Pt 2: What’s in store at Blockchained India in 2020?
Hey there, change makers! Is it just me or even you are a little nervous with the way ongoing RBI Vs Crypto case is unfolding in the Supreme Court? I sure wish things worked faster in India. Anyway, before you go on reading this piece, don’t miss the previous one, since this is a continuation piece to our first one amongst a series of 3 articles written to share our way forward with the Blockchained India community.
Blockchain has nicely found its place alongside other credible technologies like cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence. It had all started with larger than life possibilities rooted in consumer facing tokens. Many, like me, believe in blockchain because of the belief that centralisation of power is a recipe for restricting progress and change. Amongst them, there are believers of complete decentralisation or nothing. However, At Blockchained India, we have always had a feeler for conscious decentralisation. Aargh, What does this fancy word mean? Don’t worry, I am here to enlighten you. 😉
Conscious Decentralisation, coined by our very own Jessica Zartler, stands for our belief in there being a need for working styles that resonate with a whole spectrum between the two paradigms, those of absolute centralisation and absolute decentralisation. There are products that will require either of the extremes of the spectrum and then there will be ones that will require a mix of the two (especially for immutable solutions relating to organisations communicating privately with each other). The more we can use technology to map real world things digitally, the more blockchain and other decentralised systems shall be a reality. Anyway, humans unlike information systems don’t function in a binary fashion. So we will have to move through this spectrum with initiatives that are a mix of both worlds. They might lean more towards the central paradigm at first, before we get to experiencing a truly decentralised internet if not a decentralised world. Though do we even need a truly decentralised world? Would that be the most efficient way? 🤔
We set out this very context with our flagship initiative India Dapp Fest 2019 to invite teams that resonate with our belief system. It has definitely been a delight to specifically work with teams that operate as decentralised autonomous organisations(DAOs). The proposals in such a DAO style have to get enough yays to be passed. I have to thank Project Hydro and Elastos for exposing us to that wonderful experience or not so wonderful because both of our proposals got rejected 😔😕. It was interesting to see how with decentralisation, you were always in suspense if the whole community will relate to the proposal for their ecosystem.
This year, we would definitely continue to work with that particular working style. In that direction, I am using this forum to announce our foray into the dedicated world of enterprise adoption. But not any kind of enterprises, i see them through a specific lens. Why this specific focus, you ask?
When i say enterprises, i use the term in a very narrow context. I am definitely not talking about the enterprises of the past, but rather the newer set of enterprises, enterprises of the future. Platforms for various kinds of preneurs like flipkart, Makemytrip and Indiamart will be the new enterprises. We see that the movers and shakers of today’s world and even the ones that are aspiring to become that in the future, are increasingly the ones that are creating platforms of tomorrow. These platforms are the new enterprises where so many stakeholders work in their economic ecosystem. For example, In the case of flipkart, the Indian e-commerce marketplace, there are retailers or distributors(basically the sellers), end consumers(the buyers), warehouse providers and logistics services companies that all are a part of the platform’s larger ecosystem.
We are already seeing these platform economies growing to the point that they are contradicting the interests of their own stakeholders. Ironically, the whole notion of the value of the platforms must come from providing growth to the very same stakeholders. In case of flipkart, the government had to restrict the company and its counterparts from selling products owned by them or their invested companies. (Adding Indian government as a stakeholder of the marketplace’s economy.)
Another issue that arose was regarding the ownership or responsibility in case anything went wrong in an interaction onto the platform. For example, a few years back, I had come across this case where a friend had ordered a phone through the online marketplace only to realise at the time of delivery, there was only a stone delivered inside the phone case. Much to his dismay, the platform team brushed off responsibility towards the seller justifying itself as only the mediator in the whole interaction.
As we see these platform economies becoming larger, there would be more of such issues arising where we need to strike a balance between the interests of all stakeholders, be it the platform, the seller, the buyer or the government. With such economies being centrally powered by platform enterprises, there needs to be a way to solve problems before they start acting detrimental to the interests of the stakeholders. It has to be done by bringing together the various stakeholders in a decentralised fashion. Otherwise, the team creating this forum (a new kind of platform), will create a new set of problems in turn. So, decentralisation or the new blockchain powered networks are well suited to tackle these problems instead of using the idea of it to build a utopian world with no connection to the existing world infrastructure.
As many of you may already know, We have always believed for blockchain to be super valuable for its private or permissioned use-cases from the beginning. This initiative will enable us to go deeper into the domain and use our knowledge and acumen (gained from our previous work) towards this new evolved direction. At the same time, we consciously realise that many of our members don’t believe so much in cryptocurrencies and this initiative will create opportunities aligned with their belief system.
Along the same lines, we have seen considerable steps at Open Application Network which we were following for a while for the team’s work in tackling the blockchain trilemma (under the earlier brand name: Aion Network). It is great to see such an evolved vision from the founder Matthew Spoke who has just the approach needed to tackle ill effects of the platform economies of the day. In fact, many of the thought points in my head got way more connected with time because I was following his work. A key part of his vision is solving these problems related to platform economies through open apps. Learn more about open apps and how they solve the problems mentioned above. It is amazing to see how Matt’s vision gets connected to the earlier dot that represented enterprise focused, interoperable blockchain vision. Well as Steve Jobs said, ‘you can only connect the dots looking backward.’
We discuss this and much more at a series of meetups as the community treads the path towards solving problems for platform economies of the future. As always, we have a special focus towards developers and this one being a linked initiative, will be organised as a step towards getting the community to code together.
Phew 😅, it’s happening finally. So long, i have been waiting to co-create projects with fellow community members, decentralised and open source. Sounds exciting, right!? 😬 This concrete step comes in the form of 100 days of code initiative within the larger platform focused enterprise working group.
Come, be a part of the working group and the 100 days of code initiative by participating in the following meetups in each of our four cities, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi starting 25th January at PWC’s Hyderabad office.
