In this technological era, the speed of innovation is at its best. Each year, new technologies are emerging and proving to be the groundbreaking solutions to our problems. And blockchain is one of those emerging technologies that has the potential to change the digital world, the way we do business, and transactions.
The success of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has proven the potential of what blockchain can bring to the world. In this paper, I share my thoughts on what the future of blockchain looks like in coming years.
If you’re new to blockchain, here is an article that explains blockchain in simple terms: What is Blockchain.
Several industries, including financial institutes, banking, healthcare, supply chain, manufacturing, and engineering are actively involved in the development of blockchains.
Why blockchain now?
The blockchain concept is not new. It was first introduced by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991 as “a cryptographically secured chain of blocks,” which means a chain or blocks that are linked and cryptographically secured. Each block is a combination of three items; a hash pointer to the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, blockchains are secure and difficult to modify.
Here is a list of top 10 key reasons why blockchain is gaining momentum.
- Device connectivity is everywhere
- Increased digital processing power
- Need of speed of transactions and approval processes
- Important information about security, data ownership, and misuse of data
- Rapid growth in cybercrimes
- Missing trust in corporations storing personal and private information
- Corrupt banks, financial organizations, and governments
- Missing traceability in supply chain and logistics, medicine, and documents
- Untrusted cross border payments and authenticity
- Rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency
Blockchain, by design, requires an internet connection and requires higher processing power than normal data computing. It is all because of redundancy of data, distributed storage, and cryptography. Data encryption and decryption is a costly affair by nature. Today, computers have more processing power thanks to modern processors developed by NVIDIA.
Cybercrime has grown multifold in the past few years. The hacking of a billion-plus Yahoo accounts, the Equifax data breach, and increased ransomware damages are just a few incidents. As a matter of fact, over one million cyber threats are released every day and by 2020, over 200 billion IoT devices will need security. Today, Cyber Security is one of the biggest challenges for CEOs.
The largest problem dealing with cross border payments is speed of transactions. Blockchain and cryptocurrency makes cross border payments hassle free, almost at zero cost, and in no time. Authenticity and transparency is another major challenge dealing with cross border entities. Blockchain ensures authenticity to the contracts, documents, and any kind of data.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are one of the biggest reasons for the increasing popularity of blockchain. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency created by an anonymous person called Satoshi Nakamoto, who used blockchain technology to create and distribute secure digital currency.
Today, blockchain is “the blockchain” because of Bitcoin. And if you look at the reason why Bitcoin was created, there is one word that can describe it better than anything else, i.e., TRUST. Bitcoin was created to overcome the mistrust and non-transparency of financial institutions.
Blockchain programming languages
Blockchain technology is a platform and language agnostic technology. You can use pretty much any major programming language to write blockchains.
Blockchain technology is a combination of multiple technologies, including distributed ledger technology (DLT), cryptography, distributed ledger, peer to peer network, and consensus mechanism.
The good news is, developers can write these technologies using any popular programming language. Some of the most popular blockchain programming languages are Java, C++, Go, Python, PHP, and C#.
In blockchain technology, cryptographically is used primarily for two reasons – to secure user identity and encrypt data to make it immutable and incorruptible.
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) also known as a distributed ledger or a shared ledger is a way to stored data on a peer-to-peer distributed networks. The data is updated and synchronized using a consensus algorithm as a part of the technology. Blockchain technology is somewhat based on the distributed ledger technology.
You also need experience with low-level coding to interact with data and network.
Blockchain industry state
Blockchain is one of the fastest in-demand technologies of today. Thanks to the rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, blockchain will become one of the essential components of Web 3.0.
Today, 70% of corporations are actively building a proof of concept to active development on blockchain projects. Some companies have already implemented DLT-based solutions. According to a report published recently, banks are expected to increase their budget by 67% for the coming year for blockchain development.
Major Fortune 500 companies are actively involved in analyzing and implementation of blockchain technology. Some of the top companies in the list are Microsoft, Google, IBM, Walmart, Samsung, Bank of America, Amazon, and Disney.
More than 250 major banks and financial institutions are also actively pursuing implementation of blockchain technology. Some of the top banks includes Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and UBS.
There are many new developments in the following areas,
- SEC is looking into a solution related to cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and token distributions
- New crypto stock exchanges are being launched
- Traditional financial exchanges are looking into bringing crypto on board and also working on DLT to use for their own products
- Cybersecurity concerns are helping blockchain adoption
- Digital payments using crypto are growing
- Business are using blockchain to promote trust, transparency, and security
- The manufacturing industry is using blockchain for asset tracking, and supply chain.
- Insurance is using for claims, payments, and fraud detection.
- The financial industry is using it for loans, bonds, and trading.
- Legal industry will use it for documents and contracts.
- Healthcare is using it for personal records and compliance purposes.
- Government is using it for licenses, benefits, and contracts.
- Education is using it for verification of certificates, and qualifications.
- Gig economy can use it for temp contracts and payments, tracking and scheduling and so on.
- Blockchain will bring trust and transparency to world trade and cross border payments. Several blockchain projects are being developed by the trading and supply chain industry.
Blockchain Jobs
LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, and the JumpstartBlockchain website have seen a rapid jump in the listing of blockchain jobs. Blockchain experts and developers are in-demand and this demand will grow each year.
Blockchain technology is expected to add $2.3 billion by 2020 and the number will grow to $7.5 billion by 2024.
Conclusion
The future of blockchain technology is bright. Blockchain will become a major component of Web 3.0 and will be used to build systems that require trust, transparency, and accountability.