The stakes of a positive economy: the blockchain

Understanding the blockchain

In order to understand what blockchain means in our complex economy, it is important first of all to define what it really is. According to Blockchain France's definition "The blockchain is a technology for storing and transmitting transparent, secure information that functions without a central control organ". It is then a technology based on a Peer to Peer system, in which the technology becomes the intermediary of the transactions carried out. The problem here is primarily a problem of trust. Indeed, the actors using the blockchain must have confidence in this technology, in order to use it to carry out sometimes important financial transactions. If there is no confidence in this technology, the blockchain will not emerge in our society.

The objective of setting up a blockchain is a major challenge for the current economy, but also future, because a blockchain is a database containing the history of all the exchanges that could be made between its different users , since its creation. This database is considered secure but also distributed. A blockchain is also a technology based on the network principle, because it can be shared by its different users. Thanks to this technology, there is no need for an intermediary, therefore it allows each actor to verify the validity of the chain.

There are different uses to take into account, in the logic of setting up a blockchain. On the one hand, the blockchain may be public, the latter may be open to all users who wish to consult it. It can be considered as a large public accounting book, anonymous but also unfalsifiable. There are also private blockchains, whose access and use of data are limited to a certain number of users. The operation of the blockchain is simple, because any public blockchain needs to function with a currency or a programmable token, like the bitcoin that we have seen previously which is a programmable currency. In addition, the transactions that are performed between the different users of the network are then grouped together. Each block is validated by nodes of the network that we call the "minors". In the blockchain of bitcoin for example, this technique is called the "Proof-of-Work" or in French "proof of work" and is the resolution of algorithmic problems. At the end of this procedure, the block can be validated and is therefore time stamped and then added to the block chain, this allows the transaction to be visible to the receiver but also to all the people in the networks. The diagram below allows us to visualize and better understand how the blockchain works.

The applications of the blockchain

The blockchain, as we saw earlier, may represent a major challenge for the cloud economy of tomorrow, because it has great potential, but its decentralized nature, coupled with the principle of security and transparency allows applications from now on much wider than the simple monetary domain.

It is possible to classify the use of the blockchain, in different distinct categories:

First, there are potential applications for asset transfer (monetary uses, securities, votes, stocks and bonds). Secondly, there are applications of the blockchain as a "register" allowing a better traceability of the products, but also of the assets. Thirdly, we can note the "Smart Contacts" which are autonomous programs automatically executing the conditions in terms of contract, requiring no human intervention.

The possible fields of exploitation of the blockchain are immense and diverse. The blockchain can be used by banks, insurance, real estate, health, energy, and finally for online voting for example. The objective of the blockchain would be to replace or substitute for most of the centralized "trusted third parties", whether for banking professions or notary trades through computer systems. Today one of the major problems lies in the limits, which can be economic, legal, governance but also ecological.

Despite these limitations, a lot of market players really believe in the development of the Blockchain, as Pierre Louette the Deputy Director General of Orange. For him "we believe Blockchain's potential for rupture" the latter having announced mid-September an investment of several million euros in the Start-Up "Chain" one of the most promising start-ups in blockchain . The Blockchain remains a technology considered revolutionary but rather unknown in France, promising to upset our lifestyles. The areas of exploitation of blockchain are immense, currently the few French articles on the subject have focused mainly on the drastic reduction of costs in the field of the banking sector, but in reality there is a real multitude of areas that can be impacted , such as for medical data, online referendums, industrial patents, land titles or one of our current revolutions, that of Smart Cities and connected objects.

Conclusion

To conclude, the blockchain is both an old and recent phenomenon, which is at its beginnings in our society. This technology has entered our minds for the most part recently thanks to the media and social networks, without really bringing clarity on this technology. When we ask his entourage, very few are able to give a definition of the blockchain or even to apprehend the concept. At the level of companies, they are still reluctant to take an interest in and develop uses of the blockchain in relation to their activities, because of the lack of regulation of this technology. As long as no regulation emerges, companies will hesitate to invest in a technology whose legal and legal framework is undecided. Despite this lack of regulation, startups appear to upset the pre-established rules of "classic" intermediation and exchanges. They want to seize an opportunity that only startups with their flexibility can grasp. At present, we do not yet know the limits that this technology may encounter in society, but we can hypothesize that the trust in the blockchain on the part of the users is the primordial factor for its development. Indeed, the principle of this technology is based, as we have seen, on the trust that users place in the technology and in the peer network that verifies the transactions, without this trust companies and individuals will not venture to use this new technology. We can consider the blockchain as a new global free trade system, a global exchange system of "Peer-to-Peer" where "institutional" intermediation no longer has a place.