Blockchain Evolution in Different Industries

Blockchain is a database or a ledger which maintains a continuously growing chain of records or transactions shared between two & more entities at the same time. Due to this, it is also called as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). This word is derived from the way in which data is recorded. Various transactions are grouped together to form a 'block' and these blocks are linked to one another in chain with each block also storing the location of previous one and so on.

There are three types of blockchain based on roles:

1. Public blockchain: It can be accessed by anyone on the internet and have no restrictions on its uses. Till date, some of the most admired & successful business cases of public blockchains are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
2. Private blockchain: These are owned by corporations. Participation, operations, and administration are controlled totally by the corporation who has implemented this blockchain. Main motive of using this private blockchain is to utilize distributed ledger technologies, while simultaneously keeping autonomy intact.
3. Consortium blockchain: This is semi-decentralized and permissioned, but instead of a single organization control & owing rights, a number of participant companies might operate a node on such network. Here, consensus process is controlled by a set of nodes which are pre-selected.

Why trusting the technology?

• No Intermediary

Think off an open network, which is accessible by all individual members. A person ‘A’ makes a payment to ‘B’ using a virtual currency. Then Blockchain records this transaction and the transaction stamp is visible to all members to check. The ledger changes as soon as money is exchanged from ‘B’ to someone else, say for example ‘C’ or again back to ‘A’. It has the abilities to distribute access and do the financial transactions at any individual’s level. Hence This can be revolutionize and change the way the banking industry is structured today.

• Transparency in financial transactions

When the record is added by any member, it is altogether updated on all participating nodes & servers. Each member in the chain gets to see the others data in real time. No record can be changed without the concurrence of all participating members, so there is a little room for intervention by an individual participating member. Hence it ensures the dual benefits of transparency & immutability which creates one version of the truth.

• Networking

Participation by multiple members with equal opportunity & rights makes it to be superior to any system which is centrally managed by a single party. This is perfect for bringing together different entities who have varied degrees of trust among each other. State Bank of India along with 8 other lenders is initiating ‘Bankchain’ to share information among banks which will eventually help prevent frauds and reduce issues in loan problems.

• Online Smart contracts

Smart contracts are software generated online codes that run on a blockchain platform. These are triggered by some external data sets that let them modify the records on the blockchain. It’s not yet authorized in India to be equivalent to a legal contract but advances are being made in those directions by officials.

Implications in different Sectors of Indian economy

• Implications in Financial Services

The things which we are seeing today is not a pure Blockchain technology that was used for bitcoin mining & exchanges. There are few business friendly versions available with the most prominent ones being – Ethereum & Hyperledger. Hence making the technology more practical and commercially valuable for use by large corporations. According to the world economic forum, by 2027, 10% of world’s GDP will be on Blockchain platform.

• Implications in manufacturing sector

Blockchain has many practical use cases & new applications of technology are continuously introduced. The interest in exploitation of blockchain technology in the manufacturing sector is gaining momentum in different countries across the globe. Many start-ups & newbies are investigating in the applications of blockchain for supply chain management and auditing.

Still there are many use cases that is being tested as combining blockchain technology with IOT and 3D printing to enable new & smarter manufacturing process. This essentially defines Blockchain technology’s role in the Industry along with IoT, Artificial intelligence and other advance technologies.

• Implications in Real Estate Industry

A smart contract in future will be used in real estate property buying and selling. It will make it too fast & secure between the persons or individuals sitting in different countries across the world.

• Implications in Digital Advertising Industry

Marketers will generate quality leads & strengthens the consumers reclaim control; Increased consumer control does not necessarily means reduced customers. Rather, consumers will have greater access authorities in determining when, to whom, & for how long their information is available to someone. People will have the ability to buy and sell their own personal information, yielding greater autonomy of information. Hence the benefits of blockchain are not exclusive to the customers. For marketers, the amount of leads could be lower, but the quality of leads will undoubtedly become stronger by this disruptive technology.

Snovio is the first company to implement this technology in the lead generation service. This company is allowing the customer to sell their personal data by exchanging the SNOV tokens, which empowers people with greater access control over their quality database.

Impacts due to Blockchain Evolution

1)    Privacy Concerns – Sharing data on a public blockchain was a concern for many individuals and parties. Now today you can create your own Blockchain which is on your own private servers.

2)    Permissions & Participations– You can create your own Blockchain where you can choose who will participate and the level of rights can differ by type of entity.

3)    Costing issues – The cost of setting up a Blockchain technology for startups are challenging but as the cost of blockchain network has come down recently so participating corporates can easily create a network by investing in a few servers.

4)    Speed & Ease - Since you are dealing with limited set of participants and data sets, the speed of transactions has increased. Today’s Blockchain technology can easily deals with up to 15000 transactions or more per second.

Fundamental paradigms with which Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto designed blockchain platform are being inefficiently utilized. In my opinion we are currently not able to efficiently unlock the potential of this technology. We need to re-think hard about what our ecosystem would look like if no one could challenge the system & there is perfect trust. That this world will be a threat to the current socio-economic paradigm i.e. a world without the middlemens, brokers, securities firms or banks.