What is blockchain? How has it evolved in the last decade? What are the key ways this will impact marketing and insights industries and the data supply chain? Can this technology improve trust in the digital ecosystem. We open the Blockchain Forum exploring basic definitions, promise and perils, real-world examples of blockchain already in action.
It’s a great day to be here, and it’s a great time to be thinking about Blockchain
Just up the street today is the the last day of a conference called Convergence.
Last year there were 2,500 people there, this year, over 8,000.
What is even more interesting is the kind of people who are there now: major corporations, major policy makers, as well as a Cambrian explosion of businesses building on the blockchain
Blockchain, the technology behind the bitcoin digital currency, is a decentralized public ledger of transactions that no one person or company owns or controls. Instead, every user can access the entire blockchain, and every transfer of funds from one account to another is recorded in a secure and verifiable form by using mathematical techniques borrowed from cryptography. With copies of the blockchain scattered all over the planet, it is considered to be effectively tamper-proof.
The challenges that bitcoin poses to law enforcement and international currency controls have been widely discussed. But the blockchain ledger has uses far beyond simple monetary transactions.
Like the Internet, the blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built. And like the Internet, it allows people to bypass traditional intermediaries in their dealings with each other, thereby lowering or even eliminating transaction costs.
By using the blockchain, individuals can exchange money or purchase insurance securely without a bank account, even across national borders—a feature that could be transformative for the two billion people in the world currently underserved by financial institutions. Blockchain technology lets strangers record simple, enforceable contracts without a lawyer. It makes it possible to sell real estate, event tickets, stocks and almost any other kind of property or right without a broker.
Because blockchain transactions are recorded using public and private keys—long strings of characters that are unreadable by humans—people can choose to remain anonymous while enabling third parties to verify that they shook, digitally, on an agreement. And not just people: an institution can use the blockchain to store public records and binding promises. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., for example, have shown how drug companies could be required to add detailed descriptions of their upcoming clinical drug trials to the blockchain. This would prevent the companies from later moving the goalposts if the trial did not pan out as anticipated, an all-too-common tactic. In London, mayoral candidate George Galloway has proposed putting the city’s annual budget on the blockchain ledger to foster collective auditing by citizens.
Perhaps the most encouraging benefit of blockchain technology is the incentive it creates for participants to work honestly where rules apply equally to all. Bitcoin did lead to some famous abuses in trading of contraband, and some nefarious applications of blockchain technology are probably inevitable. The technology doesn’t make theft impossible, just harder. But as an infrastructure that improves society’s public records repository and reinforces representative and participatory legal and governance systems, blockchain technology has the potential to enhance privacy, security and freedom of conveyance of data—which surely ranks up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blockchain-enhances-privacy-security-and-conveyance-of-data/
As early as 1981, inventors were attempting to solve the Internet’s problems of privacy, security, and inclusion with cryptography. No matter how they reengineered the process, there were always leaks because third parties were involved. Paying with credit cards over the Internet was insecure because users had to divulge too much personal data, and the transaction fees were too high for small payments. In 1998, Nick Szabo wrote a short paper entitled “The God Protocol.” Szabo mused about the creation of a be-all end-all technology protocol, one that designated God the trusted third party in the middle of all transactions. His point was powerful: Doing business on the Internet requires a leap of faith.
A decade later in 2008, the global financial industry crashed. Perhaps propitiously, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto–outlined a new protocol for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system using a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, called Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are different from traditional fiat currencies because they are not created or controlled by countries. This protocol established a set of rules—in the form of distributed computations—that ensured the integrity of the data exchanged among these billions of devices without going through a trusted third party. This seemingly subtle act set off a spark that has excited, terrified, or otherwise captured the imagination of the computing world and has spread like wildfire everywhere.
“They’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is it. This is the big breakthrough,’” said Marc Andreessen, the co-creator of the first commercial Web browser, Netscape, and a big investor in technology ventures. “This is the distributed trust network that the Internet always needed and never had.”
Today thoughtful people everywhere are trying to understand the implications of a protocol that enables mere mortals to manufacture trust through clever code. This has never happened before—trusted transactions directly between two or more parties, authenticated by mass collaboration and powered by collective self-interests, rather than by large corporations motivated by profit.
Jan – Oct 2009 – about 100 uses of blockchin – no price
Price signaled that they had managed to create scarcity in the digital realm – that is a prrof
We can fund
Bitcoin has all the properties of money that you need –
Fungibility, durability,portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability.
What happned was – we got something
Portability in the extreme
Value per unit of weight
Infinitely divisible
Scarce
We think about money usually serving as a unit of account and a store of value
Bitcoin adds a third function that doesn’t exist – a settlement layer, payment system is rolled into the money
They first money that is the unit of account with its own settlement layer which then dramatically reduces counterparty risk – this is a trustless system – and when the whole banking system is built on s
Allows information packets to be bundled up in immutable forms and sent through a distributed network – P2P and when that is done, the transaction is complete – no settlement period – no 3 days – just like hand to hand trading – it puts hard physical exchange into the digital world and that is the source of its value
The value comes from the payment system that is embedded in it
And then ultimately – it means that people can control their own wealth
the cowry shell currency is still in use
in the Solomon Islands. The shells are worked into strips of decorated cloth whose value reflects the time spent creating them.
On the Papua New Guinea island of East New Britain shell currency is still considered legal currency and can be exchanged for Kina.
Blockchain / Crypto wallet adoption still isn’t anywhere near internet adoption
Despite the noise – we are in very early days
Adoption curves – slow
“It would be naive not to acknowledge that there’s something very bubbly about what’s going on here with ICOs, but it’s also the easy answer. While bubbles are sometimes fueled by nothing more than pure speculative mania and greed, most are actually rooted in something very real. Railroads were that way. The internet was obviously like that; the excitement was built on a legitimately transformative innovation and, when the dust settled, that innovation ultimately met and exceeded the initial speculators’ wildest expectations.
I think the same is true with the blockchain — the underlying potential of the blockchain to touch and disrupt so many different aspects of our lives, on a global scale, is becoming apparent. Ideas spread fast these days and crowdfunding did a lot of the groundwork to make those ideas actionable. It can’t go up like this forever, but I’d say we have a long way to go before we hit the top."
It is about changing the nature of relationships between people and the organizing mechanisms we use.
Internet
Mobile
Blockchain 1.0 – the Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin)
Blockchain 2.0 – the Smartcontract (Ethereum)
2017 – every major country has a digital currency exchange
Tokens built on top of the Ethereum blockchain
Blockchain 3.0 – the Blockchain app (1400 and counting…)
And underpinning all this – constant, significant investment in the infrastructure making it easier and easier to build powerful tools quickly
More organic food sold in the world than is produced in the world
Food safety is key
The retailer is trusted buying agent
WalMart – 12,000 stores
10K+ suppliers
How to better manage food safety
1980s – 5K food skus – 50K food skus
Now – the endless shelf
The achillies heel is the lack of transparency
53 cases of documented cases of eColi – 35 people needed hospitalization – 5 people suffered from kidney fail
From Yuma, AZ – but got expanded
Romaine lettuce was pulled all over the country. CDC advised throw out all your romaine lettuce.
The food chain is anything but a chain – it is a messy, non-linear thing
Trying to create a transparent model for year
Walmart very linear
Lots of redundancy between system – getting into the
IBM food trust eliminates redundancy – a trust with many to many relationships – supplier gets in and can send info to who ever needs it
Key things they need: velocity, veracity, volume, transparency
1/3 of all food produced is wasted
HSBC claimed on Monday it had performed the world's first commercially viable trade finance transaction using blockchain technology.
The bank issued a letter of credit for U.S. food and agriculture firm Cargill. The trade finance transaction involved a bulk shipment of soybeans from Argentina to Malaysia. The letter of credit was issued from HSBC to Dutch lender ING.
Letters of credit are issued by one bank to another to guarantee that a payment will be received by a seller under a set of conditions. Traditionally this process would take a large amount of time, numerous paper records, and a lot of back and forth between the various parties involved. Blockchain technology promises to change that.
Blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin, enables transactions to be recorded across a vast network of computers. In the case of bitcoin, it records all of the transactions that happen on the network, creating a public ledger. Banks have taken the principles behind bitcoin's blockchain – such as the idea of decentralized ledger – and tried to apply it to processes that they are carrying out.
For this transaction, HSBC used a platform developed by blockchain start-up R3 called Corda. R3 works with a consortium of banks to come up with blockchain solutions to a variety of problems.
"The need for paper reconciliation is removed because all parties are linked on the platform and updates are instantaneous," Vivek Ramachandran, head of growth and innovation at HSBC, said in a statement. "The quick turnaround could mean unlocking liquidity for businesses."
HSBC and ING said that the exchange was performed in 24 hours, compared to the five-to-10 days it normally takes to complete such exchanges through a paper-based system.
Proponents of blockchain claim it has the potential to upend various industries. Sectors like trade finance, health care and insurance are thought of as good targets for the use the technology as they rely on long paper trails.
While there have been proof-of-concept transactions performed using blockchain technology, HSBC's was the first that could have commercial applications, a spokesman for the company told CNBC.
Banks have been pouring money into blockchain projects as it is thought that the technology will significantly disrupt the financial services.
While lenders are not fond of the original use case of blockchain — to underpin cryptocurrency transactions — many see practical use for the technology because of its ability to handle massive amounts of data within a transparent, immutable network.
You will want the systems to be easily, instantly verify data – best way to avoid being hacked and someone spoofing data…
Remember – Bitcoin appeared just a short while after this crash.
The crash was above all a crisis in confidence due to a lack of transparency.
GfK for one focuses on building data from the human being up.
MRI is still based on address-based sampling
But convenience panels – there is no such guarantee
SCRIPT: Q&A if time permits.
Possibility to gather information and engage without direct access to personal information.
Neutralizes the GDPR as identifiable information is removed from internal processes even in the event of merger or acquisition.
Easy-to-understand smart contracts can be applied at any process level.
Appointments of DPOs unnecessary but still recommended as a safeguard.
Connectivity to other blocks including transactions, engagements, awards, loyalty schemes and risk management.
Companies processing / holding personal data of EU residents must be able to isolate revenues associated with a person
GDBP protection: name, photo, email, social media, medical, IP address, etc
Companies no longer be able to utilize long illegible T&Cs full of legalese
Data Protection Officers (DPOs) must be appointed
Fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million for breach
Props: Incentive Ecosystem to Create & Share Content
Dock.io: Decentralized data exchange powered by Ethereum
Earn: Earn bitcoin for answering questions and completing tasks
Civic: On-demand, secure and low-cost access to identity verification
Augur: Incentive-based Prediction Markets
Algebraix Data: enable individuals to own and monetize their personal data
Shoppin: Shopin is the world's first decentralized shopper profile built on the blockchain.
Streamr: Streamr is creating an open source platform for the free and fair exchange of the world’s realtime data. Our blockchain-backed data Marketplace and powerful tools put your data back where it belongs – with you.
Stox: Stox is designed, first and foremost, as a practical framework for the mainstream prediction market.
Indorse: Indorse uses different methods to validate skills in a simple and objective way, for example: Decentralized consensus, where examples of skill are judged anonymously by random other users. Or A.I. based systems like chat bots for automated real-time validation.
Props: by younow – decentralized video ecosystem – rewards content creators and content consumers
Bohdi
Xchng: is being built as a base layer infrastructure for the digital advertising ecosystem and is designed to provide the benefits of blockchain to both buyers and sellers of digital advertising