The invention of blockchain is anonymous with the invention of the Internet in terms of importance; sensing a point-blank to be skeptical? What makes enterprises avid about it?
Satoshi Nakamoto would have never imagined that Bitcoin (an invention that he published in 2009), will become a controversial currency that is used around the streets for all sorts of nefarious black market activities bringing out the endless possibilities. But as someone aptly said, everything that you ever want is on the other side of the fear; people have looked beyond Bitcoin; at the forefront is the public ledger that records every Bitcoin transaction and is famously known as Blockchain.
Blockchain is the record-keeping technology behind Bitcoin. It is a brand new technology that offers new tools for authentication and authorization in the digital world that preclude the need for many centralized administrators like banking organizations, thus creating new digital relationships. In this space, we are trying to focus on the version of blockchain technology that is used for Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Surrounding Salient Features to Crack Blockchain Code
- Blockchain, no matter how effective and scalable it is, but can never erase conventional money.
- Blockchain is not a giant distributed computer.
- Everything that is recorded into a blockchain will not remain forever.
- Bitcoin, or for that matter, Blockchain has become a prisoner of its own ideology. No one can actually stop people from excessive mining. That probably dramatically increases the probability of a single person controlling more than half of the remaining computing power, for as long as the network is stable. However, this might alter with any chances of change in the situation as the network may come across a huge number of “double spending” incidents.
- Blockchain-based autonomous business entities running via smart contract on the cloud could electronically contract with compliance entities like governments to self-register in any jurisdiction in which they want to operate.
- Blockchain is not indestructible due to its decentralized nature.
- Blockchain transactions are not anonymous. Every person involved can see everything. How much money we have, how much we gambled, which politician we supported, how I spent my money, how much I’m left with, no information actually remains private.
Top Enterprises in Blockchain Technology
(Illustrative list only)
- SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain
- Microsoft
- R3
- HPE R3
- BitSE
- CoinTelegraph
- Blocko
- Blockstream
- PayStand
- OpenLedger
- Peer Ledger
- Ripple
- Deloitte
- CoinDesk
- Blockchangers AS
- INNOVECS
- Altoros
- PixelPlex
- Techracers
- Chain
- ABES Lab
Why Enterprises need Blockchain?
For following few reasons:
Financial Industry
Financial enterprises have gained from Blockchain technology as it has affected fund transfers as well as clearing and settlement for securities, commodities, and derivatives. It has further eliminated the need for a centralized clearing authorization allowing for event-triggered smart contracts to settle trades. Blockchain benefits the financial industry as every transaction is immutable and recorded. In addition to this, as everything is publically visible, the asset lifecycle can be streamlined. With a little setup and initial cost that also involves an upfront investment of time and resources, there’s no question as to who owns what asset at any point in time.
Retail Space/ Supply Chain Management
Blockchain can improve user experience in retail space. The reason why it is important is that consumers have increasingly become concerned about ethically sourced products. They want to track their products and know all the points of contact. As they align their values with the goods they are purchasing, they wish to reassure that they receive exactly the same goods for which they were contracted for.
Data Governance
Effectiveness of Blockchain can be doubled with GDPR compliance. When the control of user’s data is back in user’s hands, it will be the only place where Blockchain will flourish.
Smart contracts
Out of the many use cases, with Blockchain businesses will redefine their payment systems, delivery and transportation of goods into smart contracts, which also includes maintenance.
Shared processes
Blockchain can actually improve back office processings, turning off existing siloes, making the process efficient and effective.
Identification
The United Nations (UN) is making use of Blockchain across 16 different agencies globally for humanitarian causes that also includes World Food Programs and refugee camps.
Microsoft and Accenture partnered together legally in a public-private partnership that will affect 1.1 billion people worldwide.
Food safety
As an example, IBM have partnered with food suppliers including Dole, Nestlé, and Walmart implement food safety using blockchain. This will essentially imply that all growers, suppliers, processors, distributors, retailers, regulators, and consumers, to allow then to gain permissioned access to information about the origin and state of food in their transactions, and as well ensure that food permitted on store shelf are removed before they reach their shelf life.
Disrupting business models
Blockchain has the potential to streamline various processes, reduce associated costs and frictions in terms of the creation of new forms of assets thus help in expanding company’s overall economic footprint.
Medical records
Blockchain could allow for each person to have a single, shared medical record with every doctor, diagnosis, and medication.
Digital rights access
Blockchain can help professionals track their intellectual property like Photographs etc. and ensure that people aren’t infringing copyright restrictions, he added.
Need to Think
If every node is capable of doing exactly the same thing, there are chances that obviously the bandwidth of the entire network is the same as the bandwidth of one network node. The Bitcoin network is capable of processing a maximum of seven transactions per second, for the millions of users worldwide.
Besides that, blockchain based bitcoin transactions are recorded once every 10 minutes only. Considering the security of the payments, it is standard practice to wait 50 minutes more after each new record appears because the records regularly rollback. So in case you wish to buy a packet of snack using bitcoins, you won’t mind standing at the store line for an hour, right?
In Conclusion
Blockchain is a way to formalize new digital relationships and is posed to create the backbone of a layer of the internet for transactions and interactions of value (often called the ‘Internet of Value’ vs. ‘Internet of Information’ that makes use of client-servers and accounts and master copy databases past-present-future)
Enterprises need to understand the advantages of the Blockchain and work to understand the investment that is required to reach a level of competitive advantage. While it is easy for the early adopters to capture, track and secure the data (discovering the advantages of the Blockchain technologies, and revolutionizing their companies in the process), those who lag behind or take more time to experiment and analyze will find it even harder to catch up.
Top blockchain development companies should be prepared to invest in whatever off-chain tools are required to support blockchain systems and must recognize various processes as it involves multiple stakeholders within the organization.