What does a blockchain future look like and when will it arrive?

Data has been described as the new oil of a digital economy. Like oil after its discovery, and continuing to today, many have questioned our ability to:

• transport data from one place to another
• make data more freely available
• protect data from security risks
• extract maximum value from data

Blockchain has the potential to solve these challenges by becoming the new pipeline of data, but like any revolutionary new information channel, blockchain is not without its early drawbacks and detractors. The early internet promised to democratise information, but only some elements of this egalitarian utopia were realised while the promise of commerce blunted its transformational effects somewhat.

The fluctuating value of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin tend to garner the majority of mainstream headlines, but blockchain technology has many other use cases with great potential. While transactions and records are the defining structures of our economic systems, the systems used to manage them haven’t kept pace with the digital transformation of our economies.

Blockchain provides a solution by efficiently recording transactions between two parties in a verifiable way. This could lead to digitally coded contracts that are stored in shared databases where they are protected from tampering. Every transaction and agreement could have its own digital record, and verification that can be easily identified and validated. The end result would be individuals, organisations and technology interacting with far less friction.

Beyond banking and finance, blockchain has huge potential value for logistics. The ability to track supply chains and transportation could drastically reduce security risks for fraud and theft. For highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, blockchain offers a much improved system for managing compliance across borders, and the food industry could markedly improve food safety accountability through a distributed ledger.

According to a 2017 report from the World Economic Forum Realizing the Potential

of Blockchain: A Multistakeholder Approach to the Stewardship of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, the internet is already entering a second era that’s based on blockchain – moving from the internet of information to the internet of value.

They predict that this second era will be powered by a combination of cryptography, mathematics, software engineering and behavioural economics that will:

• upend business models
• disrupt industries
• challenge how we structure society
• redefine value
• reward participation

Not all of the possibilities of blockchain have been imagined yet, but for every benefit to be realised, further work on the underlying governance of blockchain needs more work. This will require partnerships between blockchain developers, governments, and businesses to reach a consensus on the best use cases for blockchain.

About the author:

As the General Manager of InfoCentric, my team and I provide specialised expertise, advisory and implementation services in digital and data analytics to help our clients convert data assets into business insights for competitive advantage with faster, smarter and more accurate business decisions. If you’d like to discuss how your organisation can leverage your data assets to drive operational efficiencies, attract new business, and minimise risk, please feel free to get in touch with me at Phil.Joel@InfoCentric.com.au.