Like many in the Dash community, Team Zaimirai is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Dash Platform. We think Dash has the potential to be a strong platform within the new world of Web3. As we’ve shared our enthusiasm, however, we’ve run into the marketplace confusion that Web3 brings. It’s new, it’s evolving, and as a result, it’s challenging to define and explain. We’re dedicated to sharing what we know, so in the next four articles, we’ll drill down on the cornerstone principles of Web3. The first thing we’ll address is “what is trustless?”.

Part 1 of 4

Web3 Principles

Trustless Explained

A colleague recently saw a mention of “trustless” in our own marketing materials. Perhaps that term is too “inside baseball” — yes, on the surface it sounds scary. If I’m an institutional investor, I want trustfull, not trustless, right? Well, that’s a good way to set up our definition.

In good ol’ Web2, we rely on third parties to establish trust. Think about all your online transactions – you use PayPal, Venmo, your credit card, or your bank, right? Those are vendors you “trust” to keep all the details needed in a transaction ledger. The ledger keeps track of the debits on one side and the credits on the other, often with many personal details attached. The problem is that many of those organizations get hacked, so your trust gets violated (more often than you probably realize).

Do you remember why PayPal started? It originated as a trusted clearing house for eBay transactions – buyers were afraid to send money to someone they didn’t know and sellers were afraid of not getting paid.

In blockchain platforms, the blockchain is not stored in one place, but in thousands. Blockchains require concensus to validate transactions. That is, the blockchain is the ledger, and no one has solitary control over that ledger. To hack the ledger would be *extremely* difficult. So that’s where trustless comes in — you don’t have to trust a single person or any providers. Your own wallet tells the platform you have currency for a transaction. Then when you pay or get paid, the blockchain stores “before & after” for both the sender and the recipient.

Trustless means you don’t have to trust strangers or third parties for the network to work. The network allows you to interact publicly or privately with no need for a trusted third party.

Maybe a better description for it is inherently trustworthy…