw diagrams and explain cryptocurrency. Here’s one person’s diagram. You can see the miner here is very close to the admin.

Create Surprising Products

So the takeaway that I want to leave you with is: let’s educate by creating surprising products. I call these “products that break people’s brains.”

POAP but entirely off-chain

Example: POAP but entirely off-chain. The event organizer uses their private key to sign a claim that the attendee attended the event. Anyone can verify the signature. Importantly, this creates conflicts with the incorrect mental model. There’s no blockchain but we get a tamper-evident document if we store the signature. It uses public/private keys, but nothing is encrypted, everything in the clear.

Funding the public good of knowledge by creating products that change people's minds

We can fund the public good of knowledge by creating products that are excludable and are profitable. They’ll change people’s minds if they demonstrate something surprising in a plausible way. And, going against the common mental model might indicate a market opportunity.

Thank you!


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Karaoke enthusiast, master gardener, 2-acre amateur homesteader in the Sierras, atheist, feminist, book lover, farm kid, terrible skier. Software engineer and consultant. Past: engineering lead on Agoric's smart contract framework.


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