There have always been issues regarding trust between people. Using this as context, we created central authorities that can state the truth, and middlemen who can facilitate certain actions. This is part of the social contract: to solve trust issues between one another, there must be rules ensured by entities to which people must give up part of their freedom.
In most democracies, powers in the state are separated from centralized entities that govern the citizens: judicial, executive, and legislative. Each one has control over the other to avoid the abuse of power. But that is sometimes not enough to avoid wrongdoings or mistakes and keep the system entirely power balanced.
So, how can we achieve trust between individuals without trusted third parties?
Bitcoin provided the first answer in 2008 but the story dates back to before our era, 3,600...
