Every July Gartner publishes the Hype Curve of Emerging Technologies. I can't wait to see the one for 2018. It puts things in perspective and you can see how the time frames for adoption of innovative technologies have changed over the past year.
Due to exponential growth of Crypto Currency BitCoin in 2017, there has been a deep interest in its underlying technology called Blockchain. Blockchain is basically a distributed ledger of transactions simultaneously recorded by all the parties contributing to the Blochchain. Typically, each transaction is a hash of the previous transaction. Similarly, the next transaction will be a hash of the current transaction. The next to the next transaction will be a hash of the next transaction and so on. All the transactions are stored on a number of computers participating in the Blockchain. Each computer has the same copy of the blockchain. This way an attempt to change any transaction will modify the whole blockchain and since all the computers participating in the blockchain have the original copy of the ledger, any 'tampering' with the transactions is visible to everyone!
It is a simple technology with many possible applications especially in business involving transactions such as banking, betting, funding, voting, rewards programs, equity exchanges etc. Contracts are also executed with transactions so the concept of smart contracts is also being introduced which can utilize agreed SLAs to execute transactions, using Blockchain technology.
An interesting concept of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) has exploded in the global markets. Anyone can build and offer a digital coin and then start offering services for the same. This, eventually, results in creating some 'value' for the digital coin. And once these coins are traded on the newly created bit exchanges, they become trading vehicles.
A corporation can offer digital coins as its 'currency' and then start providing services to its customers by accepting these coins. In future, the mergers and partnerships can be formed using blockchain based smart contracts by one corporation accepting digital coins (blockchain based digital currency) of its partner and vice versa - imagine WalMart does an ICO and starts offering 'MartCoins' and then Ebay says they accept MartCoins - See how the game will change in future!
What if countries develop their own national digital currencies and then major commodities are traded in those digital currencies - that will basically kill the reign of fiat currencies ($, Euro, whatever) and turn the whole system upside down. Being based on blockchain it will be distributed and auditable at any time which will reduce corruption and fraud etc etc. I agree, this usecase is a bit too much of a stretch and probably won't happen soon, not in the near future at least...
What *can* happen in the next 5 to 10 years is that the Blockchain technology will disrupt major transactions based systems. Interesting Apps will be developed which will transform the traditional transactions to a much more secure and audit-able technology. An example of such an App is the 50/50 Draw DApp (Distributed App) being developed by a Canadian startup eXeBlock. It will use distribute Blockchain technology to conduct 50/50 draws for charities - very interesting!
Tread with caution though. Hype has been created about blockchain technology and companies are changing their names to include the keyword block in their names to attract investors while having no underlying capabilities. I looked at the Gartner Hype Charts going all the way back to 2012 and interestingly the Blockchain did not appear on them until 2016 (while the technology has been in use for over a decade e.g. BitCoin). Both the 2016 and 2017 Gartner Hype Charts show it within the Peak of Inflated Expectations era with 5 to 10 years to the Plateau of Productivity.
The search trend for the keyword Blockchain has gone up exponentially in 2017 but note the turbulence it has experienced just at the beginning of 2018 - that will make 2018 a very interesting year for this technology
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The author is a Senior Business Solutions Architect with AT&T Global Services. He is a Professional Engineer with APEGA, holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore and a Master’s degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal. His interests include reading, writing, photography, painting, promoting human development using Information Technology, applied research, innovation, leadership, investing and religion. He lives in Calgary, Canada and can be reached at uwaqar@gmail.com
