Every 15 Seconds…
Something special happens
…a piece of open source software called an Ethereum node collects together a random, unordered collection of transactions, and after throwing out the invalid ones, puts the rest in a well-defined order.
The system then seals this newly ordered list for the rest of human history (modulo re-orgs) by creating a 32-byte block hash that stands in a one-to-one correspondence to that ordered list.
The system then quickly moves on to a newly growing collection of unordered transactions, leaving behind it a trail of sealed blocks.
This trail of sealed blocks is the best data the world has ever seen.
Anyone with an Internet connection may download the source node, build it, run it locally themselves, and consume this pristine data without fear that the data has been manipulated. Nor can the data be denied. The data is both immutable and uncensorable.
Immutable, uncensorable data is the font from which all web 3.0 dreams flow.
A dream of near perfect data, agreed to world-wide, available to anyone with no restrictions, impossible to modify or fake. This is what we’re building.
Every single one — and I literally every single one — of the wild ideas everyone falls in love with when they first grok the blockchain, depend on this immutable, undeniable, uncensorable data.
Oh but it were true that people would behave as if they believed this.