Your Definitive Guide To Blockchain For Business

Why Blockchain

• The business value-add of Blockchain will grow to slightly more than $176 billion by 2025, and then it will exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030 – Gartner
• Blockchain is the future of Business – IBM
• Next Big Thing After Internet
• Blockchain will revolutionize transactions like Internet did for information
• Dubai Govt plans to go paperless by 2020 by shifting all government services to Blockchain – Dubai Blockchain Strategy
• “Expectations of at least 10% of the global GDP being stored on Blockchain platforms by 2025”  – World Economic Forum

The Need for Blockchain

• Events in 2008 exposed flaws of banking system
• Slow settlement time
• Fraud, cyberattacks – compromise of central authority will risk all participants
• Duplication lead to errors

Transactions volume growing exponentially

• E-Commerce Growth
• Online Banking
• In App purchases
• Increased Mobility

About to Explode with IoT

• Smart Objects
• Referigerators that buy groceries
• Autonomous Cars that stop by at fuel station

Magnify inherent issues like complexities, vulnerabilities, inefficiencies and cost.

Fundamentals of Blockchain

• Blockchain is a secure, shared, distributed ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network.
• An asset can be tangible — a house, a car, cash, land — or intangible like intellectual property, such as patents, copyrights, or branding.
• Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a Blockchain network, reducing risk and cutting costs for all involved.

What is Blockchain?

Three Principle Technologies Combine to Create Blockchain

• Not new but their orchestration and application
• Cryptography
• Distributed P2P Network that hosts a shared ledger
• Incentive to service the network’s txns, record keeping  and security

Key Characteristics of Blockchain

• Consensus: For a transaction to be valid, all participants must agree on its validity
• Provenance: Participants know where the asset came from and how its ownership has changed over time.
• Immutability: No participant can tamper with a transaction after it’s been recorded to the ledger. If a transaction is in error, a new transaction must be used to reverse the error, and both transactions are then visible.
• Finality: A single, shared ledger provides one place to go to determine the ownership of an asset or the completion of a transaction.

Participants and Roles

Blockchain Network Participants and their Roles

• User
• Regulator
• Developer
• Network Operator
• Traditional processing platforms
• Traditional Data sources
• Certificate Authority

Blockchain Checklist

• Does my business network need to manage contractual relationships?
• Do we need to track transactions that involve more than two parties?
• Is the current system overly complex or costly, possibly due to the need for intermediaries or a central point of control?
• Can the network benefit from increased trust, transparency, and accountability in recordkeeping?
• Is the current system prone to errors due to manual processes or duplication of effort?
• Is the current transaction system vulnerable to fraud, cyber-attack, and human error?

What is Bitcoin?

• Cryptocurrency
• Public Blockchain Network
• Application over Blockchain
• Email over Internet

o   – An unregulated shadow-currency

o   – The first blockchain application

o   – Resource intensive

• Blockchain underpins Bitcoin

o   Blockchain for business differs in key areas:

o   Identity over anonymity

o   Selective endorsement over proof of work

o   Assets over cryptocurrency

Challenges & Weaknesses in Blockchain for Businesses

• Double Spend Problem
• 51% Attack
• Democratic Nature – The majority of a crowd is always right
• Code is Law
• All executions are final, all transactions are immutable.
• Lack of consumer protection
• OpenBazaar P2P uses partial moderator
• Scaling
• Bitcoin split
• Network size, speed, cost
• New Technology

Blockchain as a Service (BAAS)

• IBM Blockchain
• Premier Member behind Hyperledger Project
• IBM Bluemix container hosting
• IBM Blockchain platform
• Microsoft Azure Blockchain
• Founding member of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
• Offers both Hyperledger and Ethereum cloud hosting available
• Vision is to become chain agnostic middleware