Creative Agencies and the Blockchain
How blockchains will impact traditional web development.
Disclaimer: This article doesn’t thoroughly explain blockchain technology, rather it emphasizes how it will impact agencies like ours.
About 6 months ago a friend of mine introduced me to Bitcoins as an investment opportunity. I didn’t know much about it, but he convinced me that they would hit $5,000 by the end of the year. If you follow that sort of thing, you’ll know just how right he was.
Now, as Director of Development here at Five&Done, my research led me to other discoveries that have other implication for my livelihood and industry. With projects like IPFS taking off, the term “distributed web” really struck a chord with me, and blockchains are really just that — distributed databases.
The idea that data would live distributed among nodes across the web securely — as a ledger of sorts — to record transactions should raise red flags for any business that has intermediaries. The fate of these positions has been sealed and it’s really just a matter of time before they’re eliminated. Any industry where trust is a factor will be affected.
At the moment, it’s hard to see beyond how block chains benefit financial institutions. It’s easy to understand why, say a charity organization, would benefit by exposing transactions to its contributors. But everyday new stories come out about how blockchain technologies are finding purpose in all industries. For example, Toyota is looking at blockchain technology in order monitor and distribute information about the safety of individual vehicles.
Seeing as Toyota is actually one of our clients here at Five & Done, it’s already hitting closer to home then we realized.
The Center of Disease Control is looking to expedite federal reaction to health crises and threats.
It’s easy to see with this that all industries will be affected but blockchain tech in some way shape or form, and the federal government is no exception. This is why more and more Senators are embracing the technology.
How does it affect us?
It’s important to stay open to new verticals in our industry and so understanding how the Blockchain might better help our clients is also crucial. It won’t be long before clients come to us for solutions that would be best handled on a distributed platform.
As a Creative Agency it’s important for us to have some kind of vision with how to utilize this new tech creatively. In this ever changing, fast spaced, world of the web, we’ll be there ready to offer up those solutions.
As a one stop shop for everything under the web and Director of Development at Five & Done, I take great pleasure in being able to speak to almost every technology regarding this industry and in order to stay relevant, we must constantly be learning.
The good news is — if you’re like me — and see the blockchain as a distributed database, the biggest hurdle is how to read and write to it. The rest is easy?
Where to start
What should your first steps be if you’re looking to jump into this tech?
There are so many resources and platforms out there that are looking to abstract and simplify the process of working with Blockchains. One such company is Monax. I’ve learned a lot from their resources, however, as a starting point it’s best to learn straight from the source. I feel it’s better to understand this technology at a lower level before moving forward.
For learning more about how transactions are initiated, I’ve found the Ethereum platform to be most helpful. Ethereum comes with its own scripting language — that feels like javascript — baked in. It makes it possible to build complex smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized autonomous apps and even other cryptocurrencies with relative ease. They’ve also made it very easy to ramp up with tutorials right on their homepage.
Building your own token seems to be the “Hello World” project for jumping into this tech and Ethereum has a tutorial for you here:
If you’re a creative, I found this article very helpful in sparking a vision:
Conclusion
It’s still early. This technology hasn’t been fully embraced, but make no mistake about it, it’s only a matter of time. When it does, I hope you’ll join me in being able to offer up solutions.
I’m excited to see where the next few years will take us and I’m even more excited to know we’ve made the effort to understand it.
