Every news media is fond of Disruption as these days they look up to brands that crush long-surviving businesses. This is just like Uber and Netflix that disrupt Logistics and DTH Business. Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Big Data may be some of the buzzwords that have been around for some time. But if there is any technology that is going to disrupt legal, Real Estate, Music, Finance, Logistics and Supply Chain Businesses in this decade, then it is the Blockchains.
Blockchains
Blockchains are the technology behind digital currency but the scope is not just limited to currency. This can be applicable for any value like votes or information or music or art etc. Although Bitcoin has implemented Blockchains as a secure way of online transactions in the Financial Services sector, people find it difficult to visualize Blockchains beyond Platform for Capital Markets. Blockchain is a Decentralized digital Ledger that records transactions that cannot be altered. As it ensures that the token is used only once it eliminates infinite reproducibility and this characteristic widens the scope beyond Financial Services.
Counting Votes
Switching Ballot Boxes is one of the fraud scenarios where relying on Conventional voting has become less credible. If Blockchains were to come into this picture, its decentralized nature makes it highly resistant to cyber-security threats and service attacks.
How? In terms of Digital Currency Analogy, the blockchain model would issue each voter a “wallet” (which is usually a user credential) and a single “coin” (which is one event to vote) and have them cast their vote by transferring their coin to the wallet of their candidate of choice. Voters can only spend their coin or cast their vote once, even though they would have the flexibility to change their vote before the deadline.
Logistics
Imagine the supply chain of a Perishable Goods Business and the scope of a distributed ledger and it’ll probably hit you about how securely transactions- right from production through packing till distribution, can be audited. On assessing the quality, a business can audit the network in which every step is verified by the relevant performing party. Each step will require a particular type of data to be registered in the ledger and its way of representation in the consumer-facing applications. If we were to take the example of manufacturers, participants would be required to input the data on the number of raw materials used for production.
Sharing Economy
“What’s mine is yours” simply defines the Sharing Economy. Although using Uber or Airbnb or eBay spares consulting fees, blockchain services allow individuals to connect, share, and transact directly, ushering in the real sharing economy. Blockchain is the platform that enables real peer-to-peer transactions and a true “sharing economy” and will create new markets. These markets will be ones in which individuals can trade non-traditional assets like reputation, data, and attention. Blockchain makes any activity, however small, easy to monetize. And this concept opens up several windows of opportunity because even one can – use blockchain to share energy and earn energy tokens in a microgrid environment; pay somebody an advice token for a 30-minute advisory call; Or earn tokens for sharing genomic data. Each time the data is used, the user receives a token in a licensing-type model.
Intellectual Property
With the World wide web, Digital Piracy concerning Music, Video, Content, Art, etc has become prevalent. The solution to this? Blockchains. In a nutshell, just as blockchain is used as a virtual decentralized ledger to track bitcoin transactions, it can also be used as a tool to track the rights and transactions attached to all manner of digital creative works from music to the artwork. Blockchain version of Intellectual Property Rights Management would be more like allowing artists to upload digital art, watermark it as the definitive version, and transfer it. So similar to bitcoin, it moves from one person’s collection to another’s. The technology solves the intellectual property world’s equivalent of the double-spend problem better than existing digital rights management systems; and artists could decide whether, when, and where they wanted to deploy it.
The scope of Blockchain is vast as it opens up opportunities in areas where existing activities haven’t yet been monetized. It is now with the world to explore the possibilities and tech geeks to build the idea to reality, let alone experimenting. When the internet came into existence, several industries struggled to keep up with the technology and those who failed to didn’t survive. Half a century later, with Blockchains the world will have to disrupt their existing beliefs and ease into its scope if they do not want to be left behind.
