What this medium is about :
- Making a state of play of the Blockchain technology applications in 2018.
What this medium isn’t about :
- Market trends, auction dynamics, speculation
- Understanding Blockchain technology
Ok, 2018 has been a disastrous year for crypto investors we all got this. However, IMHO once should never forget that :
- The liquidity of the crypto market is super low (~5%) and easily manipulated
- Blockchain value doesn’t comes from its market trend but from its revolutionary technology. By allowing to get rid of trusted 3rd parties it eases the development of so many critical processes for society
2018 H1 investments (1.3bn USD) already overtook 2017 full year
Despite the bearish market trends, investments in Blockchain companies had never been so intense. This year has even seen the rise of 3 Blockchain startups in the Unicorn club : Circle ( peer-to-peer payments technology company) , Coinbase (exchange market), Robinhood (exchange market). The most contributing countries are US (38%), UK (8%) and Singapore (4%). The first rising applications sectors are Banking, Public services (govs) and Insurance.
Blockchain based startups current impact
Since the marketing department of all startups wants to do a press release with “blockchain” in the title, many of us could be doubtful about the actual impact of the Blockchain technology. However, even if the ecosytem of companies actually using blockchain is small at the moment, they are already disrupting their domains. Lets see some examples.
Startup 1 : Guardtime
Guardtime is certainly the biggest blockchain based company I’ve been able to find. They could be defined as blockchain implementation and management company even if they are more known for building the Estonian decentralized platform for public services and e-nationality (want to became e-estonian? here). They developped their own blockchain tech (Keyless signature infrastructure) and their own Dapps platform named Cosmos.
Besides easing processes they also reinforce e-security because data is not duplicated and not centralized wich minimize the risk of ddos attack
Creation : 2014
Employees : ≥150
Revenue : 23MUSD in 2015
Applications : Insurance, adverstising, supply chain, governments
Clients : Govs, Verizon, LM..
Startup 2 : SKU chain
Sku Chain transforms every transportation in the international supply chain network into a tradable asset.
In the traditional system a buyer usually gives a receivable to a supplier which will himself get a funding from the bank paying interest for the loan he will then refund with the buyer payment 90 days after the transaction. Using smart contracts SKU chain allows any financial investor to finance an inventory unleashing arbitrage and competition as on all tradable market and lowering financing fees.
Creation : 2014
Employee : 15
Revenue : -
Applications : supply chain
Startup 3 : Building Blocks
Building blocks is my personal favorite! Its a pilot of the World Food Program, which aims at implementing cash transfers in refugee camps. Cash transfers, allow people to purchase their own food locally and are an effective way to empower them to make their own purchasing decisions to relieve hunger. Bummer, in war territories opening a bank account is not that easy and even when its possible transfer fees are outrageaous. Building blocks runs their own blockchain using proof of authority (PoA) and iris recognition in some cases to empower the migrants to transact fund in their every day life.
Creation : 2017
Applications : Payments, ID
Technology : Ethereum
Beneficiaries : 100k syrian refugees
Why is there still no disruption yet?
“Okay Tim, I’ve read your article until here despite your poor writting skills and I see your points : there is money floating around the crypto projects, some applications are already here but still …why don’t I have any f****** Dapp on my phone?”
If you are just like Bob my perfect imaginary reader then I’ll try to answer your question in the rest of the medium.
- Technical constraints :
The number of “good” Dapps developpers remains low and the infrastructure for developpings these apps (test and design) remains underdeveloped. This should change as the high demand level for Dapps developpers will attract fresh smart brains to grow their skillset.
2. Pratically :
In theory, the predominant blockchain use case is to automate process between multi partners. Practically it’s hard to get everyone to adopt a new technology. However the history showed us that with the growing use of a the technology eventually partners agreed on a standard.
What is coming?(besides winter)
So Bob don’t get discouraged when we look a bit closer to the project ecosystem signals are positive :
Investors continue to believe in the projects they funded and put money on the table in higher rounds:
More and more companies with powerful means invest in Blockchain :
- Telegram Open Network (TON) will be used for securely saving user information and payments
- Facebook created a blockchain division
- Microsoft has filled patents for trusted execution environments (TEEs) that could secure and support blockchain networks.
- IBM has +1500 employees working on Blockchain and 2 services live ( Blockchain as a service and a platform for banks)
- AMAZON, the Seattle-based giant announced AWS Blockchain Templates, which will enable enterprises to launch Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric networks in a much faster manner.
- Baidu (Chinese search giant) debuted its blockchain project, Totem, which manages intellectual property rights of images.
Conclusion is that while speculators are maybe losing patience a lot is happening in the crypto world and cool projects keep building their techs.
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