The main assertion seems to be that with blockchain we are not trusting an unreliable person, we are trusting buggy code. This is true. But it is [theoretically] possible to write code that doesn’t have critical bugs, while it is probably not possible to change people to make them more reliable. The core algorithms and cryptography of something like bitcoin – which has been running for years with billions of USD – is probably trustworthy. If a system grows organically, like bitcoin, the early bugs will ideally result in limited losses and as the platform matures people will trust it with more funds.

The piece also makes the point: “junk in, junk out”, with the mango pesticide example. Data quality is of course very important, but the article does ignore IOT and the possibility of oracles incentivized to preserve their own reputation by feeding in reliable data to the platform e.g. mango spot checks, drone inspections, smart food labels.

No idea what is meant by “crypto-medieval”, the piece seems to be missing the point that the “blockchain/DLT/smart-contract” substrate performs the role of a central government, but according to deterministic logic rather than relying on infallible people who do not always obey the rules…

Looks like we are mired in the Trough of Disillusionment…

…perhaps this time the slope of Enlightenment will lead us to distributed utopia? ;)