According to global research and consulting company Gartner (Gartner) research estimates that by 2030, the scale of new business that blockchain can create will be as high as 3.1 trillion US dollars, half of which will be through 2025. application to achieve.
In this article, we will use the viewpoints in the book The Real Business Opportunities of Blockchain to divide the development of blockchain into several different stages.
Why do we have to write an article specifically to analyze the development stage of the blockchain?
The core purpose is to help the current blockchain practitioners or those who want to enter the blockchain industry, or friends who hope to improve the development of their industry with the help of blockchain technology, to be able to sort out the current blockchain technology. What stage is it, what stage of development it will go through in the future, and where it will eventually go in the future.
There is a popular saying on the Internet called Believe and see, not see and believe. The first half of the sentence is the world view, and the second half is the world view. There must be a difference in the realm of the two. metaphysical philosophical differences. The development path of the blockchain is not clueless. As long as we try our best to summarize the laws of technological development and have a certain logical reasoning ability, it is actually not difficult to speculate on the possibility of the future development of the blockchain.
Next, we will draw on the viewpoints of the book The Real Business Opportunities of Blockchain published by David Furlong and Christopher Ujuro, two vice presidents of Gartner, to illustrate several stages of blockchain development. Stage, to point out the direction for everyone, clarify the clues, and help everyone think about what kind of things can be done with the help of blockchain technology in the industry track in the future, and what role they can play.
Before explaining these stages, we still have to take the trouble to explain the five core elements of the development of blockchain technology. Why we need to explain these five elements is because the combination and use of these elements will determine the development of blockchain technology. Blockchain development is at various stages.
5 core elements of blockchain development
1. Distributed
The participants of the blockchain are independent individuals in the real world, but in the blockchain they are connected through the network. Each participant who manages a complete node needs to maintain a complete copy of the ledger, which will be in Update when new transactions occur. More specifically, a node is a computer owned or used by a participant that operates a consensus algorithm. All participants can view the entire contents of the ledger, but have no right to change it, unless pre-established rules are followed.
2. Encryption
Blockchains use technologies such as public or private keys to record data in blocks in a secure, semi-anonymous (participants use pseudonyms) manner. Participants control their identities and other information, sharing only necessary information in transactions.
3. Cannot be tampered with
Records of completed transactions are cryptographically signed, time-stamped, and added to the ledger in chronological order. Transaction records can only be corrupted or otherwise changed if participants agree, an agreement known as a fork.
4. Tokenization
Transactions and other interactions on the blockchain involve the secure exchange of values, which are presented in the form of tokens. Tokens are not only digital assets issued based on blockchain technology, but also encrypted A negotiable digital certificate of rights and interests, referred to as a pass. Tokens are created for multiple purposes by making digital markets more efficient. Tokens can be used to represent physical assets in digital form, can be used as a reward mechanism to motivate network participants, and can also be used to create and proudly exchange new forms of value. In addition, the token also allows individual and corporate participants in the blockchain to control their own data.
5. Decentralization
It is multiple computers in the distributed network, or multiple nodes, that maintain network information and network operation rules. In concrete practice, decentralization means that there is no single entity that controls all computers and information, or that makes the rules. Each node maintains the same encrypted ledger and keeps records in the network. A consensus mechanism run by all full nodes is responsible for the verification and approval of transactions. This decentralized, consensus-driven system architecture means that organizational governance by a central authority is no longer necessary, while also preventing fraud and malicious transactions.
Together, the five elements can support the secure interaction of two or more unknown participants in a digital environment. In principle, the five elements are indispensable. If one or several of them are missing, the true maximum value of the blockchain will be limited, or even tasteless.
But the current situation is that many opinions in the industry do not think so, but the fact is that whether it is domestic or foreign, the promotion of policies and the needs of lighting projects have supported many projects supported by pseudo-blockchain, and the development of the entire industry Still in the early stages of fishing in troubled waters with many opportunistic players. Many centralized players use the blockchain as a database technology, trying to define the market in ways that are ambiguous or in their favor.
Obviously, the blockchain is not a database. Although many alliance chain technical teams interpret it as a kind of database for the convenience of everyone to understand, there are still many differences between the two; for example, unlike the database, the blockchain is not a general information In addition, the blockchain cannot be tampered with, and the database supports the reading, writing, deletion or modification of information; more importantly, although the database can be distributed to multiple participants, there is a single central administrator , while in the blockchain, management is achieved through consensus.
It is undeniable that todays blockchain is still in the early stage of application, and the current blockchain solution only uses a few of the five major elements, and the overall development environment (technical environment, legal environment, etc.) When allowed, the synergy of the five elements of the blockchain will surely unleash its full potential and support a series of new digital transactions to facilitate greater value flows.
3 Stages of Blockchain Development
Based on the combination and development background of several elements, in the book The Real Business Opportunities of Blockchain, David and Christopher of Gartner Company divided the development process of blockchain technology into three stages. The purpose of presenting these stages is to let everyone see the way forward in the fog, find a firm future, and achieve the state of believe, then see.
Phase 1: Blockchain Innovation Solutions
The first phase of blockchain development began in 2012, during which business leaders explored the technology through proof-of-concept pilot projects. This phase employs three of the five elements, distributed, encrypted, and immutable, and these solutions are often aimed at redesigning existing manual processes in a particular organization or industry. Typical cases include the food tracking and traceability solution developed by Alibaba, which is used to track dairy products from Australia and New Zealand, and wine from all over the world. At the same time, it also includes the solution of Tradelens of Maersk, the leader of transnational shipping and logistics, which we analyzed a few days ago. From Survival with Broken Arms to Ride the World, How Does Shipping Giant Maersk Use Blockchain Technology to Turn the Tide? Everyone can take a look.
We would like to explain why the solutions at this stage only focus on these three elements (distributed, encrypted, and non-tamperable). The readiness to accommodate all elements, the differing internal and external feasibility of each element in implementation, regulatory issues, and the tendency of businesses to deal with a limited but credible number of players, etc.
Gartners analysis predicts that the major technical challenges required for the innovative solutions phase of blockchain will be resolved by 2025.
The biggest challenge comes not from technology, but from organizational structure. We all know that organizations must embrace a decentralized structure if they want blockchain solutions to help beyond efficiency improvements and process optimization. This is the most difficult of the five elements to implement. Decentralization means that every full node in the blockchain network has equal voting rights to determine whether participants and transactions are valid, and each node has access and Permission to view account books. Many business leaders distrust the concept of full transparency (even when data is encrypted) because it means letting code execute business decisions without full control.
At present, blockchain technology is immature, and the conservatism within many organizations is still obvious, and intermediaries and equipment providers who use centralized technology and processes to earn income in the market are also hyping the possible concerns that it may bring .
Therefore, in a centralized environment, blockchain innovation solutions, as a transitional stage of blockchain development, can also create a broad market space. At present, almost all alliance chain solutions on the market are blockchain innovations. solution. We often use specific words to describe these solutions, such as closed, enterprise-class, proprietary and so on. Some solutions also introduce the element design of the pass, but the scope of use of the pass is still very limited. Since the system is centralized, its pass is difficult to trade outside the system.
The second stage: a complete blockchain solution
Compared with blockchain innovative solutions, the most important upgrade of blockchain complete solutions is the token that runs based on smart contracts in a decentralized environment. Tokenization technology can not only create new assets, but also represent illiquid assets in an autonomously tradable form. Based on consensus, the decentralized mechanism is responsible for verifying potentially untrustworthy users, assets and transactions, ensuring that all centralized participants cannot grasp or control the underlying logic of asset transactions.
The complete solution of the blockchain integrates the five elements of distribution, encryption, non-tampering, certification and decentralization, creating a new form of value transactions, breaking the existing form of monopoly, and realizing the blockchain The entire value proposition.
Although the expectation of a complete blockchain solution cannot be realized in the short term, with the development of blockchain technology and changes and attempts at organizational concepts, organizations will explore how to further promote decentralization during operations.
As far as we know, there are only a handful of large enterprises or government departments that are developing complete blockchain solutions, but many entrepreneurial teams have already begun to try this, and some of them have shown a good momentum of development in recent years , we can foresee that after 2025, they will develop to a larger scale and create a new era benchmark.
Phase 3: Blockchain Enhanced Solutions
The enhanced solution of the blockchain is what people really expect for the blockchain to change the world, but such expectations are not the status quo, and it will take a long time for development. In order to be more authoritative and professional, we are worried that our description of technological development will be inaccurate and desecrate an era, so our explanation of this stage comes from the book The Real Business Opportunities of Blockchain Excerpt from the original text:
“Sometime after 2025, IoT, AI, and decentralized self-sovereign identity solutions will converge and become more deeply integrated into blockchain networks, and the resulting blockchain-enhanced solutions will expand Tokenizable and exchangeable value types and incorporated into smart contracts. Therefore, this solution supports more transactions with smaller amounts than traditional mechanisms. Ultimately, blockchain-enhanced solutions will be available in multiple autonomous enables small transactions between computerized objects without human intervention. This ability will foster new markets for monetizing previously illiquid or illiquid assets, such as intellectual property, data, physical objects, and other large-scale or high value asset.
Decentralized self-sovereign identity solutions will bring more help to blockchain-enhanced networks. This technology helps participants to protect villain data in digital wallets or other storage mechanisms, and share data according to corresponding rules. (Participants can also tokenize the personal data they want to share with third parties, thereby selectively itemizing data on a blockchain-ready solution.) Combined with artificial intelligence, self-sovereign identity can be dynamically enforced Rules preset by data owners and automatically request consent from data owners before data can be shared and used. After agreeing to share their data, the owner can also track and record who has viewed and used the data. This transparency means that individuals can more widely use data to monetize, and realize accountability traceability in the process of data use, thereby protecting personal privacy.
As new forms of value and blockchain-enhanced solutions emerge, businesses will also use decentralized operating structures to drive business model innovation. From a technical point of view, organizations can entrust economic decision-making power to things that act autonomously according to blockchain smart contracts, thereby removing people from transactions. self-governing organization.
The blockchain-enhanced solution stage is our real expectation for the development of blockchain technology, but such a stage requires sufficient technical support and advanced and open organizational concepts. Technology development has passed the darkest stage of capital bubble hype, and technology development and application landing have become the consensus of the market. We no longer need to hold an attitude of suspicion or even hatred to understand the actual role of this technology. We are no longer entangled in whether or not tokenization is necessary to be a blockchain. The core demarcation point of blockchain technology is not the token, but the element of decentralization, which is the biggest problem in its development process. Obstacle points are also demarcation points.
This article intends to clarify the development stage of blockchain for everyone. Although the enhanced solution of blockchain is very worth looking forward to, we still have to return to the essence. In essence, our different solutions are suitable for different situations and different subjects. The stage of blockchain development is not necessarily the best only the last stage, just as our Internet has developed to today from being readable From Web 1.0 to interactive Web 2.0, and then to the stage of exploring Web 3.0, there are still many Web 1.0 projects (such as search engines) playing an important role, and the focus is that each can solve different problems.
In addition, what the blockchain brings is a new way of thinking, new solutions, new ways of collaboration, and new business models, but the blockchain is not a panacea. Whether the decentralization brought about by the blockchain and the traditional centralized mechanism is better or worse cannot be decided. In our opinion, it is more likely that the two coexist and appear in a way of different degrees of decentralization between centralization and decentralization.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin has hit a record high, encrypted digital exchanges in various countries are gradually issuing legalization licenses, and central banks’ digital currencies are also being released in full swing. It seems that the future has come.
As we said at the beginning of the article, no matter how we look at the existence of the blockchain, it has already arrived, and now is the time we have to face it, and hope that our existence and writing can help everyone see the blockchain more clearly. The future of blockchain.
