Blockchain applications are suitable across industries due to their security, immutability and decentralised properties. This means the next wave of new technology jobs would come from blockchain.
Blockchain is hot news these days. There was a time, in the not so distant past, when working-age people were going after analytics courses. People’s inboxes were flooded by emails from sundry institutes and organisations offering analytics courses, degrees and diplomas.
Everybody wanted to get into analytics. While the availability of data is huge and the requirement to analyse and make sense of it is still there, analytics doesn’t seem to be so popular now. Blockchain seems to be the next analytics.
As per Yli-Huumo etal, the idea of Blockchain started in 2008 (Yli-Huumo, Ko, Choi etal, 2016). Blockchain is defined, as the name suggests, as a chain of blocks of information. This is stored in a database. Merriam Webster defines blockchain as “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.”
Blockchain is also defined as “a digital ledger of economic transactions that is fully public, continually updated by countless users, and considered by many impossible to corrupt.” (Carlozo, 2017). The use of cryptography makes the blockchain transactions trustworthy and secure (Holbl, Kompara etal). All cryptocurrencies including bitcoin have the blockchain technology at its base.
The above properties of blockchain make it applicable across industries. As usual, banking was the first industry to make use of blockchain technology. The banking industry has always been the first mover when it comes to the latest technology. Barclays and UBS are trying the blockchain technology to speed up settlement and their other back-office functions.
This could lead to an annual saving of $ 20 billion in costs. Middlemen could be eliminated just like that. Payment collection and automation of digital invoices are other applications in the banking industry. Crowdz is a B2B startup that is blockchain-based.
Barclays bank has invested in Crowdz in May 2019. JPM Coin is being launched by JP Morgan to enable transactions between one institute and the other. JPM Coin is based on blockchain technology.
Blockchain technology is slated to revolutionise messaging. It is going to be used to build an improved and secure communication infrastructure. The security expectations would be uniform across platforms. Currently, different platforms have different protocols which might compromise security.
SuchApp is working at creating a “5G ecosphere” using blockchain. Commercial transactions would also be possible on SuchApp. Then there is BlockMesh. This will work outside the range of cellular towers. It will work on the concept of peer to peer networking.
Telegram Open Network (TON) is being developed by the popular social networking app Telegram. They are planning to get into censor less browsing, payments and file storage. Other chat platforms like Kik are also raising money via Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
