If you’ve been going down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos and “beginner-friendly” blockchain explainers, only to come out more confused than when you started — you’re in the right place.
Okay… so. Let me just start by saying, no, blockchain is not cryptocurrency. Get that out of your head. To really get blockchain, you first need to understand the problem it’s trying to solve. It solves a lot of things, yes, but at the core, it’s about ownership — giving it back to you.
Most online systems today are built around centralized control. We rely on a single authority — a company, a platform, a provider — to manage our data, money, or content. And that means they have the final say, not us. I might feel like I fully own my blog on WordPress at this very moment that I’m writing this, but I don’t. WordPress can take it down at any time, and there’s little I can do. That’s because the control is centralized — with WordPress — not shared or decentralized like it would be with blockchain.
Now what is even a centralized system vs a decentralized system? If you understand the difference between these both, you’ll understand the need for blockchain.
Let’s talk about Facebook.
Remember when you first opened your Facebook account and felt like you’d created your own little world? It was your space — you decided who had access to you, who could see your photos, peek into your thoughts, or slide into your messages. But then, one day, you wake up to find that your account’s been deleted, or you’re faced with a sudden restriction, unable to log in, unable to reach out to anyone. And you realize, “Wait a minute, was my account ever really mine to begin with?” Your sense of ownership over your Facebook account is about as real as the freedom a government claims you have as long as you don’t look too closely
Your sense of ownership over your Facebook account is about as real as the freedom a government claims you have – as long as you don’t look too closely
Facebook can decide, on any random day, to delete your account, remove your friends, or claim you’ve violated some ever-evolving community guideline and ban you from their platform. “But what about the terms and conditions?” you ask. They can change them whenever they like — and if they’re feeling generous, you’ll get a polite little email sent.
When an entity has more power than its user, like Facebook, we call that a centralized system. Unlike, blockchain. Blockchain is decentralized.
So what is blockchain?
A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger that records transactions in a series of cryptographically linked blocks. Each block contains a timestamp, transaction data, and a reference to the previous block’s hash, ensuring immutability and security.1 Blockchain operates without a central authority, relying on consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work or Proof of Stake to validate and add new blocks.
Yeah, now, so what does all that even mean?
Imagine it like a group card game where each player keeps their cards hidden, but every move they make — like playing a card or taking a turn — is announced out loud and written down in a shared notebook. Instead of one dealer running the game, the group follows a common set of rules to verify and agree on each move. After a round, all the actions are recorded, sealed, and stacked with past rounds — no edits allowed. If someone tries to lie about a past move, it won’t match the group’s record, so it gets rejected. It is a computing system where once something is added — like Facebook’s terms and conditions — you can’t secretly change it later without everyone noticing (unless you create a fork — but that’s a whole different conversation).
Does that mean blockchain is an app, or a software too? Incorrect. A software is just a bunch of code — something you program to do specific things. It runs on a computer or phone, and whoever owns or controls that software can go in and change the code whenever they want. Blockchain isn’t software in that sense. It is a computing system or a platform – where you can build software on top of it, but once you deploy that code (often through something called a smart contract), you can’t just go back and change it like you would in regular software. So, think of it this way: traditional software is like a whiteboard — you can write and erase whenever you want. But blockchain is more like etching that code into stone — once it’s written and deployed, it stays there. It’s designed to be transparent and tamper-proof.
Another way to see the need for blockchain is by asking: who controls the servers or infrastructure behind the service you’re using? In centralized systems, that control sits with one company, meaning they control access, policies, updates, and even who gets to grow on their platform. This played out with Zynga, a once-thriving game developer behind hits like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, which relied heavily on Facebook for users. When Facebook changed its policies and cut off Zynga’s access to its network, Zynga’s traffic — and business — plummeted almost overnight.2 The game didn’t fail; the gatekeeper simply shut the gate.
The same pattern affects content creators today: platforms let them build an audience organically, only to later tweak algorithms so they must pay to reach that same audience again. It’s a classic bait-and-switch where once you’re dependent on the platform, you’re stuck playing by their rules. That’s the real danger of centralization — no matter how brilliant or beloved your work is, it can all disappear with a policy update (where you don’t get to have a say).
Blockchain changes that. It removes the gatekeepers and puts control back where it belongs. In a decentralized system such as a blockchain network, no single person or company stores all the data on their own servers. Instead, the information is shared across many computers (called nodes) around the world. Each node keeps a copy of the entire record and helps check and add new transactions. If someone tries to change even one block, it breaks that connection, and all the other computers (called nodes) in the network quickly notice the difference and reject the changed version. This makes the system more secure and trustworthy because no one server is in control, no one person is in control. The original data stays safe and unchanged. You know what that means?
That means if you signed up for TikTok under terms and conditions that said, “The more followers watch your content, the more it will appear on their feeds,” and if this agreement were written (as a smart contract) on the blockchain, Tiktok couldn’t arbitrarily change or ignore it. You wouldn’t have to worry about your account being frozen or your content being mysteriously hidden. The rules would be transparent, automatically enforced, immutable and visible to everyone.
So no, blockchain is not memecoins, DAOs, or cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is the network on which these systems are built. It’s the foundation that makes them possible, secure, and decentralized. In a world full of disappearing posts and ever-changing terms, don’t you think that this is about as close to freedom as the internet gets?
Between The Squiggles 
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