Visions of Blockchain Magazine S01E02 | Page 58

Megaphone In a few years, the average citizen will comfortably interact with smart contracts and dapps without knowing it. Why? Well as blockchain technology matures, banks and corporations have an economic incentive to leverage the technology to cut operating costs by automating and decentralizing their operations. Dapps, smart contracts and DAOs (decentralized autonomo- us organizations) have the potential to reduce infrastructure, labor and ope- rating costs for all companies to near- -zero. The irony of course is that these cor- porations are investing in developing technologies which pose an existential threat. Once they’ve privately decen- tralized their entire backends, all that will remain is their brand, a user in- terface and a fiduciary requirement to deliv er profits to shareholders. Perhaps that’s enough for customers to continue paying a premium fee. Or perhaps customers will switch to a public DAO equivalent with zero profit requirements, that offers the same (or better) service with much lower fees. In this sense, blockchain technology is a crypto trojan horse.