What is The Blockchain?
The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and platforms like Ethereum. It provides a way to record and transfer data that is transparent, safe, auditable, and resistant to outages. This technology has the ability to make the organizations that use it transparent, democratic, decentralized, efficient, and secure. It will likely to disrupt many industries in the coming 5 to 10 years. These are some of the industries it’s already disrupting.
- BANKING
From a macro perspective, banks serve as the global storehouses and transfer hubs of value. As a digitized, secure, and tamper-proof ledger, blockchain could serve the same function, injecting enhanced accuracy and information-sharing into the financial services ecosystem.
Swiss bank UBS and UK-based Barclays are both experimenting with blockchain as a way to expedite back office functions and settlement, which some in the banking industry say could cut up to $20B in middleman costs.
Banks are among the growing number of financial services giants investing in blockchain startups such as R3 CEV, which is working with an 80+ member consortium of banks, regulators, and technology partners to develop Corda, a blockchain platform designed to be the “new operating system” for financial markets.
- PAYMENTS AND MONEY TRANSFERS
The World Economic Forum has argued that decentralized payments technologies like bitcoin could transform the “business architecture” of money transfers, which, due to reliance on central authorities such as banks and clearinghouses, has remained static for the last 150+ years.
Blockchain could be used to create a more direct payment flow that connects payers and payees — across borders or domestically — without intermediaries, at ultra-low fees and almost instant speed.
Digital currency startup Coinbase — which has served over nine million customers as a digital platform for buying and selling bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies — recently became the first cryptocurrency company in the Global Unicorn Club.
Abra, another blockchain-enabled mobile wallet and payments startup, was recently integrated into the payments ecosystem of American Express: through a new feature, customers will be able to fund their Abra wallets using an eligible American Express Card.
- CYBERSECURITY
Though blockchain’s ledger is public, its data communications are sent and verified using advanced cryptographic techniques — ensuring that data is coming from correct sources and that nothing is intercepted in the interim. Thus, if blockchain is more widely adopted, the probability of hacking could go down, as the cyberprotections of the technology are more robust than legacy systems.
One way blockchain reduces conventional cybersecurity risk is by simply removing the need for human intermediaries — thus lessening the threat of hacking, corruption, or human error.
Other potential applications include using blockchain to provide massive scale data authentication: for example, using its blockchain-enabled KSI (Keyless Signature Infrastructure), cybersecurity startup Guardtime tags and verifies data transactions for cryptographic assurance of their integrity and authenticity.
- EDUCATION AND ACADEMIA
By nature, academic credentials must be universally recognized and verifiable. In both the primary/secondary schooling and university environments, verifying academic credentials remains largely a manual process (heavy on paper documentation and case-by-case checking).
Deploying blockchain solutions in education could streamline verification procedures – thus reducing fraudulent claims of un-earned educational credits.
Sony Global Education, for example, has developed a new educational platform in partnership with IBM that uses blockchain to secure and share student records, while Learning Machine, a 10-year old software startup, has collaborated with MIT Media Lab to launch of the Blockcerts toolset, which provides an open infrastructure for academic credentials on the blockchain.
- VOTING
Elections require authentication of voters’ identity, secure record keeping to track votes, and trusted tallies to determine the winner. In the future, blockchain tools could serve as a foundational infrastructure for casting, tracking, and counting votes — potentially eliminating the need for recounts by taking voter fraud and foul play off the table.
By capturing votes as transactions through blockchain, governments and voters would have a verifiable audit trail, ensuring no votes are changed or removed and no illegitimate votes are added. One blockchain voting startup, Follow My Vote, has released the alpha version of its stake-weighted end-to-end blockchain voting solution.
- CAR LEASING AND SALES
The experience of leasing, buying, or selling a vehicle is a notoriously fragmented process for stakeholders on all sides of a transaction, but the blockchain could change that. In 2015, Visa partnered with transaction management startup DocuSign on a proof-of-concept project that used blockchain to streamline car leasing — transforming it into a “click, sign, and drive” process.
With the Visa-DocuSign tool, prospective customers choose the car they want to lease and the transaction is entered on the blockchain’s public ledger. Then, from the driver’s seat, the customer signs a lease agreement and an insurance policy, and the blockchain is updated with that information. If the technology were to be implemented in practice, it’s not a stretch to imagine that a process of this sort might be developed for car sales and registration as well.
- NETWORKING AND IOT
IBM and Samsung have been working on a concept known as ADEPT, which uses blockchain-type technology to form the backbone of a decentralized network of IoT devices. With ADEPT (“Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry”), a blockchain would serve as a public ledger for a massive amount of devices, which would no longer need a central hub to mediate communication between them.
Without a central control system to identify one another, the devices would be able to communicate with one another autonomously to manage software updates, bugs, or energy management.
Some startups are looking to build blockchain technology into an IoT platform as well. For example, Filament (formerly Pinocchio) provides a decentralized network for IoT sensors to communicate with each other. By encrypting down to the hardware level and leveraging blockchain technology, Filament’s decentralized network stack allows any device to connect, interact, and transact independent of a central authority.
- FORECASTING
As more industries embrace blockchain in a holistic way, the research, analysis, consulting, and forecasting industries could also be shaken up by the technology: with an unshakably accurate transaction record supporting their data analysis, forecasting operations will have a stronger foundation for using machine learning algorithms to cultivate targeted predictions and insights.
Even now, blockchain is creating new a new “predictions market.” Augur, built on the Ethereum blockchain, allows users to forecast events and be rewarded for predicting them correctly. The service remains in beta, but the company says the entire process will be decentralized and will enable users to place bets not only on sports and stocks, but on other topics such as elections and natural disasters.
- MUSIC/ENTERTAINMENT RIGHTS AND IP
Entertainment entrepreneurs are turning to the blockchain to make content sharing fairer for creators using smart contracts, whereby the revenue on purchases of creative work can be automatically disseminated according to pre-determined licensing agreements.
Before pivoting into an entertainment think tank, Mycelia was launched with a focus on producing “intelligent songs” supported by blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Ascribe.io, a product of BigchainDB, also works to provide a trackable, verifiable record of ownership between artists and their work.
British blockchain startup JAAK also has plans to work with music rights holders and other entertainment-industry stakeholders. JAAK, which provides an operating system for content, is developing a platform that allows media owners to convert their repository of media, metadata, and rights into “smart content” that can self-execute licensing transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
- RIDE SHARING
Ride apps like Uber and Lyft represent the opposite of decentralization, since they essentially operate as dispatching hubs and use algorithms to control their fleets of drivers (and dictate what they charge). Blockchain could inject new options into that dynamic: with a distributed ledger, drivers and riders could create a more user-driven, value-oriented marketplace.
Startup Arcade City, for example, facilitates all transactions through a blockchain system. Arcade City operates similarly to other ride-sharing companies but allows drivers to establish their rates (taking a percentage of rider fares) with the blockchain logging all interactions.
This allows Arcade City to appeal to professional drivers, who would rather build up their own transportation businesses than be controlled from a corporate headquarters: drivers on Arcade City are free to set their own rates, build their own recurring customer base, and offer additional services like deliveries or roadside assistance.
- STOCK TRADING
For years companies have worked to ease the process of buying, selling, and trading stocks, and now new blockchain-focused startups are looking to automate and secure the process more efficiently than any past solution.
For example, TØ.com, a subsidiary of Overstock, wants to enable stock transactions online using blockchain tech. The “t zero” platform integrates cryptographically secure distributed ledgers with existing trading processes to reduce settlement time and costs and increase transparency and auditability.
Partnerships with existing trading networks and exchanges will help blockchain take off in the space. Blockchain startup Chain (which is also mentioned below) is a leader on that front: the company helped orchestrate a live blockchain integration that successfully connected Nasdaq’s stock exchange and Citi’s banking infrastructure.
- REAL ESTATE
Pain points for buying and selling property include a lack of transparency during and after transactions, copious amounts of paperwork, possible fraud, and errors in public records. Blockchain offers a way to reduce the need for paper-based record keeping and speed up transactions — helping stakeholders improve efficiency and reduce transaction costs on all sides of the transaction.
Real estate blockchain applications can help record, track, and transfer land titles, property deeds, liens, and more, and can help ensure that all documents are accurate and verifiable.
Tech startup Ubitquity offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) blockchain platform for financial, title, and mortgage companies. The company is currently working with Land Records Bureau in Brazil, among other stealth clients, to input property information and record documents through the blockchain.
- INSURANCE
Companies like AirBnB, Tujia, Wimdu, and others provide a way for people to temporarily exchange assets— including private homes — for monetary value. The problem, however, is that in the absence of a public record it has been nearly impossible to insure assets on such platforms.
Together with blockchain startup Stratumn, which helps developers build trustworthy applications enabled by Blockchain features, professional services firm Deloitte and payment services provider Lemonway recently unveiled a blockchain-enabled solution called LenderBot.
LenderBot is a micro-insurance proof of concept for the sharing economy that demonstrates the potential for blockchain applications and services in the industry. LenderBot, which allows people to enroll in customized micro-insurance by chatting through Facebook Messenger, enables blockchain to serve as the third-party in the contract between individuals as they exchange high-value items through the sharing economy.
- HEALTHCARE
Healthcare institutions suffer from an inability to securely share data across platforms. Better data collaboration between providers could ultimately mean higher probability of accurate diagnoses, higher likelihood of effective treatments, and the overall increased ability of healthcare systems to deliver cost-effective care.
Use of blockchain technology could allow hospitals, payers, and other parties in the healthcare value chain to share access to their networks without compromising data security and integrity.
To that end, startup Gem has launched the Gem Health Network, a blockchain network for the global companies across the continuum of healthcare. (Gem is using Ethereum blockchain-enabled technology to create a secure, universal data-sharing infrastructure for the space.) Tierion is another blockchain startup that has built a platform for data storage and verification in healthcare; both Gem and Tierion recently partnered with Philips Healthcare in the Philips Blockchain Lab.
- SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
One of the most universally applicable aspects of blockchain is that it enables more secure, transparent monitoring of transactions. Supply chains are basically a series of transaction nodes that link to move products from point A to the point-of-sale or final deployment.
With blockchain, as products change hands across a supply chain from manufacture to sale, the transactions can be documented in a permanent decentralized record — reducing time delays, added costs, and human errors.
Several blockchain startups are innovating into this sector: Provenance, for one, is building a traceability system for materials and products, enabling businesses to engage consumers at the point of sale with information gathered collaboratively from suppliers all along the supply chain (and thus substantiate product claims with trustworthy, real-time data).
Others include Hijro (formerly Fluent), which offers an alternative platform for lending into global supply chains, and Skuchain, which builds blockchain-based products for the business-to-business trade and supply chain finance market.
- CLOUD STORAGE
Enterprises that offer cloud storage often secure customers’ data in a centralized server, which can mean increased network vulnerability from attacks by hackers. Blockchain cloud storage solutions allow storage to be decentralized — and therefore less prone to attacks that can cause systemic damage and widespread data loss.
Storj is beta-testing a blockchain-enabled cloud storage network to improve security and lower the transaction costs of storing information in the cloud. Storj users can also rent out their unused digital storage space in a peer-to-peer manner, potentially creating a new market for crowdsourced cloud storage capacity.
- ENERGY MANAGEMENT
Energy management is another industry that has historically been highly centralized. In the US and UK, to transact in energy one must go through an established power holding company like Duke Energy or National Grid, or deal with a re-seller that buys from a big electricity company.
As with other industries, the distributed ledger could minimize (or eliminate) the need for intermediaries. Startups like Transactive Grid — a joint venture between LO3 Energy and Brooklyn-based Ethereum outfit Consensys — are rethinking the traditional energy-exchange process.
Transactive Grid uses Ethereum blockchain technology to enable customers to transact in “decentralized energy generation schemes,” effectively allowing people to generate, buy, and sell energy to their neighbors. LO3 Energy also has projects that include Brooklyn Microgrid and Project Exergy, the latter being a proof-of-concept for harnessing excess heat expelled by computers.
- SPORTS MANAGEMENT
Investing in athletes has generally been the purview of sports management agencies and corporations, but blockchain could decentralize the process of funding athletes by democratizing fans’ ability to have a financial stake in the future of tomorrow’s sports stars.
The concept of using the blockchain to invest in athletes (and earn returns) has not been tried on any significant scale. Yet at least one organization, The Jetcoin Institute, has promoted the idea of fans using cybercurrency — in this case, “Jetcoins” — to invest in their favorite athletes and receive small a portion of the athlete’s future earnings (as well as VIP events, seat upgrades, and so on). Jetcoin has experimented with this approach in a partnership with the Hellas Verona soccer team in Italy, among others.
- RETAIL
Currently, consumers’ sense of trust in the retail system is mainly linked to their trust in the marketplace where their purchases are being made. (As an example, trust is a key element of Amazon’s success with customers.) Blockchain could decentralize that trust, attaching it more to the sellers on various marketplaces and platforms than to the sites themselves.
Startups like OpenBazaar are developing decentralized blockchain utilities to connect buyers and sellers, without a middleman and the associated charges. OpenBazaar operates as an open-source, peer-to-peer network offering merchants no fees and no restrictions on what can be sold. Customers purchase goods using any of 50 cryptocurrencies, and sellers are paid in Bitcoin — with all associated data distributed across the global network instead of stored in a central database.
- HUMAN RESOURCES
Conducting background checks and verifying employment histories can be time-consuming, highly manual tasks for human resources professionals. If employment and criminal records were stored in a blockchain ledger (and thus free from the possibility of falsification), HR professionals could streamline the vetting process and move hiring processes forward more quickly.
Chronobank is one blockchain project aimed at disrupting the HR/recruitment industry, with a specific focus on improving short-term recruitment for on-demand jobs (in cleaning, warehousing, e-commerce, and so on). The startup aims to use blockchain to make it easier for individuals to find work on the fly and be rewarded for their labor through a decentralized framework via cryptocurrency, without the involvement of traditional financial institutions.