블록체인, 신뢰의 끈(영문판) | e경제정보리뷰

KDI 경제교육·정보센터

Economic Information and Education Center

발행물

핵심이슈 동영상

블록체인, 신뢰의 끈(영문판)

KDI 경제교육·정보센터 교육콘텐츠2팀 2026년 02호

#1
The Global Financial Crisis

“While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffer from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.”

How is trust established?
What guarantees trust?
BLOCKCHAIN. Can technology be a foundation for trust?

#2
Trust is the invisible thread that holds people together.
If this thread breaks, then people can no longer make transactions.
That‘s why we‘ve relied on trusted third parties so people can transact with confidence.
But this approach takes time and money.
And if the knot ever comes undone, trust quickly unravels.
But what if everyone could share the thread of trust?

#3
In 2009, this idea became reality with the emergence of blockchain and Bitcoin.
Blockchain is a technology that allows a network of people to record and verify information together, without relying on a third party.
It groups multiple records into a block, and it secures the blocks with cryptography and links them together.
Once information is recorded in a block, it can’t be changed unless enough people on the network agree.
That innovation launched a new era of decentralization, in which everyone helps protect trust together.

#4
People began to imagine:
“Can agreements be kept, even if we don‘t know or trust the other person?”
This idea became a reality through smart contracts, introduced by Ethereum.
A smart contract records an agreement in code and then automatically executes it when the conditions are met.
In other words, the code itself guarantees trust in the contract.
As a result, blockchain could be used in many more ways.
For example, in DeFi, people can transact directly with one another, without banks or other financial institutions.

#5
Of course, one major challenge arose: the blockchain trilemma of balancing scalability, security, and decentralization all at once.
The more secure and decentralized a transaction is, the slower and more expensive it becomes.
On the other hand, increasing the speed and affordability of transactions means sacrificing decentralization and security.
New technologies, however, have been developed to overcome these challenges.
Representative examples include modular blockchain architecture, which separates blockchain functions across different layers, and sharding, which divides a blockchain network into smaller sections so multiple tasks can be processed in parallel.

#6
Today, blockchain is bringing trust to many areas of the economy.
These include digital identity systems that verify personal identities, supply chain management systems that allow companies to transparently track goods from production to delivery, and real-world asset tokenization, which enables assets such as real estate and bonds to be traded on blockchain networks.

#7
Of course, there are still issues to think about.
Blockchain can’t operate without the internet, and new cryptographic technology will be needed for the age of quantum computing.
Above all, we should consider how blockchain can replace existing systems and work alongside them.
Even so, blockchain will continue to evolve as it overcomes these challenges―because we will always need trust.