What is time?

Answering a simple question can often be difficult. For now, let's set aside the discussion of time in physics. As ordinary people, our earliest experience of time was probably the rising and setting of the sun, the repetition of days, and the reproduction and growth of human beings. Here, time is a sequence and has the irreversibility of the occurrence of events.

From a physics perspective, time is the change of matter. In physics, the definition of a second is given by the characteristics of radiation from a cesium-133 atom. However, here I will use an apple to explain what physical time is. I peeled an apple, and after 15 minutes, the fresh apple turned into a brown apple due to the oxidation of phenolic compounds. Therefore, "fresh apple" and "brown apple" are two states of the apple, which can also be seen as timestamp. The process of turning brown is called a time interval, and the concept of "second" can be classified as a time interval. The State of the account in blockchain is essentially a data snapshot, similar to a timestamp.

The granularity of time

The earliest concept of time was the continuous cycles of sunrise and sunset, but due to natural variations, the length of day and night varied throughout the year. Later, ancient Chinese people divided time into 12 time periods. Around the 13th century, mechanical clocks for measuring "hours" appeared in the West. We see that the granularity of time has been continuously refined. Why do we need to distinguish time precisely?

With the invention of the clock, "time" began to dissociate from natural phenomena and became a measurable unit. The clock was a key invention that led to the modern industrial era.——Lewis Mumford

What is the value of time?

From the perspective of human perception, time is merely a concept that we imagine out of thin air. What value does it have? It is human labor activities above time that create value, which is the production of material changes. The difference is that when we return to the question of why we need to continuously refine time, time brings us more efficient cooperation between people, allowing groups to achieve better division of labor and improve productivity, creating more value. For example, a ferry makes three round trips across the river each day. Without accurate time awareness, passengers would have to wait for the ferry to depart early, wasting a lot of workable time.

We often say that time is priceless, but in reality, time has a price, and everyone's time is defined by capital. The average hourly wage in the United States is $28, and how much would a billionaire be willing to spend to extend their life? The world's disparities are vividly reflected in the pricing of time.

Blockchain is time

Time is the order in which transactions occur, and the direction of physical change. Its irreversibility is an important characteristic that brings about serious exchange and builds trust and markets. Blockchain brings order to the electronic world, endowing the electronic world with sacred and irreversible time, and it builds a market based on blockchain technology. As for why blockchain is time, you can read the article "Bitcoin is Time” for more information. In this highly abstract world, it is important not to reinvent the wheel, especially since I cannot create such a good one.

How to measure the value of blockspace?

The time of ordinary people and billionaires is valued differently. Therefore, when we think of blockchain as time, we can perhaps consider it from this perspective. How much transactional value can be contained in one unit of time? BTC is the cryptocurrency with the largest marketcap in the cash world. Compared to smaller blockchain networks, it is like Bitcoin is billionaire time and Altchain is ordinary people's time. People often conduct larger value exchanges on the BTC network, so BTC, which represents the right to use high-value time, and Altcoins (such as $LTC), which represent the right to use low-value time, have huge differences in market cap.

Investing in blockchain infrastructure is investing in the growth of transactional value contained in time

With the continuous rise of BTC prices over the past decade, the transactions made on this network often contain increasingly higher dollar value. When we talk about a currency or a medium of exchange, the increase in its own price is part of the growth of transactional value contained in it. Why does BTC, which mainly serves as a currency, have a higher market cap than ETH? Which can achieve more functions? Perhaps we can understand that its price itself is part of its value, which means that it can transfer a larger amount of value per unit time, based on its accumulation of more consensus.

When we recognize ETH as the right to use time in the Ethereum network, the increase of ETH’s intrinsic value is the increase in the value of transactions that can be contained in a unit of time. The Ethereum community is currently dedicated to increasing TPS, constructing a second-layer network through the Rollup method, and writing real-world information into the blockchain through oracles. All of these are constantly enriching the transactional value that can be contained in a unit of time, and the underlying growth of Ethereum comes from this. After more than a decade of development, the world has discovered that many industries need the "connection" property brought by the Internet. Now, it may be time to think about what changes "time in eletronic world" can bring.

Can blockchain bring lower transaction costs to the market?

Centralized timing tools have already achieved very high granularity of time division and sorting. When we settle transactions using the SWIFT network, the time of each transaction can be highly accurate, essentially because centralized institutions maintain a general ledger. The method of solving consensus is based on trust in the political and capital forces behind it. In contrast, the consensus mechanism of blockchain is brought about by randomness in the algorithm. To compare the costs of the two markets, we need to look at the requirements for centralized and decentralized ledgers separately.

Centralized Trust Market:

• National violent agencies;

• Government-built credibility;

• Balance between worldwide governments;

• Operational costs of official central banks, clearinghouses, etc.

Blockchain Trust Market:

• Utilization of traditional world's stable social security, electricity, network and other infrastructure;

• Randomness and consensus mechanism;

• The execution capability of code;

There may be some operating conditions that have not been listed, but from the above items, we can also see that the construction of the blockchain market cannot be separated from the underlying support of the traditional world. The advantage is that the trust market of blockchain is supported globally. In the event of the loss of regional traditional world support, nodes can be migrated to other areas that provide support, such as the migration of Chinese miners in the past, now the US teams.