HOW BLOCKCHAIN IS DISRUPTING INDUSTRIES

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Week Seven ↓

TL;DR

Although Blockchain still has some drawbacks, it has shown to be of immense benefits as a collection of digital pieces of information.Transaction details like; timestamps, participants and any other unique details are collected. There are a couple of challenges that are associated with the adoption of this new technology.

The financial industry has seen major benefits and rewards from investing and using blockchain in its transaction. This has made the industry; which is traditionally reluctant to change, and which security of its transaction is at the core of its business; to be willing to invest millions in resources to learn how to best implement it.

Blockchain, though still a relatively new technology, has been viewed by researchers as having the potential to disrupt every industry. Any industry with valuable digital assets can find a legitimate use case for blockchain technology.

Blockchains are a real-time ledgers of records stored in a distributed peer-to-peer fashion, independent of any central authority. Every record in blockchain is encrypted and it is also time-stamped. Users can also only access and edit their own block. every block in a blockchain is linked to each other and any time one block gets updated, the entire blockchain is updated (Marr, 2018).

Blockchain can help companies around the world with cost reduction, customer data tracking, enhanced security, increase in product safety and reduction in fraud and counterfeiting.

INDUSTRY BLOCKCHAIN ACTIVITY

Financial Services
The financial services began activity on blockchain a few years ago and there has being a lot of closely managed testing, proof-of-concepts and pilots. Earlier investors/users of blockchain in the financial services are; Santander, JP Morgan, Citibank, Vista, American Express, Master card, to name a few.  Most of these companies have dedicated internal working professionals that are focused on the blockchain technology. But due to regulations, financial services are testing blockchain in a conservative manner (Lannquist, 2018).
Goldman Sachs, one of the top financial institution in the world has being developing its strategy to blockchain technology. The firm has an internal working group focused on blockchain technology. The firm has also invested in Digital Assets Holdings, a blockchain firm that invests in distributed ledger technology that supports financial institutions (Marr, 2018).
Visa in 2017; released plans of its pilot blockchain-based technology which is the business-to-business payment service also known as B2B connect. The platform was developed in partnership with Chain, which is an enterprise-focused blockchain infrastructure platform.
In 2016, MasterCard applied for a patent for faster blockchain-based payment processing for transactions. Then also in 2017, it applied for another patent for blockchain-based storage payment histories between vendors and customers.
JPMorgan has an internal blockchain team that researches and comes up with proof-of-concepts on blockchain related technology. It is a member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA), and Hyperledger consortia. It also has its own blockchain infrastructure called Quorum- this is based on blockchain technology and is designed for financial service transactions. The company is investing massively in blockchain technology, has a partnership with Zcash-a blockchain company and launched an inter-bank payment platform (Marr, 2016).
Many financial institutions have been moving towards blockchain technology as they look into research and development of blockchain. Many firms are in the R3CEV consortium, Hyperledger and Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA).

Shipping, Telecom and Aviation
The telecom industry participates in blockchain technology as a way to make use of the new distributed service models and the “Internet of Things” paradigm. The industry also uses it to address steep competition. Several researches have also been made by these companies into blockchain and they have been coming with various proof-of-concepts to it (Marr, 2018). There has also being massive investment into blockchain technology firms by the telecom industry. Verizon Ventures was joined by Intel Capital, Samsung, Next Ventures, and JetBlue Technology Ventures in the series-A fundraising round for Filament-a blockchain startup developing a secure communications platform for devices operating in distributed environments (Lannquist, 2018).
Maersk, a Danish shipping company uses blockchain to track movement of shipping cargo and freight from one port to its destination. It has also continued in pursing innovation with blockchain technology.
Airbus, part of Hyperledger, in 2017, developed a proof-of-concepts with Blockchain at Berkeley for tracking of plane parts. Also, KLM began working with Krya to develop blockchain-based prototypes.

Automobiles
Automobile manufacturers know that the traditional way of mobility is changing with the trends that include; ride sharing, electrification, autonomous vehicle and others. These trends have led to the industry leaders to consider blockchain technology as a way to participate in this mobility revolution that is taking on. Various research and development have been taking place with heavy investments by these auto manufacturers.
Volkswagen released proof-of-concepts about testing vehicles telematics tracking. In this, the engine usage history, mileage data, repair and maintenance and others will be captured on blockchain so that insurance companies, manufacturers, car dealers and buyers would have access to accurate information of history and activity (Lannquist, 2018).   
Toyota also led a proof of concept for blockchain technology on decentralized exchange for the purchase and sale of autonomous vehicles driving data. In this case, car makers purchase car driving data from car owners for their autonomous machine learning algorithm.

Challenges of adopting blockchain

Blockchain technology promises to improve a lot of industries, industry forecasters expect to see a steady growth in the use of blockchain technology in a lot of industry. Yet, there are a lot of challenges faced in the adoption of blockchain.

·       -Regulation of Blockchain Technology
There has been a lot of discussions among experts as to whether blockchain technology has to be regulated or not. Experts seems have differing opinions as to whether blockchain has to be regulated or not. It’s all a matter of perspective. But most honest thinkers will agree that some regulation is necessary. It is only when discussing where and how much; that disagreement ensues.

·         -Scalability
There is the believe among some people that blockchain is slow. For small to medium scale businesses of about hundreds of nodes, blockchain technology is relatively fast. But it becomes slow when its been deployed to handle thousands of nodes or transactions. This means that a lot of work still has to be done in this area (Marr, 2018).

·         -Security
Blockchain technology was believed to be secure and impervious to security attacks. This was until when an attack known as the 51% attack; where an attacker successfully gained 51% control of the Ethereum classics network and rolled back transactions to their own profit, occurred (Lannquist, 2018).

Blockchain is a new technology. The adoption is still in its early stages. As industries all across continue to find use cases for it, and continue to adopt the technology, there will be more challenges to face.

REFERENCES
Lannquist, A. (January, 2018). Blockchain in Enterprise: How companies are using Blockchain Today. Retrieved from https://medium.com/blockchain-at-berkeley/a-snapshot-of-blockchain-in-enterprise-d140a511e5fd
Marr, B. (January, 2018). Blockchain is changing our world: Here are the best practical examples of how it is used in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/01/10/blockchain-is-changing-our-world-here-are-the-best-practical-examples-of-how-it-is-used-in-2018/#627ee1354579
Marr, B. (May, 2016). How Blockchain Technology could change the World. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/05/27/how-blockchain-technology-could-change-the-world/#1cdcaf59725b

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