Blockchain – Overhyped Or A Revolution In The Making?

Over the last decade, technology and innovation in India have come a long way. Among the very latest technologies, blockchain is set to disrupt various sectors of the economy including finance and manufacturing. Most people associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It is the technology that many are built on. However, blockchain is now referred to as a technology that will improve visibility, productivity, and security for business.

It is a protocol for exchanging value over the internet without an intermediary. Various Indian companies have already started providing financial services through blockchain technology, which has the potential of making industrial processes more efficient and transparent. So, what is blockchain and why is it important for business?

The first step towards understanding blockchain for business is to put aside any thoughts of cryptocurrencies. What we need to understand is why is it used in business, how is it used, how it simplifies work and the kind of potential it carries in the near future.

Invented to support Bitcoin, blockchain is a digital version of a classic ledger book. However, this new digital ledger has the capability to record and, most importantly secure, many different kinds of transactions. Blockchains can also hold rules about what kinds of transactions to accept and execute more rules in order to interact with other blockchains to form “smart contracts”.

The most important and disruptive feature of blockchain is that it’s a distributed ledger – multiple parties have a copy of the entire ledger. That means many kinds of business transactions can be decentralised, eliminating the cost, complexity and slowness of involving trusted intermediaries. Smart contracts provide new ways to automate complex, multi-party business transactions which reduce costs and increase the velocity of business. Blockchains are ideal for recording custody chains of goods like the fine art to prevent forgeries. The same is true for commodities to ensure sustainability for farmed products or conflict-free sourcing of raw materials.

A global realisation has emerged that blockchains can bring new efficiencies to commerce and profoundly change how the world conducts businesses and interacts with governments. Major IT providers like IBM, Microsoft and Infosys are collaborating with banks and other financial institutions in a race to develop commercial blockchain platforms.

The advent of blockchain is fueling a huge number of startup companies focussed on specific industries and consumer applications and governments are considering how blockchain can make tax reporting easier while reducing fraud.

The Concept – How Does This Technology Work?

The Blockchain technology is a powerful model for businesses. A blockchain is a ledger holding a list of transactions or events people want to track. What makes blockchains so appealing is that they are very secure and multiple parties can possess reliably synchronised copies. Blockchains are append-only data structures, which means that entries can only be added at the end of the list. Once added, entries are immutable and cannot be changed or deleted without corrupting the chain. Each entry in a blockchain is digitally signed by whoever creates the entry and the entire blockchain is also digitally signed to make tampering easily detectable.

Blockchains are a reliable and authoritative record of events, financial or otherwise. No single person or company controls access to the data because any participant can have their own copy. Transactions are guaranteed never to change and their source cannot be repudiated. A blockchain can consist of many replicas of the same data, which enables each party to have an up to date copy of the data. A new block appended to one replica is eventually copied to every other replica.

Along with financial transactions, blockchains can hold code which is triggered automatically when new blocks are added to the chain. This practice is called a smart contract because these code blocks are typically used to enforce rules or execute actions dictated by legal contracts.

For example, a rule to release payment when and only if all goods ordered have been signed as delivered can be encoded into the blockchain rather than relying on a user to monitor the order and send payment. Smart contracts can also be used to propagate data from one blockchain to another (beyond any replicas) thus creating a business ecosystem automated and secured by a collection of blockchains.

Different Types Of Blockchain

Blockchains can be classified based on the access procedures. Corroborating the accuracy of a blockchain without a central authority who holds responsibility (and also usually controls the single system of record) requires all replicas in the blockchain to formulate a consensus about which entries are valid or invalid. This is tricky to accomplish for widely distributed replicas and the consensus process can take a long time.

This is one reason why there are two kinds of blockchains – unpermissioned and permissioned.

Unpermissioned blockchains (aka permissionless) have no owner per se and entries can be created by anyone. Bitcoin used an unpermissioned blockchain because all participants have identical copies and every user can access the complete transaction history.  All replicas of an unpermissioned blockchain participate in the consensus process. Unpermissioned blockchains avoid censorship, where someone (in authority) decides which transactions to accept.

Permissioned blockchains typically have one or more owners and the consensus process can (optionally) be carried out by a smaller set of trusted agents – like Governments or banks. Also, only authorised parties can validate transactions and access to transactions can be restricted to certain participants.  Permissioned blockchains are very amenable to businesses because the consensus process is much faster and it’s easier to control who has access to sensitive data.

Are Businesses Ready?

More and more industries are adopting this technology in order to create a simplified, yet advanced procedure to undertake complicated tasks. Businesses today are becoming more interdependent not just for mission-critical tasks, but for services or products that carry legal liability.

For example, food providers who need proof that their suppliers are correctly processing ingredients. Maintenance and repair of critical types of machinery like airplanes and surgical equipment require staff with provable certifications. Home mortgages are touched by a large number of entities who, still to this day, do much of the work on paper forms.

When problems occur, for example, an E. coli breakout or a jet engine malfunction, it can take weeks for all parties to sort through their records to determine the root cause. Using a blockchain ledger provides a single, shared place where all constituents in a business chain record their actions. The record can be constantly checked by computers looking for problems –like the wrong part mistakenly installed during maintenance.

For manufacturers and distributors who ship across borders, simply delivering goods can generate dozens or hundreds of paper documents describing critical aspects of the process like routes taken, customs declarations, insurance riders, hazardous material documentation, sourcing documents, and certifications for carriers of special cargo. Digitising and electronically transmitting these documents is a commonplace practice. Critical shortcomings still remain, mainly stemming from Government demands for transparency and disclosure along with increasing complexity in the business itself.

Today, each company participating in a global logistics process likely keeps their own collection of the documents and records about a given shipment.  If any piece of documentation is amended or revoked by another party (or Government), it’s possible some participants won’t be notified and might wind up retaining outdated or even conflicting information.

Some companies mitigate this problem by using a collaboration tool like Microsoft SharePoint as a centralised document repository.  But access to that repository is often managed by one controlling entity who might not always protect everyone else’s interests. Centralized repositories are also expensive to maintain, subject to outages, and cumbersome to audit.

Blockchain is a great advancement for an industry like global shipping because a reliable, shared ledger simplifies recordkeeping. For example, a manufacturer can write the bill of lading—a document issued by a carrier which details a shipment of merchandise and gives the title of that shipment to a specified party – and contract terms to their copy of the blockchain.

Those entries are automatically replicated to the copies of the blockchain held by the freight and insurance carriers. The insurance company will write their certification of coverage back to the blockchain which triggers the carrier to schedule pickup and delivery. The carrier will copy the proof of delivery to the blockchain, which indicates to both the manufacturer and the insurance company that the customer has taken final possession.

A blockchain for overseeing a shipping operation improves efficiency for all parties involved. Because each party has a copy of the blockchain they can access locally, no one has to log in to anyone else’s system to enter data. And better yet, no one is relying on emails to keep paperwork in order. When an event occurs, all parties are notified automatically.  If a problem arises, everyone can review the same history which helps avoid liability issues. The security of a properly administered blockchain helps prevent entries created by unauthorised users or even authorised users from secretly altering data or repudiating a transaction.

Making Businesses Blockchain Ready

Even though it is well known as the technology driving Bitcoin, blockchain for commercial use is still very new. Much of the commercial uptake is still in the proof of concept (or startup) stage.

There are four key areas to consider when deciding if your business is ready for blockchain:

1. Are the standards good enough for your industry? Blockchain works as an application programming interface (API), which means standards need to be developed before there is widespread adoption. There are multiple groups working on standards, including Hyperledger and the Etherium Alliance Framework.  However, Gartner expects the industry to stabilize in 2018 with 75 commercial blockchain platforms before consolidating to about five platforms in 2019.
2. Is the technology robust enough yet? While blockchain is conceptually simple, the underlying technology encompasses some difficult technical challenges. This is especially true for the distributed capabilities of blockchain which allow each party to have their own writeable copy of the same historical record. An entry written to one replica will eventually arrive at the other replicas, which then have to collaborate and decide if the new entry is valid. This can be harder than it sounds to facilitate.
3. Is blockchain secure enough? Whilst in general, blockchain is considered a step forward for securing transactions, like most things in computing, security is not inherent. Blockchain uses public key encryption, hashing, and digital signatures, and other mechanisms which are well known, but not always administered correctly. Missteps in securing a blockchain, or simple bugs in the platforms, can cause serious disruption. For example, on November 6, 2017, $280M in assets were accidentally (and temporarily) frozen in a blockchain managed by Parity Technologies due to a bug in the underlying platform.
4. Will I be compliant? As is often the case for new technologies, there are policy issues to be worked out.  For example, in the Union Budget for 2018-19, the Finance Minister said: “…The Government does not consider crypto-currencies legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system. The Government will explore the use of blockchain technology proactively for ushering in the digital economy”. This implies that for now, India must forego the classical financial applications of cryptocurrencies. However, the Government spoke about working on innovative technologies for blockchain.

For many, the answer will be ‘not yet’. Ultimately, there is no doubt that blockchain is a disruptive technology which has the potential to transform industries. However, despite recent momentum, it is a technology that isn’t (yet) particularly easy to use for many businesses.

The platforms are still maturing and, like many other software platforms, they are subject to bugs and operational errors. The potential risks of being a blockchain pioneer are higher than other technology adoption waves because blockchains typically apply to monetary transactions as well as transactions carrying fiduciary responsibilities.

However, blockchain technology is likely to be intrinsically embedded within business processes in years to come. Those businesses that have technology with flexible deployment options and those with modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in place, will be in a better position to take advantage of blockchain technology and adapt faster.

So, is blockchain right for your business? Assuming you agree that it is a technology that can improve visibility, productivity and security for businesses, then maybe the answer is yes. Any technology that provides components needed to achieve the desired business growth is worth paying attention to, in my view. Is it right for your business in 2018? I’d have to say that the chances are unlikely. So blockchain, in some form appears to be in everyone’s future, even if it’s not just yet.