Beyond bitcoin: Blockchain applied — key takeaways
In the fall of 2016, during Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) in Bergen, the team at M'Labs organised a workshop around the subject blockchain. We were eager to host an event where ideation, collaboration and brainstorming could be the center of attention. In this blogpost we sum up what we did and we present the key takeaways from the event.
Ever since our summer party earlier that year, where we had some presentations around the subject, the whole team at M’Labs had been interested in blockchain and we were curious to learn more about the technology and its areas of use. The bitcoin and blockchain technology is starting to gain ground, particularly in the banking and finance sector. We wanted to dig deeper and explore further — where can this technology take us?
To arrange this event with us, we invited a group from Netlife Research, a digital design agency with creative minds and the same curiosity as us, and DNB, Norway’s biggest bank.
This event was supposed to give the attendees an introduction to blockchain and then they would get a few hours to ideate and be creative. We formed smaller groups where people could discuss and share ideas related to blockchain technology. The event was open for everyone, no matter their skill set, experience and knowledge about blockchain, so it was important that we made sure that everyone had the same basic knowledge before we got started.
Therefore, the evening was kicked off with a small introduction about the blockchain technology. Nils Norman Haukås (Netlife Research) gave a brief intro with the basics, but also explored different areas where the technology is in use. This was followed by a longer talk by Jon Ramvi, lead blockchain engineer in distributed ledger and in the blockchain team in DNB. He started Blockchangers and has among other things arranged Oslo Blockchain Day for over 200 participants. He held a presentation about an internal R3 project in DNB.
Now the stage was set for the participants themselves to indulge in a creative process and to plant some seeds for further development, collaboration and great discussions. There were around 25 participants, and they could choose themselves who they wanted to discuss with. Groups were given a theme to discuss around — health, commerce, culture and IoT were some of the themes.
Commerce
All the groups were interested in using blockchain in cases where verification or authentication was important. For example, the commerce group discussed the possibility of using blockchain when selling a house. They discussed how you could incorporate the technology in the whole process — from announcing the sale to the money transaction from the previous owner to the new owner. This could avoid a middleman (the bank or the real estate agent) and make the whole process more effective.
Health
The group that discussed health talked about how you might secure a patient’s journal and health information using blockchain. This would maybe not be useful in Norway, though, where most people trust that the government and your doctor keeps this information secure. This group pointed out that blockchain has a much bigger potential in underdeveloped countries, where one might lack trust in the government or you don’t have a good infrastructure.
IoT
The IoT group talked a lot about cars and registration of service history, driving activities and other information about your car. For example, when you have a service done you get it registered with the new parts so you have an overview over what is actually in your car, or you can see if it has been in any accidents. As everything in a block is timestamped, this could be used as verification for insurance or in legal cases.
Culture
Lastly, the group with the culture theme discussed how one might preserve a country’s culture or support a journalist in his work. For example, to get a case published, a certain amount of users need to verify the information in the story.
All the groups had great discussions that eventually branched out to philosophical questions, ethical dilemmas and extreme “what if”-situations. The discussions showed that the potential for blockchain is huge and people are extremely curious about this technology. The areas of use are limitless, but there is definitely more to learn about the pitfalls and disadvantages.
