Turing Award Winner is Optimistic About Blockchain’s Future

By Prashant Jha

Whitfield Diffie, the chief scientist at crypto labs, a Turing awardee and the father of public key encryption has sought his support for the blockchain technology and is quite optimistic about the blockchain’s scalability which would help the technology to connect to masses.

However, Diffie did mention that it’s too early to make a definite announcement about the impact of the technology.

During a recent interview with CGTN’s Global Business, Mr, Diffie touched on the various topics related to the blockchain space and noted that the technology is different from cryptography. Cryptography is just one aspect of the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)

He Explained,

“Although blockchain uses a lot of terms of cryptography and some of the techniques of cryptography, it is much newer”

Diffie also emphasized that Blockchain is way beyond Bitcoin and while cryptocurrency is just one use case of the technology. While technology has the potential to change many things in the traditional setup, he is optimistic about its adoption.

Blockchain technology despite its current concerns of regulatory uncertainty, scalability and standardization issues, the chief scientist at crypto lab believes that it’s too early to predict about the certain future, but as the technology gets more defined, he is optimistic that more people would realize what it can do for them.

He said,

“It’s such a general phenomenon that I think there is every reason to be optimistic. It is a young technology and it’s really impossible to say yet exactly how it would scale. But I’m optimistic”

Blockchain is not Necessarily a decentralizing Technology

While Diffie is quite optimistic about the blockchain future, the turing awardee gave an interesting perspective on decentralization. Diffie denied that blockchain is decentralization technology.

He explained,

“decentralizing means taking the control out of hands of small numbers of people and putting in the hands of the population in general.”

While there are many who have voiced their opinion on putting regulations and issue standards for its development, Diffie thinks its too early to set standards for a technology which would take another decade to mature.

“When new technology is not clear on what the standard should be, it’s possible to stifle the development of technology by setting standards with refrigerating regulations too soon. Once again, it’s too early in making a definite announcement about what its impact is going to be.”

Prashant Jha

As a content writer Prashant believes in presenting complex topics in simple laymen terms. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid reader.

Related Posts