Truth, Trust and Transparency: The ‘satya’ around the buzz ‘blockchain’

When the veterans in informatics industry are scrambling resources and close knit communities are scrounging research literature, shaping opinions on multiple use cases of a technology, any analyst would assume that this technology has “arrived”.

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But it appears that wherever you go, nobody knows how definitive the industry’s opinion is. Blockchain sounds fascinating on paper. A few notable events that have happened over the last few months:

1. Global communities have come up and are sharing dozens of news articles on blockchain use cases, digital currencies, DeFi, peer to peer ledgers. Most of them are telegram, whatsapp groups while few are forums.
2. Fortune 500 companies have been announcing that they have succesfully built the ‘rocket’(read-new gen decentralized applications) on a blockchain. In real terms, the successful POCs suggest that bigger companies are now willing to invest more, into blockchain based supply chains.(read products which solve all of their problems.)
3. Research communities from universities are conducting workshops, which are more like the ‘Hygge’ of Danish and Norwegian origins, sometimes the gatherings are enjoying the fruits of wine too.
4. The three decade veterans in IBMs or Microsofts &Oracles are writing their presentations, on an airplane at 30000 feet, reaching out to cement corporations and deploy blockchain.
5. The Private Equity firms are releasing media coverage of their pioneering ‘blockchain only’ fund. The startups lining up outside their offices are the ones which have an ‘ICO ready prototypes.’
6. ICO is an amazing yet another term for crowdsourcing, where individual investors happen to be in the possession of an encrypted coin or token. These startups supposedly have a potential of raising millions of dollars through crowdfunding by validating their five pager ‘primer’ documents, known widely as ‘the white paper’, defining every crook and cranny of the next gen technology. Technology which some of these startups are going to produce in some near future. Generally, the white papers have a well articulated timelines & infographics of their past actionables but not much clear indication of the future which follows.
7. Blockchain consulting companies which collaborate with traditional ways of business operations are promising to deliver case studies.

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When a beginner googles blockchain today, she sees a dozen of articles which mention or criticize this technology. Some of these articles make them believe in the reality of a networked world while others talk about a bubble. Mostly the “bubbles” are associated with one of the many use case of blockchain — money in the form of “digital currency”.

Regardless, when a topic garners an interest to the millions of conversations & billions of capital backing it, the world wide web is meant to change. Economic transactions(read commercialization) worth billions have followed these conversations.

However, the ‘satya’ behind this ardent commercialization is that there is very little that has really happened in comparison to the scale of commerce, concealed behind this technology.

Blockchain is not new. The idea behind blockchain (read as a database concept) happens to be decentralization. Blockchain, as a business model is a very powerful vehicle that unravels many global phenomenon.

Therefore, it appears to be important to relate it with the social order. While blockchain has been theorized in mathematical formulations with proof of stake, proof of work based consensus, there is a lot more comprehensibility in the anthropoligical view.

As a data innovation, it is simply a form of decentralized database management reform. A kind of reform which is akin to java technologies around the year 2000 or python as a ‘more friendly’ programming language.
With the computer language reforms, we are simply improving our communication with the machine. With this data reform, we are managing the trust in that communication. It is meant to have stable and continous propagation, accepted, refuted and then accomodated. In broader sense, it is meant to stay.

An organisation, assessing a blockchain use case, should take into account factors like security, opportunity costs, future of such a foundation and more such variables.(read carbon neutrality)

The odd sense of reality which persists throughout the industry is that major technological overhaul goes through a centralised management decision. But adoption of blockchain based networked infrastructure is beyond centralised power structures of a single corporation.

Blockchain has become noticeable thanks to the popularity associated with bitcoins, the first prominent use case of a Peer to Peer network. The ones who are noticing are;

1. Those who have a decentralized, multi-stake holder relationships. An example is a network of several vendors, suppliers of a huge business chain with presence across different continents.
2. Those who have distributed stake holders but with a very centralized attribute. An example is democratic governance of a closed network but with distributed members.
3. And offcourse, the individuals or group of individuals with a self governance model.

These appear to be the ones who are pushing blockchain technology as a foundation for a future unique selling preposition.

In the current dynamics of global economy and evolution of technology, the first group is perhaps the perfect fit for reaping benefits by moving data management to blockchain based applications.

However, in terms of rapid adoption, all groups should horizontally scale and invest in blockchain technologies.

Following factors appear to be influencing the wide spread adoption of blockchain technology:

1. Its comprehensibility/understanding in the space or area of work.

The ease with which technology evangelists in different industries express their domain methodologies. Adopting Blockchain is necessarily a business preposition.

2. Immediate or long term gratification (return on investment) to the individuals or group of individuals putting their five cents into blockchain.

The major companies have decided to invest into blockchains and scouting groups are now active, resulting in massive skill development era. This is happening more fast and rapid than any of the technologies discovered so far in human history of informatics.

3. Its future mandate over blockchain’s preceeding era.

The histroy sheet of blockchain is a ledger which is long, possibly more long than the ledger that has recorded bitcoin transactions. A lot of things have gone wrong with the early associations of digital currencies. From DAO attack, bitcoin price variations, drug trafficking, ICO busts, the phase gone has a lots of tales.

But the future within the realm of global economy and governance dynamics cannot be overlooked.

4. Challenges and possibility of visible security criticism

The security challenge to a data reform is better to be known than not visible at all. Blockchain as a design concept of a database management does exactly that. Again, this is unique to different use cases of blockchain, the way the global supply chains exist & how blockchain application is deployed.

The biggest visible pattern to see here is that blockchain is coming across as a very viable network reform, demistifying most naunces around its existence and criticism. It is serving well shaped arguments against prevailing myths.

Therefore, the so called buzz around blockchain is justifiable.

There are certain humungous challenges to adoption of blockchain. It is becoming clearer and clearer that blockchain is an old wine in a new bottle and this wine shall be celebrated.

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