Recommendations on implementing a blockchain?
The Blockchain is a new computing paradigm that tends to be increasingly present in many areas of daily life. Blockchain, a word that not many people know about but that might revolution our future the way the Internet has.
This technology is setting the pace for using distributed ledger technology instead of centralized database systems because it provides a shared, secure and concurrent view of the truth. If blockchain will revolutionize our way of doing business, we don’t know it yet, but Gartner’s latest strategy trends for 2017 states that distributed ledger technologies are going to be one of the key technology companies must focus on for the years to come.
Is it a useful technology for the industry you are working in? It depends!
I believe any decision-maker should take into account the following recommendations before implementing any type of blockchain. Sections below provide insights on whether or not, blockchain technology is a useful solution for any type of industry.
Assessing the Industry’s Needs
Before implementing a distributed network, assessing the needs of your industry and the problem your industry is trying to solve, is crucial. Knowing those needs makes it easier to assess whether blockchain technology will play a pivotal role in bringing efficiencies.
Although this technology has significant potentials to bring efficiencies into industries, its implementation is not an easy task. Blockchains are distributed networks, meaning that the state of the system is divided over more than one computer. A distributed system tends to be more scalable, but also more costly and complex than a centralized system because computers need to be in sync in real-time. This complexity needs to be taken into account when planning to build a distributed ledger. This is why any industry should have this in mind.
Collaborative Task Force
Initiating the implementation of a blockchain for your industry is useful only if the whole industry is involved in the project. The blockchain is supposed to be a business network where all the actors within the industry are connected to the same global and shared ledger.
Before getting involved in such a project, it is important to set up a task force made of various other actors from the same industry to work on one single blockchain for the whole industry to participate in. We want to avoid the scenario where blockchains are siloed to every actor with its standards and incompatibility.
Implement Standards inside the Industry
Developing standards accounts among one of the major issues experts in blockchain technology are working on. For this task, industries need to work with the government for the sake of regulation and with academia to make sure that standards take into account the security and integrity of data.
Currently, the distributed ledger landscape abounds of actors all working on separate projects in the hope to impose their technology. It is like the early days of the Internet where there were no standard protocols until the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) responsible for the transfer of packages between nodes on the network.
Best Fit
Once you have assembled the right task force to implement a blockchain solution for your industry, the next step is to identify the market that you are seeking to redesign as well as the most appropriate distributed ledger technology, whether it should be private or public.
Ideally, the market should be the one involving middlemen in the value chain.
Concerning the type of ledger, whether it should be permission or permissionless ledger, it depends on your needs. Permissioned ledgers are more appropriate for simple networks requiring speed and greater control over the network, while permissionless ledgers are suited for public networks that cannot be shut down easily.
Pilot Project
The latter recommendation deals with the evaluation of the functioning of the blockchain through the implementation of a pilot project. In other words, it consists in implementing the project on a smaller scale to test its efficiency and examine its impact afterward.
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