Blockchain technology: Facts and future potential

“Blockchains are essentially decentralised data systems, that ensure data safety and incorruptibility. Inter-operability of blockchains allow cross-platform sharing of data, which will surely become highly beneficial for the technological revolution we are about to witness in the impending future. Apart from financial organisations, use of blockchain technology is increasingly finding favour among government and private enterprises.”

Industries and businesses are progressively shifting towards digitisation. They don’t have a choice but to keep up pace with the new emerging technologies. Today, data – its collection, storage and usage have become a key component of technological transformations around the world. With the increasing significance of secure data storage, the emergence of blockchain as a growing system of data collection has gained both prominence and importance.

Blockchains allow a digital asset to be assigned a certain value by decentralizing data storage and making the data history unalterable and transparent. Utilities of this growing technology is exhaustive. The World Economic Forum has said that blockchain technology could be the fourth pillar in industry 4.0, having major socio-economic impacts. According to a report published by Cisco in 2019, blockchains will account for 10% of global GDP.

A few years earlier, digital currency was the only application of blockchain in use, but since 2014-15, blockchain technologies have been re-programmed. Programmable features saw addition of business projects in blockchains, increasing their utility. Since 2013, a number of banks and financial institutions worldwide have invested in start-ups working in the domain of blockchains to nurture talent and to better understand how blockchain technology could be further utilised for business purposes.

Blockchains are essentially decentralised data systems, that ensure data safety and incorruptibility. Inter-operability of blockchains allow cross-platform sharing of data, which will surely become highly beneficial for the technological revolution we are about to witness in the impending future. Apart from financial organisations, use of blockchain technology is increasingly finding favour among government and private enterprises.

For instance, the government of Netherlands has been using blockchain technology to track toxic waste from its origin to treatment, as different sets of informative data related to the waste is being integrated into the blockchain, easing the tracking. Several airline manufacturers are also using blockchain technologies regularly, to keep a track of every part of an airplane during manufacturing stages.

Blockchain is also significant for emerging economies as their reliance on clean data is necessary for governance-related services. The absence of a central authority and nearly nil risks of data tampering are features that make blockchains attractive to enterprises worldwide. While privacy issues will always be a concern, and rightly so, the future of regulated and monitored blockchain technology, especially its integration with apps and AI, will have a big impact on technology and society.

[box type=”info” align=”” class=”” width=””]Insights for the above article has been taken from ET Tech Summit 2019 – Session titled, ‘Blockchain technology hype: Facts, fiction and future’ by Eddy Travia, Co-Founder and CEO of Coinsilium Group Ltd.[/box]