How Blockchain Can Change World and Transform Society?
As of now we are not thinking about security and protecting data, but in the future data protection and encryption is must where block chain can help to resolve all the real life things. If we see bitcoin or cryptocurrency at a different angle instead of currency just say how if it’s blockchain only.
As many CIOs dig in to their digital business transformation strategies, they may wonder whether, and where, blockchain technology fits into their platforms.
Sure, CIOs at major banks and financial services companies have already launched into frenzied adoption analysis to exploit potential savings or thwart potential disrupters. Yet CIOs across industries should understand how blockchain works, and why its limitations will spawn future distributed ledger platforms for the programmable economy.
What is the blockchain?
The primary instance of blockchain technology is found in the Bitcoin stack — measured in terms of longevity, market share and ecosystem. Bitcoin is both a digital currency (when used in lowercase, by convention) and a technology/protocol stack (when the first letter B is capitalized) that has gained a lot of visibility in mass media. While the currency has fluctuated in value and represents an infinitesimal portion of global payment activity, the technology that creates the distributed ledger — the authoritative open record of currency transactions — has captured the imagination of many in financial services and other industries, as well as the public sector.Blockchain technology entails the following core components:
- A data structure that promotes the identification and sharing of transactions between entities (unknown and/or untrusted in the Bitcoin context) on a network of distributed computers.
- Cryptography that provides security and immutability of the transactions.
- Independent entities, known as “miners,” who verify the history of each transaction when it is traded and record the new transaction.
- Transactions that are grouped into blocks and recorded on the distributed ledger — with each block being chained to the prior blocks.
- No central authority (such as a bank) validates the transaction or the counterparties to the transaction. The crowd, using consensus mechanisms, verifies the authenticity of a transaction and its exchange between two parties.
- The miners require significant computational power to compute each block of new transactions, and are compensated for their work with bitcoins for each added block.
The shortcomings of the Bitcoin technical architecture have led others to propose and create alternative versions that differ in important ways, such as how transactions are confirmed using different consensus mechanisms or algorithms (e.g., proof of work, proof of stake, etc.), the speed of transaction confirmation, the nature of the value/asset being exchanged, the confidentiality of transaction data, trusted nature of the participating entities (i.e., permissioned — or private — ledgers, and permissionless — or public — ledgers), customizability for business/market use cases, and so on.
We prefer the term "distributed ledger" to "blockchain," because it affords architectural flexibility and supports the formation of businesses as "platforms." It is this evolution beyond the current blockchain technology to alternative types of digital value exchange that will enable future scenarios in digital business.
Think of cars that can not only negotiate parking space availability, but also receive bids on spots, calculate appropriate costs and make the necessary payments; or landowners who can indisputably verify their deeds; systems that track education history and credentials by the individual; personal healthcare records storage linked to insurance, test results, prescriptions and more; or new political voting systems.
Blockchain's near flawless history
One key strength of the Bitcoin blockchain over newer alternative digital currency technologies is that the Bitcoin technology stack has been in production, live on the internet, since January 2009, functioning almost flawlessly and without any security-related hacks.
This value of assets managed by the blockchain fluctuates but has been as much as $10* billion. This sum represents a huge bounty or reward for any party that would seek to capture this by "hacking" the blockchain. However, over many years, the Bitcoin blockchain itself has never been compromised. Because of the near-flawless track record of the Bitcoin blockchain and core stack, developers of competing architectures, platforms and technology stacks will have significant work to prove their operational risk capabilities to support mission-critical contexts in this regard.
Blockchain’s limitations
Although the Bitcoin blockchain represents a significant step forward in the enablement of digital business, this 1.0 version of distributed ledger technologies has significant limitations, to the point where some of these can be considered severe design flaws, such as:
- Scalability (a theoretical maximum of seven transactions per second for the entire system, plus the need to replicate the entire ledger in every node in the network).
- Speed (a minimum delay of 10 minutes in confirming transactions).
- Confidentiality/transparency (all transactions amounts are public).
- Governance (no clear structure for decision making, heavily dependent on individual personalities).
- Manageability (no built-in mechanisms).
- Transaction finality (transactions are probabilistic rather than absolute).
- Lack of resistance to centralization (80% of bitcoin mining power is controlled by just four organizations, all based in China).
- Contradiction with respect to existing legal, accounting and taxation frameworks and rules and industry operating structures.
The Future of the Bitcoin blockchain
It appears that the era of blockchain proliferation has just begun, and organizations are now developing proof of concepts to address related, but distinct goals. Some vendors and organizations see the limitations and shortcomings of the Bitcoin technology stack, and are either trying to address those or instead seeking a wholesale replacement of the Bitcoin stack. Some have implemented a demonstrable or beta-stage system, while others are still assembling components or considering the best architecture.
Through the next five years, there will be multiple distributed ledger platforms powering digital business and laying the foundation for the programmable economy. The road to the programmable economy is a long one, and will take decades, just as the internet and web each took decades to reach their full potential. In the short- to mid-term, executives should concentrate on provability of business use case and, critically, the underlying technologies — pushing back on “blockchain washing” (the process of relabeling or rebranding unrelated technology as blockchain, when they are not). Additionally, CIOs should consider the relative merits (return on capital employed) of blockchain investments against existing technologies and capabilities, until productivity outweighs hype.
Financial Services
- Asset Management: Trade Processing and Settlement
- Insurance: Claims processing
- Payments: Cross-Border Payments
- Unconventional money lenders/ hard money lending
- Your car/ smartphone/ daily life things etc.
- Blockchain Internet-of-Things (IoT)
- Smart Cities
- Smart Appliances
- Smart Cars
- Supply Chain Sensors
- Smart Contracts (Use smart contracts for all sort of situations, such as financial derivatives, insurance premiums, property law, and crowd funding agreements, among others.)
Blockchain Healthcare
- Personal health records could be encoded and stored on the blockchain with a private key which would grant access only to specific individuals.
- The same strategy could be used to ensure that research is conducted via HIPAA laws (in a secure and confidential way).
- Receipts of surgeries could be stored on a blockchain and automatically sent to insurance providers as proof-of-delivery.
- The ledger, too, could be used for general health care management, such as supervising drugs, regulation compliance, testing results, and managing healthcare supplies.
- Key problems in the music industry include ownership rights, royalty distribution, and transparency.
- The digital music industry focuses on monetizing productions, while ownership rights are often overlooked.
- The blockchain and smart contracts technology can circuit this problem by creating a comprehensive and accurate decentralized database of music rights.
- At the same time, the ledger and provide transparent transmission of artist royalties and real time distributions to all involved with the labels.
- Players would be paid with digital currency according to the specified terms of the contract.
Blockchain Video, Audio, Content Software Piracy
Blockchain Government
- Election Data
- Secured Voting System
- Fast Voting Process
- Leader Background & Record Check
- Leader Work Record Check
- Farming
- Medicine
- Secret & Private Mission Data
- Ammunition
- Investment Fund & Political Party Funding
- Reserve Bank Data & Document
- Ticket System
- Booking Management
- Public value/ community (Self-management platform for companies, NGOs, foundations, government agencies, academics, and individual citizens. Parties can interact and exchange information on a global and transparent scale – think of Google Cloud, AWS but larger and less risky.)
- Vested responsibility (Smart contracts can ensure that electorates can be elected by the people for the people so that government is what it’s meant to be. The contracts specify the electorate’s expectations and electors will get paid only once they do what the electorate demanded rather than what funders desired.)
- Blockchain Identity (Whether we like it or not, online companies know all about us. Some companies whom we purchase from sell our identity details to advertisers who send you their ads. The blockchain blocks this by creating a protected data point where you encrypt only the information that you want relevant people to know at certain times. For example, if you’re going to a bar, the bartender simply needs the information that tells him you’re over 21.)
- Population Counting
- Passports
- Birth, wedding, and death certificates
- Personal Identification
- Voter Card, Aadhar Card, Social Security No etc.
The blockchain can protects your identity by encrypting it and securing it from spammers and marketing schemes.
There are other questions as well what blockchain can solve
- What can companies do to protect their systems from being invaded?
- How can inventors shield their ideas?
- How should governments protect their secret information from spies and potential terrorists?
- How to protect data from the hackers?
Blockchain Revolution Summery - By Prince Bhalani
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