About

Demystifying Blockchain is a project developed during the The Final Synthesis Design Studio course at Politecnico di Milano for the Master's Degree in Communication Design.

This project is an extension of Phase 2, which uses effective communication strategies and storytelling to show what a blockchain is and the technologies behind it. In Phase 2, the team analyzed the visual and textual self-representation of sustainable blockchains.

Blockchain is a hot topic. If you have no idea what blockchain is and why we use it, this guide is for you! Blockchain can become very relevant to our daily lives very soon, which is why the sustainability issues it causes are receiving more and more attention.

Demystifying Blockchain guides those who are beginners and interested in the blockchain to understand the very basics of blockchain and why it’s so popular.

Through simple graphic and text interaction, Blockchain enthusiasts can quickly understand what is, how it works, and how it is applied.

The aim of this project is to make the basics of blockchain accessible, as well as inspire people’s curiosity and encourage further research. Demystifying Blockchain calls on more people to understand and to further learn about sustainable blockchains.

The project focuses on the concept and sustainability of blockchains, using real-world scenarios to make the subject relatable to the user.

The main goal of this project is to show that the blockchain is not as difficult to understand as it seems. Through interactive and dynamic displays, people can learn about the technology didactically, so that they can start to understand why blockchain is important, how it can change society, and if they want to implement it in their lives. By comparing different ways to go, users can understand the difference between them, perhaps leading them to making a more sustainable choice.

Blockchain technologies are going to be changing societies, institutions, and governments around the world. It has already changed the financial world. The main message is that sustainability is not what we think it is in the blockchain world, but the health of the blockchain ecosystem and its relationship with security, decentralization, and scalability.

Users can take informed decisions not just based on “green” things they see or read but also by understanding what makes a balanced blockchain.

Call-To Attention

Implementing a supercut at the beginning of the project was intended to make it clear that blockchain is a widely spoken-of topic, and to replicate the “buzz” that surrounds it.

The video is intended to overwhelm the user, and to allow our page to provide relief for that overwhelming feeling, but providing information in a calm way.

Explanation of a Blockchain

The research process started with Phase 2, we researched blockchains using a variety of different sources, publications, videos, and created our own explanation in a simplified way.

Throughout the project, the user can find gifs and animations to help him/her understand scenarios and processes that would not be clear if explained with a static visual.

Focus on Sustainable Blockchains

This section of the website allows a detailed look at sustainable blockchains and especially at textual strategies to present themselves as sustainable. With the use of a timeline, an interactive word visualization and a visualization of the words in context, we allow the user to discover that sustainability in terms of blockchain is manifested in the type of technology used and how it contributes to the decentralization, scalability and security of the system.

These are expert lists of Sustainable blockchains:

• The State of NFT Environmental Impact Reduction: Excel Report
• Clean NFT’s Developer Community

In Phase 2 we cross-referenced them to eliminate duplicates, and created our master list of sustainable blockchains.

On this list we mapped 69 blockchains that define themselves as sustainable on their websites and recorded this information:

• Blockchain’s name
• Website
• Consensus mechanism
• Cryptocurrency associated

Blockchains selection

To work on the comparison between POW and POS, we selected, according to CoinMarketCap:

• POS: First 50 proof-of-stake blockchains we have found based on their market capitalization in 2021
• POW: First 50 proof-of-work blockchains we have found based on their market capitalization in 2021

We decided to take 50 from each kind to have a balanced set and be able to compare them based on the same data.

Keywords selection

During Phase 2 we extracted all the texts used by the blockchains to talk about sustainability and record it here.

One of our discoveries led us to understand that blockchains use two different patterns when communicating sustainability.

Pattern 1

Talking about sustainability from the common imaginary: they use words like sustainability, efficient, ecosystem, energy, green. This communication focuses on communicating blockchains as environmentally friendly and less polluting technologies than other blockchains such as those based on a POW consensus.

Pattern 2

Talking about sustainability from the perspective of a healthy ecosystem that can thrive. This communication focuses on the technological aspect of the blockchain because once it manages to balance security, scalability and decentralization, it becomes more sustainable over time. By using more efficient consensus systems such as POS, this equation is better balanced by not requiring miners to solve algorithms in an inefficient and energy-consuming manner.

To visualize these patterns, we decided to visually quantify the words most used by sustainable blockchains when talking about sustainability. We chose the most recurrent words from Pattern 1 and the keywords defining Pattern 2 to do so.

Pattern 1 - Word Selection

From the word counting of the main page of the 69 sustainable blockchains websites, we selected the most frequent used words to talk about sustainability:

• Ecosystem: 89 times
• Sustainable: 35 times
• Green: 30 times
• Energy: 19 times

Pattern 2 - Word Selection

For Pattern 2, we chose the keywords that define a thriving and healthy ecosystem from our previous research:

KEYWORDS COLLECTION PROCESS

SUSTAINABLE SCREENS COLLECTION PROCESS

Scroll

In order to keep the information easily accessible, the project has two levels of interaction. The first is to scroll through the website to create a foundational knowledge of blockchain.

Demystifying Blockchain is not meant to be a serious informative project. It is meant to be a casual, light-hearted method of education in order to empathize more with the audience and simplify complex concepts.

Anel
Alzhanova

Soraya
Astaghforellahi

Camila
Coelho

Beatrice
Foresti

Yaqing
Luan

Nelly
Saad

Severin
Schwaighofer