Beyond Bitcoin - Enabling Smart Government Using the Bitcoin Blockchain
- 1. www.vestforsk.no Beyond Bitcoin - Enabling Smart Government Using the Bitcoin Blockchain Svein Ølnes, Western Norway Research Institute eGov 2016, 7. Sept. 2016
- 3. www.vestforsk.no Content Research objectives and framework Method What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin as an information infrastructure Use case: Academic certificates stored on the blockchain Conclusions and further research
- 4. www.vestforsk.no Research objectives 1. To give an overview of the Bitcoin literature Bitcoin/blockchain literature in general Bitcoin/blockchain literature in e-Government in particular 2. To study the potential for using Bitcoin technology in public sector services By comparing it to the characteristics of an information infrastructure By studying a specific use case
- 5. www.vestforsk.no Research framework Information infrastructure theory Comparing Bitcoin to specific characteristics of an II
- 6. www.vestforsk.no Method 1. Comprehensive literature study 2. Case study
- 7. www.vestforsk.no Literature overview – Bitcoin publications in general Year No. of publications 2008 1* 2009 0 2010 1 2011 8 2012 21 2013 63 2014 208 2015 325 *Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper
- 8. www.vestforsk.no Literature overview – Bitcoin publications in the eGov field Category EGRL 11.5 Google Scholar Web of Science Bitcoin Academic Publ. Search phrase «bitcoin» or «blockchain» «bitcoin/ blockchain e- Government» Same as Google Scholar No search criteria All publications Economy 0 0 0 244 Technology 0 0 0 241 Regulation 0 0 0 107 Other 0 0 0 35 Irrelevant - - - - Total 0 0 0 627
- 9. www.vestforsk.no What is Bitcoin? 1. A crypto currency A peer-to-peer electronic cash system 2. An infrastructure An open, distributed ledger on the Internet (the blockchain) Bitcoin is proof of ownership of an asset, physical or digital, without the need of a third-party
- 10. www.vestforsk.no Bitcoin development Proposed in a white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto in Oct. 2008 The Bitcoin system was started 3rd of Jan. 2009 Has been running for more than seven years without any serious errors A platform for permissionless innovation, above all in financial services, but also for use in other sectors Based on open source and open standards Bitcoin code published on GitHub
- 11. www.vestforsk.no Bitcoin key characteristics Distributed system (peer-to-peer) No central authorities (no central bank) Consensus-driven Secure transactions without third-parties Immutable Deterministic money supply 21 million bitcoin in total 12,5 new bitcoin mined every 10 minutes Halving of new bitcoin mined every four years (the last one in July 2016)
- 12. www.vestforsk.no Bitcoin key contributions A practical solution to the Byzantine Generals’ problem first formulated by Lamport et al. (1982) computer systems’ ability to handle conflicting information how to establish trust in a distributed system (without a third-party) An open platform for financial innovation But also an open platform for innovation in «trustless» systems A fully functional digital cash system Today perhaps the main driving force in cryptograhic research
- 13. www.vestforsk.no Bitcoin building blocks Open source software Digital signatures Public key cryptography (but not a PKI! There are no certificates) Hash functions Consensus based trust Network of nodes reach consensus based on rules laid out in the software Secured through Proof of work Massive resources needed to add new blocks to the chain But everybody can read the content on the blockchain
- 14. www.vestforsk.no Bitcoin as an information infrastructure* Property Information Infrastructure Bitcoin as an II Shared Universally across multiple IT capabil. Yes Open Yes, allowing unlimited connections to user communities and new capabil. Yes Heterogenous Increasingly, both techn. and socially Yes (althoug early) Evolving Yes, unlimited by time or user commun. Bears the signs of unltd. evolvement Organizing principles Recursive composition Yes/No – only one reference Bitcoin impl. Control Distributed and dynamically negotiated Distr. and dynamically neg. (by consensus and «voting») Information infrastructure (II): «A shared, open and unbounded, heterogeneous, and evolving socio-technical system consisting of a set of IT capabilities and their user, operations, and design communities” (Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010)
- 15. www.vestforsk.no Case study: Certificates on the Bitcoin blockchain Certificate from university courses (or degrees) put on the Bitcoin blockchain Simple and cost effective solution Ubiquitous access to verification of certificates (MIT Media Lab have expanded on the idea and provided a set of tools to ease the management of certificates on the blockchain)
- 16. www.vestforsk.no Case study: University of Nicosia’s use of Bitcoin blockchain for storing certificates 1. Prerequisites: No other services or products than the Bitcoin blockchain Authntication of certificates without contacting Univ. of Nicosia Should be possible to perform the authentication even if Univ. of Nicosia ceases to exist in today’s form (merger, shut down etc.) 2. Storing the index document on the blockchain 3. Verification process Verification of the index document itself (retrieved from the web) Verification of the certificate(s) MIT Media Lab has also done work on this Open badge + Bitcoin blockchain tools for storing and verifying certificates
- 17. www.vestforsk.no Case study: certifiates on the blockchain
- 18. www.vestforsk.no Case study: certifiates on the blockchain
- 19. www.vestforsk.no Case study: certifiates on the blockchain
- 20. www.vestforsk.no
- 21. www.vestforsk.no eGovernment blockchain initiatives Sweden: Planning to place real estate transactions on the blockchain Georgia: Blockchain project for land registries; through the National Agency of Public Registry UK: Exploring the use of blockchain technology to manage distribution of grants. Ghana: Blockchain to record property ownership. Singapore: Prevent traders from defrauding banks (hashed invoices stored on blockchain and shared among banks) Delaware: Moving state archival records to an open ledger Open ledger for private shareholders to keep track of their rights
- 22. www.vestforsk.no Conclusions The Bitcoin technology is absent from eGov literature Bitcoin as an information infrastructure has a great potential for innovative use also in public sector, as the use case indicates Important research questions: how can Bitcoin help innovation in public sector? how should the currency bitcoin and the infrastructure Bitcoin be handled? Bitcoin in public sector on the blockchain, sidechain or altchain? Important factors determining adoption of this new technology? Installed base as a barrier to adoption of the technology Many similarities with the development of the Internet and web 25 years ago Can Bitcoin/blockchain help re-establish the decentralized Internet?
- 23. www.vestforsk.no Thank you for your attention! E-mail: sol@vestforsk.no This presentation: http://bit.ly/beyond_bitcoin Bitcoin address: 1sveinoFzUtMQ5wnnxMoHX9vb42mvPsWN