I’m always trying to find new ways to explain blockchain to others in the simplest of ways. 

I recently came up with an example that seems to do pretty well. 

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# What makes blockchain so special

This is why:

**Blockchain makes it possible to establish trust between two parties (that may not even trust each other) over the internet without a third party.**

When you start thinking about it like this you will find many useful possibilities for blockchain. 

You don’t even have to technically understand how it works.

# Possibilities

The first possibility is pretty simple and well known. Banking.

All banking does for most people is being the middleman in a transaction. You need to pay bob $5. The bank checks if you have $5. Then the bank takes the $5 from you and gives it to Bob. Bob trust you must have had $5 because the bank told him so. The bank charges money for this service.

![pic](http://www.blockchaintechnologies.com/img/blockchain-consensus.jpg)

With blockchain, you can send the $5 straight to Bob without a third party (bank) over the internet. Bob doesn’t even need to trust you. He knows, because of the blockchain, that when he receives the $5 that you no longer have it and it’s now his to spend.

This works almost instant, worldwide, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

# Example with STEEM and Facebook:

But a third party is not only used in banking. Third parties are everywhere. And with most third parties. They need to make a profit too somewhere along the line.

Facebook is a third party. They are the tool (like the bank) that you use to post your data. 

People trust that it is, in fact, you that posted it because it’s in your Facebook account. 

But Facebook needs to make a profit. They don't charge you for using their service but they can’t facilitate this service for free as well. So what do they do? They sell your data and show you ads to generate income for themselves. 

There is nothing wrong with this. This is how a business works.

![test](https://big.exchange/data/images/sell-user-data.jpg)

# The STEEM blockchain eliminates the third party

STEEM eliminates the third party in social media by using a blockchain and still, people can trust that it’s you that posted the content in your account. 

And because the STEEM blockchain has no owner nobody needs to make a profit to facilitate the service. In fact, it’s reversed. 

The users of the STEEM blockchain can generate a profit for themselves by providing content to the blockchain. (And In doing so they raise the value of the STEEM blockchain.)

Because users get paid in Steem tokens to provide content you can be sure that when the value of the blockchain raises the value of the tokens will rise too.

So, instead of providing content raising the value of a company like Facebook and making them rich you can raise the value of the STEEM blockchain with content that you already provided for free before.

I think that is so cool and another reason why blockchain is so great and innovative.

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