Can we operate without trust?

Last week I was invited to present our experience with blockchain-based developments at a clearly practice-oriented meeting. Real-world use cases were shared across different areas: traceability, document verification, operational records, process certification, and data integrity.

As the presentations unfolded, a common pattern emerged. Very different experiences converged on the same gap: the difficulty of working with a shared source of truth in environments where fraud, opacity, and distrust have become commonplace.

This post grows out of that observation. It seeks to name an underlying problem that helps explain why, even with mature technical solutions available, adoption remains limited and scaling proves so challenging.

The erosion of shared truth

In societies marked by fraud and corruption, the most serious damage is not always economic. It is quieter and more corrosive: the erosion of trust in records, in processes, and in the word itself.

A constant suspicion takes hold. Data can be manipulated. Documents can be rewritten. Decision histories can be adjusted after the fact. And when a dispute arises, each party arrives with its own version of events.

The impact is immediate and concrete. Companies and citizens protect themselves by multiplying checks, accumulating supporting documents, and anticipating conflicts. Processes slow down, costs increase, and cooperation weakens. Economic and social activity continues, but it does so through layers of caution and hidden overhead that never appear on an invoice, yet are ultimately borne by everyone.

What is missing is easy to describe and difficult to build: a reliable common reference, a minimal foundation on which different parties can agree about what actually happened. A functional source of truth. Without it, every interaction requires additional proof, every agreement demands safeguards, and every relationship begins from a position of distrust.

Responsibility and memory

At BlockTac, we have worked from the outset in environments where trust is put to the test. Different sectors and different challenges, but a shared requirement: the ability to be accountable for what is recorded.

Blockchain does not guarantee that what is recorded is true. No technology can. A false entry can still be introduced, even in a distributed system.

The decisive shift happens at a different level. Blockchain makes it practically impossible to rewrite the past without leaving a trace and explicitly links each record to the party that asserts, validates, or authorizes it.

In traditional systems, records can be corrected or adjusted without it always being clear when the change occurred, who made it, or why. Over time, the account of what happened becomes open to dispute.

Blockchain redirects attention toward responsibility attached to each record. Every data point is anchored in time, associated with a specific actor and governed by explicit rules, so that any subsequent change becomes part of the same record.

In complex social and economic contexts, truth does not rest solely on the technical accuracy of a data point. It depends on the ability to reconstruct the full path: who decided, based on what information, under which rules, and with what consequences. In this sense, blockchain functions as a form of responsible memory, making visible what previously remained scattered or diluted.

In societies affected by fraud, this shift has a profound effect. It does not eliminate deception, but it raises its cost. It forces a trace to remain. And over time, that changes behavior.

Why trust is not demanded

If distrust carries such a high cost and technologies exist that can reduce it, an obvious question follows: why are they not widely demanded? The answer has little to do with technology. It has to do with incentives and habits.

From the perspective of companies, daily pressure pushes toward speed, cost control, and operational flexibility. Robust traceability systems require process discipline, clear accountability, and greater exposure of errors. The effort is immediate, while the benefit in terms of trust appears later and in a less tangible form. In many sectors, opacity has also become normalized as a practical advantage, perceived as a way to preserve room for maneuver.

From the consumer side, a similar pattern emerges. Trust is rarely articulated as an explicit demand. It is assumed until it fails in a visible way. In the meantime, decisions are driven by immediate criteria such as price, availability, and convenience. Traceability only becomes relevant when a problem arises.

This combination explains why trust does not behave like a conventional market. Its benefits are collective and materialize over time, while the costs of implementation fall immediately on specific actors. The outcome is predictable: tools that everyone claims to value, but few are willing to demand.

This helps explain the stagnation of many blockchain-based initiatives. They work, demonstrate real utility, and deliver tangible value, yet they rely on an unrealistic expectation: that demand for trust will emerge spontaneously.

As long as verifiability is treated as an optional add-on rather than a structural condition, solutions designed to reinforce trust will continue to occupy a marginal position, regardless of their technical sophistication.

The role of institutions

When something is essential to the functioning of a society but is not naturally demanded by the market, responsibility for protecting it must be assumed somewhere. Systemic trust belongs to that category.

At that point, public administrations and social institutions play a decisive role by reshaping incentives and positioning verifiable trust as a structural element of how the system operates.

History offers clear precedents. Many infrastructures we now take for granted did not emerge spontaneously. Standardized accounting, commercial registries, cadastral systems, and auditing rules were driven by institutional action because, without them, economic activity and social coexistence became fragile.

The current situation shows a clear parallel. In environments where fraud has eroded the credibility of records, expecting companies and consumers to lead the adoption of verifiable trust systems on their own is unrealistic.

Public authorities have sufficient tools at their disposal, fully compatible with technological neutrality: requiring verifiable traceability in sensitive sectors, simplifying audits when immutable records exist, offering regulatory or fiscal advantages to those who adopt verification standards, or acting against persistent opacity when it generates systemic risk. The objective is not innovation for its own sake, but the restoration of minimum conditions of trust where they have been weakened.

Institutions also carry an exemplary responsibility. When public bodies adopt record-keeping systems that make decisions, changes, and accountability visible, they send a clear signal. Transparency ceases to be a message and becomes a practice.

Without this institutional impetus, technology remains confined to pilot projects and isolated cases. It works, proves its value, but does not transform the system. And without systemic transformation, distrust persists.

The conditions for blockchain to scale

At this stage, what drives the scalability of blockchain-based applications is clear: an environment that integrates verifiable trust as part of its everyday operation.

When a solution of this kind becomes a structural element of the system, its value becomes evident. Verifiable traceability reduces legal risk, simplifies audits, accelerates inspections, and facilitates access to certain markets. In that context, what once appeared as an additional cost turns into an operational advantage.

This shift in framework allows some initiatives to move beyond the pilot phase. By operating in environments where verifiable trust carries recognized value, the technology gains the context it needs to fully deploy its potential.

Blockchain scales when it is embedded in the rules of the game and becomes part of the infrastructure that supports economic and social activity. At that point, it no longer presents itself as a promise of the future and consolidates as a practical tool in service of trust.

The fundamental decision

The reflection behind this article extends beyond blockchain itself. It points to a more basic need: the existence of a shared source of truth in societies where trust has gradually weakened.

The technology exists and is readily available. Today, it is possible to build systems that preserve the memory of events, make responsibility visible, and provide continuity to records over time. The open question lies elsewhere: whether we choose to integrate these capabilities as a standard mode of operation or keep them confined to an experimental space.

When a functional source of truth is missing, distrust becomes the default. Controls multiply, conflicts increase, and cooperation weakens. The cost is collective and persistent, even if it rarely becomes explicit. In that scenario, the central question shifts and becomes unavoidable.

Blockchain does not deliver absolute truth, nor does it replace ethics, law, or human judgment. It delivers something different and increasingly scarce: the ability to stand behind what is asserted, supported by records that retain memory and context.

The final decision reaches beyond technology. It is cultural and institutional in nature. On it depends whether trust regains a structural place in economic and social life, or continues to be managed as an exception negotiated case by case.