The innovation and advancement offered through open-source & decentralisation paradigms will outperform the economies of scale and cronyistic advantages offered through stable, heavy centralised players as soon as technology exists to irrevocably and dramatically lower the barriers for entry into the sector. Trust-free technology, of which decentralised consensus systems such as the blockchain is the first solid example, is to the notion of trust as the internet was to communications. Dr. Wood is a co-founder and CTO of Ethereum. He co-designed the Ethereum Protocol and wrote its formal specification, created and wrote the first functional Ethereum implementation, designed the Solidity language and implemented the Whisper protocol. Dr Wood created Parity, the first truly industrial blockchain implementation. Recently, he has been working on Polkadot, which could have a significant impact on the development of blockchain. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx