Blockchain is evolving quite rapidly for the past few couple of years and has set its empire all around the globe in just a decade. Thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto, a brain behind this amazing concept, whether a person or a group of people, to present a detailed written explanation about it. The technology, having a giant set of applications, has the potential to take the businesses into a new direction.
The concept of blockchain is simple and a bit confusing at the same time. I have seen many people talking about the wide opportunities in the field of Blockchain and still wondering about ‘What is Blockchain??’. So, here I’m going to explain the concept in very simple words-
Introduction to Blockchain
Blockchain technology was originated in the year 1991 by two scientists i.e. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta. Though, it was practically appeared over a decade ago, in the year 2009.
Blockchain is the literal translation of block-chain as per the English dictionary i.e. a chain of blocks. A block is a digital package of information containing data, cryptographic hash and timestamp. These blocks are further linked together in a linear chain using cryptography.
It is basically a decentralized and distributed ledger that stores all the records for economic transactions or data transfer. It is highly secure, anti-fraudulent and incorruptible technology because the blocks are decentralized, immutable and transparent.
With ‘No Transaction Cost’, blockchain carries the information in a very secure manner. As the data is distributed in the form of blocks around the net, one would have to hack the entire chain to manipulate a single record which is virtually impossible.
Top Emerging Trends of Blockchain??
After so many advents in 2019, the time has come for blockchain to explore its new angles, to take the businesses to the unexpected heights and to reach the very edges in the near future.
Let’s see what improvements we can expect from blockchain in 2020-
Federated Blockchain
The term ‘Federated Blockchain’, also known as Blockchain Consortium, can be considered as an upgraded version of private blockchains.
In Private Blockchains, you won’t be able to access the network unless you are authorized to it. Only a single entity has access over the network in the private blockchain. While in the case of Federated blockchain, instead of having the sole influence over the network by a highly trusted node, it can be operated by multiple pre-defined entities simultaneously.
Blockchain Consortium re-establishes the concept of a decentralized system which is ideal for many use cases. You can think of it like, the best way to ensure the security of the highly sensitive data is to divide it into multiple parts and place them separately.
Experts have predicted a solid rise in the use of federated blockchains in financial services, records security, insurance claims and several other sectors in the year 2020.
Blockchain-As-A-Service (BaaS)
Blockchain-as-a-Service, BaaS, is another trend of Blockchain that has been playing its part and contributing significantly to the blockchain development. BaaS allows the enterprises to use the cloud platforms to build their own blockchain apps, consequently ease the development process. BaaS companies are the link between the blockchain platforms and the enterprises utilizing blockchain. Currently, the major players in the field of blockchain-as-a-service are -
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- IBM Cloud
- Oracle Blockchain
- VMWare
Future of Stablecoins
Stablecoin is another category of cryptocurrencies designed to minimize price volatility and offer stability. Tether is the best example of a Stablecoin. The major advantage of Stablecoin over other cryptocurrencies is that its value does not get affected by the market’s conditions such as currency crash and remains stable in all circumstances.
Price stability is the key element missing in the cryptocurrencies hindering them to be used for day-to-day payments but with the introduction of Stablecoins, we can expect some growth in this scenario as well in the upcoming years. As of now, the Stablecoins are fresher in the market but have the potential to become one of the largest digital assets.
In some circumstances such as the medium of exchange (MoE) and store of value (SoV), the highly volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin face a great competition with Stablecoins. The future of Stablecoins is very bright due to its following qualities:
- Immunity from issues like currency crashes
- Streamline Recurring and P2P payments
- Fast Remittances and Affordable
- Stable Currency Exchanges
- Can be used as the Regular Currency
Blockchain with IoT (Internet of Things)
Blockchain & IoT, both are considered as the revolutionary technologies of this decade. While blockchain provides an encrypted & distributed filing system to keep the data records secure, the IoT interlinks the internet and the everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.
Combining them together brings a whole load of future-possibilities with it. Theoretically, the fusion can create a permanent and secure way of storing data by ‘Smart Devices’. These interconnect devices interact with the surroundings and make decisions on their own, without needing any human assistance.
At present, there are billions of IoT devices and this number is only going to be rocketed by 2020. As the IoT devices are interconnected so any failure in the IoT ecosystems causes the failure of multiple devices. In such scenarios, blockchain provides a major advantage by adding an encrypted layer of security that is virtually impossible to crash.
Blockchain with AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Integration of Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain has unlocked many gateways of future-possibilities towards thriving development solutions. The experts are speculating that in the coming years, the use of the combo of AI and Blockchain can alter the pace of businesses all around the world.
Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain, it may take days to confirm the transaction while transferring a bitcoin from one peer to another. The confirmation time delays further with the increase in the unprecedented bitcoin transactions as the size of a block is limited and the transactions exceeding that capacity get queued for confirmation.
In this scenario, Artificially Intelligent systems can help to bring down this cumulative process by diminishing the computing power required to confirm those transactions. Also, an AI system can improve the hashing algorithms that are used in the blockchain network to confirm any transaction. The amalgamation of both these technologies is just the beginning of a new era of technology.
Advancement in Applications of Blockchain by 2020
The exchange of Bitcoin cryptocurrencies is still considered illegal in some countries like China. But in order to administrate a very large quantity of data that governments have to deal with, they will also have to adopt blockchain by 2020. Also, we can expect utilization of the blockchain technology in various fields, such as-
- Finance & Economy: Many financial institutions are already taking benefit of blockchain and the graph is going to take a hike only. By 2020, most of the transactions are to be transferred to blockchain.
- Social Networking: Blockchain will ensure the safety of the user’s data on social networking websites getting hacked or leaked.
-
Voting System: The voting system can be advanced with the use of blockchain as the votes recorded on blockchain are next to impossible to hack or manipulate.
-
Content Streaming: Content streaming can become very easy with blockchain. Now, the writers, singers or other artists can place their piece of work directly on blockchain and it will be accessible to all the end-users connected to the blockchain.
Bottom Line:
Blockchain has far more potential beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies using Blockchain Technology. It’s just a beginning, I can foresee the future where each sector in the market is taking benefit from Blockchain technology in one way or another.
Stay connected with us for similar tech blogs.
Thanks!