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This is the first of several articles about the RChain project, an innovative blockchain platform currently being developed in Seattle by a team led by Lucius Gregory ("Greg") Meredith, a mathematician and computer scientist whose work over the years centered around mobile process calculi and their applications to a broad scope of practical problems - from consensus algorithms to modeling biochemical processes in the human body.

RChain is a blockchain platform, which means that it is a distributed system used to record and relay transactions under network consensus. Existing blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, are commonly used to create decentralized applications with an economic component. Ethereum introduced and developed a framework for automated economic interactions between multiple parties usually termed smart contracts. RChain aims to achieve a similar goal: to create a global platform for decentralized economic applications using its own smart contract language, Rholang.

RChain is based on a formal mathematical framework called ρ-calculus. This blog post will explain what this framework is, where it fits with blockchain technology, and briefly outline other innovations behind RChain. The primary audience for this post is technical. In order to understand some concepts presented here you are expected to be familiar with such terms as consensus protocol, smart contract language, concurrency, process, and others, which I will use without providing detailed explanations. This series is being written as an early introduction to RChain for developers and will dive deeply into specialized topics that may be too in-depth for general audiences.

A mobile process calculus is a formal way to model an environment that consists of a number of concurrent processes that engage in communication with each other. Examples of such environments can be found everywhere, both in nature and in computer science. For example, we can look at every car and driver on the road as an independent process, with communication established through speed, turn-signals, and horns. Reducing the scale, we notice that every part of the car is also a concurrent process, where each mechanical part communicates with certain others by applying pressure and each electrical part communicates by producing electrical signal and current. The human body is also made up of a vast number of concurrent processes, cells, which communicate through a complex medley of chemical, electrical and mechanical signals. We can continue these illustrations, but the picture is clear: once you look at the world as a combination of concurrently proceeding processes, you see them everywhere.

But the model presented by the mobile process calculus doesn't stop there. It is further augmented by the fact that configuration of the network and coordination between processes may itself be seen as a process, which is changing over time. In mobile process calculus therefore, we see a mechanism that describes and accounts for such fluidity.

The applicability of mobile process models to blockchain is easy to see. A blockchain platform, such as Ethereum, operates by running a vast number of concurrent processes in several different contexts. On one hand, each of the nodes on the network is a process. Every such node has threads that receive, resend and analyze transactions as they happen.

More importantly, however, is the fact that a smart-contract environment is inherently a mobile process environment, where each party to the interaction encoded in the smart contract is itself a process. These processes are of a special kind, because they do not operate continuously, but rather interact with the network as-needed. So for example, a multi-signature cryptocurrency wallet is a process which receives signed messages and occasionally performs a funds transfer to the destination address. Each of the parties to such contract sends signed messages to the wallet. From the perspective of the wallet, people that interact with it look like other processes.

A creation or a dissolution of a smart contract is an act of reconfiguration of a part of the mobile process network. It is governed by its own rules that are carried out by yet another set of processes that act to create or dissolve a contract under these rules.

I hope that what I have shown so far illustrates the power and versatility of this approach. Mobile processes calculi (of which there are several variations) are elegant models for programming both real-world systems and digital environments such as blockchain networks and smart contracts.

This is the primary insight behind the RChain project. Greg has spent many years developing a particularly powerful variation of a mobile process calculus called ρ-calculus (pronounced Rho-calculus), which closes the loop on several issues that are outstanding in a more traditional framework, π-calculus.

One of the features that ρ-calculus adds to π-calculus is reflexivity. In fact, Rho stands for reflexive higher order, which is to say that ρ-calculus supports processes referring to themselves and the code that comprises them. As we will see in subsequent chapters of this series, this feature proves to be particularly important for blockchain programming. It allows for an unprecedented level of automated analysis of smart contract code to definitively confirm that it adheres to specification and respects constraints set upon it by its creators. It also makes available the concept of namespaces, which are collections of communication channels with associated rules. Namespaces, in conjunction with automated analysis, allow a developer to verify that access to certain features of a smart contract is appropriately restricted, preventing such egregious security holes as the one recently discovered in the Parity multi-signature wallet. These are just some advances made possible by ρ-calculus, but there are also others that we will illustrate in subsequent chapters.

RChain is a blockchain framework fundamentally predicated on these ideas. Its core feature is its programming language, Rholang, which makes ρ-calculus concepts available to programmers as language constructs. Rholang is being developed both as a smart contract language and as a high-performance programming language that will eventually be used to implement the low-level functionality of the blockchain nodes themselves.

Rholang's performance expectation comes from several sources. First, it is a highly concurrent programming language (obviously, since concurrency is its primary feature). As such it allows one to develop highly parallelizable software, whose speed of execution can be increased significantly by adding computing resources to the network. Secondly, it can be efficiently analyzed by automated tools that will eventually become an integral part of its compiler framework. As part of such analysis the compiler may automatically identify bottlenecks, perform optimizations, and even execute certain parts of your code in a vectorized fashion on your GPU(s).

In addition to performance Rholang offers significant guarantees of safety and determinism when it comes to such aspects of concurrent programming as deadlocks and race conditions. For example, it can find race conditions in your smart contract code (at compile time!) and ensure that all nodes on the network achieve consensus at the race-point only, which is expected to significantly reduce the amount of information that is required to flow through the blockchain network.

RChain's innovative vision, however, doesn't stop with Rholang. Another area of improvement as compared to existing blockchain networks is its resource-economics model (which I call a meta-resource model in one of my earlier posts). This model defines the way RChain accounts for the economics of carrying out blockchain transactions. A resource-economics model currently known to many is Ethereum's gas, which is used to pay for smart contract computations performed under consensus. Ethereum's gas, however, only accounts for the computing power required to run a smart contract, but leaves other node-related expenses uncompensated. Those are: disk storage, memory, and network utilization. A truly scalable blockchain requires that these expenses be properly accounted for, because if they aren't, an incentive misalignment will prevent the network from growing. Imagine, for example, what happens when a blockchain grows to multiple petabytes of data (which is a conservative estimate for something truly global). A node desiring to become a validator needs to be able to pay for storage of such significant size. If they don't get compensated by the network for doing so, they will simply not want to provide this important service and the network will be left without validators.

Another feature that contributes to the vision of scalability in RChain is the way it uses namespaces to limit the scope of transaction validation. Because data and code are unambiguously referred to by names within a rich namespace framework, validators are only required to achieve consensus related to a particular transaction within its specific namespace. This means network communication only needs to happen between a limited set of validators (those that record transaction in the same namespace), and only for relevant transactions, rather than every transaction in the global network. Essentially, one can think of namespaces as shards in more traditional parlance.

Similarly, an RChain node doesn't need to download the entire blockchain as is the case today with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Nor do all transactions in the world need to be placed in sequential order, but just the ones whose order matters to resolving conflicts, such as a double-spend.

The ability to narrow the scope of consensus around a specific transaction allows RChain to do as little work as possible in validating specific transactions. At an extreme low end of the spectrum, this translates to being able to create an equivalent of state channels, which can be seen as transactions between a small number of counterparts, carried out cheaply and efficiently without engaging the consensus protocol of the larger network. Essentially, with RChain you can think of state channels as a feature you get for free, without the need to create additional software layers to support them.

RChain strives to cover many of the features that are either apparently missing from the current frameworks, or will soon become major bottlenecks preventing adoption and scaling. It is being developed as a platform for the future, one that plans to survive and be used for decades, rather than becoming obsolete at the next turn. In the subsequent chapters of this series I will dive more into specific features of Rholang and RChain, demonstrate a simple smart contract written in Rholang, further discuss its security model and economics, talk about the basis for automated compile-time analysis, as well as address many other aspects of this truly innovative framework.

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RChain series: Introduction - The Blockchain Investments Blog

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This is the first of several articles about the RChain project, an innovative blockchain platform currently being developed in Seattle by a team led by Lucius Gregory ("Greg") Meredith, a mathematician and computer scientist whose work over the years centered around mobile process calculi and their applications to a broad scope of practical problems - from consensus algorithms to modeling biochemical processes in the human body.

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Earlier this year, IBM conducted the largest study to date on the state of adoption of blockchain. interviewed almost 3,000 C-Suite executives from over 80 countries and 20 industries to learn about their company's blockchain plans.Survey responses where classified into three groups: explorers, investigators and passives.

Explorers are already involved in blockchain pilots and experiments.They make up an average of 8 percent across all industries, with higher activity in certain industries like financial services .25 percent of organizations are investigators, - considering but not yet ready to deploy blockchains, and 67 percent are passives, - not considering blockchains so far.

These survey results are not surprising for a technology as new and complex as blockchain.With such technologies, you typically have a relatively small number of early adopters.A larger number of followers are waiting to learn from the early adopters' experiences, while the laggards are not yet sure what the technology is about or if it applies to them.

The analyzed the responses of the explorers, in an attempt to figure out what's driving them to embrace blockchain at this early stage.Their responses suggest that they view blockchain as a kind of trust accelerator, helping to build trust in several ways: increased transactional transparency, higher data quality and accuracy, increased trust in transaction reliability, and improved security against fraud and cybercrime.

Traditionally, intermediaries have taken on the role of trust keepers, adding costs, delays and complexity to the processing of transactions.Explorers expect blockchain to reduce transaction costs by eliminating intermediaries; increase transaction speed by reducing clearing time; and simplify and automate business processes, especially processes that deal with interactions across companies and governments.

They also see blockchain as enabling the creation of platforms for business model innovation and new ways of working. are all about scale and network effects , where the whole is much greater than the sum of their parts.Platforms require the formation of multi-sided ecosystems, including partners and developers on the supply-side, and users and customers on the demand-side.The greater trust, security and efficiencies inherent in blockchain platforms could be competitive differentiators in the formation of such multi-sided ecosystems.

Blockchain has the potential to transform our economic and social systems.It's a foundational innovation , like the Internet, whose full transformational impact will play out over decades rather than years, because such innovations must overcome many barriers, - technological, organizational, governance, political.Their adoption process is thus gradual, incremental and steady, unlike the adoption we typically associate with disruptive technologies . The impact of blockchain could well be enormous, but its full transformational impact will take considerable time.

The IBM survey study reminded me of Crossing the Chasm , Geoffrey Moore's 1991 bestseller, now in its third edition.Crossing the Chasm applies what's known as the diffusion of innovations model to the development of high-tech markets, paying particular attention to the transition from early to more mainstream adopters.

According to Moore, "the point of greatest peril in the development of a high-tech market lies in making the transition from an early market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a large block of customers who are predominantly pragmatists in orientation.The gap between these two markets, all too frequently ignored, is in fact so significant as to warrant being called a chasm, and crossing this chasm must be the primary focus of any long term high-tech marketing plan.A successful crossing is how high-tech fortunes are made; failure in the attempt is how they are lost."

What will it take to help blockchain across this chasm, - from the explorers/early-adopters who are already involved in blockchain pilots, to the investigators/followers who are considering blockchain but waiting for results and assurances before jumping in?How long will it likely take?

As with similar such questions , let's look at the lessons learned from the decades-long evolution of the Internet for inspiration and guidance.

, - the packet switching network and precursor of the Internet, - was developed by a small number of researchers in the 1960s and 1970s. It adopted the protocols in the early 1980s, evolving through the decade into what became known as the Internet.The Internet's early adopters arrived in two phases.First came universities, supercomputing centers and other research communities in the early and mid 1980s. Then came commercial early adopters, who were only allowed to use the Internet toward the end of the 1980s. Their numbers grew rapidly over the next few years, and by the mid-1990s the Internet was being embraced by a much larger number of mainstream users, - having successfully crossed its chasm.

What helped take the Internet from early adopters to mainstream users?Three main reasons stand out for me: standards, applications and governance.

Standards:Through the 1980s, an increasing number of university, government and research networks embraced TCP/IP as their networking standard.The advent of routing technologies enabled these various TCP/IP networks to eventually coalesce into one Internet or network of networks.e-mail was the Internet's first major application.Its protocols, - e.g., , , , - were standardized in the mid-1980s, enabling its users to easily communicate with each other.A few years later, the Web's open standards, - , , , - made it possible for any PC connected to the Internet to access information on any web server anywhere in the world.The easy-to-use, graphical web browser released in 1993, played a major role in the popularization of the Internet.

Applications:A is an IT application whose value is easy to explain, because while relatively mundane in nature, it turns out to be unexpectedly useful in business and/or everyday life.e-mail and the Web are great examples of killer apps, having played a crucial role in the mainstream adoption of the Internet.Everybody could easily appreciate the ability to easily communicate with anyone, or to access information anywhere in the world.Many other applications quickly followed across a variety of industries.

Governance:Much of the success of the Internet and World Wide Web is due to the international organizations created to oversee their evolution, including - the Internet Engineering Task Force, - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and , - the World Wide Web Consortium.In addition to developing standards and organizing technical, industry and policy activities, these various organization make available open source implementations of their software releases, thus encouraging collaborative, open innovation .

Let's now turn to blockchain.Last year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its annual list of the Top Ten Emerging Technologies for 2016, and named The Blockchain as one of the technologies in the 2016 list.The WEF compared the blockchain to the Internet, noting that "Like the Internet, the blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built."

But, is blockchain ready to transition from its early adopters to a more mainstream market?Let's look at where we stand with blockchain in each of the three areas that helped the Internet across.

Standards:There are already a number of blockchain platforms in the marketplace; more are in development.All are generally based on the original design released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto , but the platforms differ, depending on the applications they are designed to support. There seem to be two fairly distinct blockchain design points.One is primarily focused on blockchain as the underlying platform for and other cryptocurrencies ; the second is focused on blockchains as a general purpose platform for transaction applications, - a kind of Internet 2.0 .

The cryptocurrency-oriented platforms are mostly based on public, permissionless blockchains and proof-of-work systems.The more general purpose platforms, - e.g., Hyperledger , - are aimed at supporting business applications, and are mostly based on private or permissioned blockchains, akin to the Internet encompassing private intranets.Some blockchain designs straddle both camps, like , which includes support for the Ether cryptocurrency and for distributed transaction applications like smart contracts.

Realizing the Potential of Blockchain , a recently released WEF report by and Tapscott, wrote that "As with all disruptive technologies, competing interpretations of Satoshi's vision have emerged... there is no shared taxonomy or categorization of the space: Does blockchain refer to the bitcoin blockchain or the technology in general?Is it big 'B' Blockchain or little 'b' blockchain?Is it a currency, commodity or technology?Is it all of these things or none of them?"

There is an urgent need for blockchain standards, at least at the fabric level, the equivalent of the TCP/IP layer."While these groups attack the problem from different angles and with different agendas, each shares a common goal to make this technology ready for prime time - by building infrastructure, developing standards and making it scalable."

Applications:Since blockchain is all about the creation, exchange and management of valuable assets, its applications are like to be considerably more complex to develop than Internet applications. "Launching this type of application requires massive collaboration among companies, governments and other entities," said the WEF report."Similarly, this resource will need constant care and tending to onboard more and more users over time.It illustrates the profound differences between managing information creation versus value creation activities.The latter require deep negotiation, contractual and jurisdictional understandings, and the ongoing stewardship of application-level ecosystem."

Governance:"Like the first generation of the internet, this second generation promises to disrupt business models and transform industries... pulling us into a new era of openness, decentralization and global inclusion. However, this extraordinary technology may be stalled, sidetracked, captured or otherwise suboptimized depending on how all the stakeholders behave in stewarding this set of resources - i.e. how it is governed," adds the WEF report in a strong cautionary note. "How we govern the internet of information as a global resource serves as a model for how to govern this new resource: through a multi-stakeholder approach using what we call global governance networks. "

Is blockchain ready to cross the chasm from its early adopters into a wider marketplace?Not quite yet. Much remains to be done. Given all the attention and activity, this important transition should be able to take place in the not too distant future. But, as reminds us, crossing this chasm is "the point of greatest peril" for a high-tech innovation. Geoffrey Moore

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Is Blockchain Ready to "Cross the Chasm"? Lessons from the Internet

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Earlier this year, IBM conducted the largest study to date on the state of adoption of blockchain. The study interviewed almost 3,000 C-Suite executives from over 80 countries and 20 industries to learn about their company's blockchain plans. Survey responses...

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https://www.intelligenthq.com/innovation-management/some-of-blockchains-possible-applications/

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Blockchain is a fastest growing revolutionary technology that has been disrupting the financial world and now different areas of society, as developers and tech entrepreneurs realise that it can be used almost in everything.

Some say it is the so much needed innovation for the coming age of the Internet of Everything (IoE) as it has the potential to become the structural ledger of everything. Various authors such as Don Tapscott with his new book The Blockchain Revolution and others argue that the blockchain will be shaping the next era of prosperity-in finance, business, healthcare, education, governance, tech and beyond. Blockchain opportunities are so significant that it's a question of when, not if, these applications will emerge.

In this article we cover a few of the possible applications / areas / sectors of Blockchain:
1.Finance / Banking / Insurance/Fintech related products- Payme
The biggest use of Blockchain for now is in the 360 degrees Fintech industry at large. As Finance and technology becomes a powerful liaison more and more companies both startups and big corporations are using Blockchain to serve as a basis for operations.

Financial institutions, are now considering how the technology underpinning digital currency - commonly called 'the blockchain' or 'blockchain' - could in itself revolutionise finance.

Key players working with finance are becoming aware of the potential of blockchain. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said at the Consensus 2016 event in midtown Manhattan:

"I'm reasonably confident ... that the blockchain will change a great deal of financial practice and exchange." He forecasted the future of finance:

"40 years from now, blockchain and all that follows from it will figure more prominently in that story than will bitcoin."

Summers referred to blockchain technology's ability to reduce inefficient frictions during asset transfers, but he sounded a much less confident note about the cryptocurrency for which it was originally invented.

Payments is a special industry / sector that is betting big in Blockchain due to the multiple possibilities that Blockchain offers for payment transferences, infrastructure, and global reach platform.

A very recent development in payments using bitcoin is happening in mobile money. BitPesa, a Nairobi based start-up focusing on bitcoin remittances, raised over $1 million earlier this year.

An important aspect of payments using blockchain are micropayments. ChangeCoin is a company (that was recently bought in 2016 by Airbnb) that uses the Blockchain protocol in order to process micropayments. The micropayment system that ChangeCoin has created, which is called ChangeTip, allows people to make very small payments online.

An example is when you are reading an article but in order to see more of it and continue reading you have to pay a small fee to the company that produced the content. Micropayments allows the reader to be able to do this, rather than setting up a subscription. Another example of the potential applications of this technology is a customer just paying for the data that they use at a Wi-Fi hotspot.
2. Law/Legal/Contract
Blockchain has the potential to impact the legal world in a very revolutionary way. With smart contracts, anyone can start doing business operation directly and without 3d parties. The challenge is how to regulate this with the right compliance overview and avoiding eventual money laundry issues and illegal ways to escape to taxes and other criminal usages.

Smart applications software programs that live on the blockchain and execute without the possibility of third-party interference legal and compliance, will be critical areas for Blockchain. Examples of some companies/organisations working with smart contracts are RootStock or Tierion, who is a pioneer of the verifiable data category.

Some of the practical smart contract / use cases include :

Creating a verifiable audit trail of insurance claims.

Creating an audit trail and legal footprint for healthcare processes and patient data.

Track the record purchasing approvals of goods and services in platforms and CRM such as Salesforce.com.

Archive contracts for Slack communication, creating a verifiable track record of a company's online conversations. This is particular powerful for regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.

3. Government / Corporate Government
Governments around the world are seeing the multiple opportunities to simplify their operations and data processing. This is a powerful way for governments to get their different organisations having one simple flow of data and infrastructure. The challenge is the present infrastructure not prepared to manage this and advance as fast as the tech world is going. Moreover Blockchain disrupts potentially central banks and other local, national institutions therefore a lot of work is necessary to align efforts.
4. Health
Health is a sector that can benefit immensely from blockchain technology. Melanie Swan (2015) gives various examples of ideas on how health could be revolutionised using bitcoin. For example, apps could be built on infectious disease tracking sites like Healthmap and FluTrackers to include a Bitcoin donation functionality. Blockchain could be used for efficient, immediate, targeted delivery of aid funds for supplies in the case of crises like Ebola and other contagious disease breakouts.

Another example is The Genomic Data Commons. The GDC was established by the University of Chicago in partnership with the NCI, to assemble a gigantic database to focus on genomic research and personalised medicine. The potential of the GDC is fantastic, but accessing it is limited to just certain groups of people. Swan proposes that if one appcoin like Genomecoin would be created, it would enable larger groups of people accessing it, such as any individual worldwide. Further, the appcoin could be the tracking, coordination, crediting, and remunerative mechanism sponsoring collaboration in the Genome Data Commons community.

DNA.bits is an Israeli organization that applies Fin-Tech innovation (Bitcoin and Block-Chain platform) to solve the need for large sets of clinical data and correlated genetic samples. Our solutions utilize the power of block chain cryptography to enable tagging, tracking and cross-referencing health-related data in secure, authenticated and anonymous way.
5. IoE / IOT
An area where Blockchain seems to be consensual is within the large spectre of interconnected devices and sensors that constitute the Internet of Everything. Here most of the global tech and corporations players are already using Blockchain technology to get a global infrastructure that highlights data and connectivity to be circulating and flowing.

6.Digital Identity.

Most of the ones living in western countries, aren't aware how identity is a major problem in our world. Maybe we became a bit more conscious of the importance of proper identification with the heightening of the refugee crisis that led millions upon millions of refugees to flee their homes becoming undocumented. Statistics for the year of 2016 speaks of 232 million undocumented migrants. Recently various NGOS have tried to find innovative solutions to solve the identity issues happening in the digital age.

BitNation is an example of an organization pushing forth the boundaries of autonomous governance and identity services. The organization claims for a governance 2.0: What it means is that it seeks to provide people with the same services traditional governments provides, from dispute resolution and insurance to security and much more - but in a geographically unbound, decentralized, and voluntary way. Bitnation uses the Bitcoin 2.0 blockchain technology. Besides offering its users the possibility of forging a world citizenship ID, they have recently created a project called Refugee Emergency Response (BRER), to help solve refugee identity crisis in Europe via the blockchain. Bitnation believes that BRER can help fleeing Syrians get identification easily as a basic global right.

Another company working with identity is Onename. According to the company's founder, Onename can help solve the identity issue as well through its blockchain-based identification protocol. Onename usernames are created within an open namespace and user data is embedded directly into the blockchain.
7. Cyber security / Censorship
The use of Blockchain to improve Cybersecurity is something that is now being discussed and put together as the next structural axis for the new infrastructure of the coming global internet.

Censorship is another area critical as well. Blockchain could challenge profoundly censorship, as it enables the development of Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models. Addressing censorship, Melanie Swan describes 3 categories of applications of blockchain: blochain 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Thus Blockchain 3.0 leads us to "the next category of application beyond currency and market transactions.

She writes:

"Through its global decentralized nature, blockchain technology has the potential ability to circumvent the current limitations of geographic jurisdictions. There is an argument that blockchain technology can more equitably address issues related to freedom, jurisdiction, censorship, and regulation, perhaps in ways that nation-state models and international diplomacy efforts regarding human rights cannot."

This is provided by the blockchain's immutable public record, transparency, access, and reach. Blockchain has the potential to let anyone in the world research the activities of transnational organizations. Blockchain can thus become a global system of checks and balances that creates trust among all parties. This is precisely the sort of core infrastructural element that could allow humanity to scale to orders-of magnitude larger progress with truly global organizations and coordination mechanisms.

One example working to prevent Internet censorship is Namecoin. Namecoin is an altcoin that can be used to verify Domain Name System (DNS) registrations.

With namecoin one gets an alternative DNS that is transnational and cannot be controlled by any government or corporation. The benefit of a decentralized DNS is that it makes it possible for anyone worldwide who might be otherwise suppressed or censored to publish information freely in the Internet. Namecoin can be used to:

Protect free-speech rights online by making the web more resistant to censorship.

Access websites using the .bit domain (with TLS/SSL).

Store identity information such as email, GPG key, BTC address, TLS fingerprints,

Bitmessage address, etc.

Human readable Tor .onion names/domains.

File signatures, Voting, bonds/stocks,/shares, web of trust, escrow and notary services (to be implemented).

8.Media/Entertainment
Blockchain is getting big in media and entertainment as authors and artists start to envision its potential as a way to connect directly with their audiences without intermediaries. With blockchain, creatives have the opportunity to relate with their audiences in various ways. The opportunities are multiple and comprehend content payment, rights licensing and many other areas.

Take the case of the music industry. A blockchain could be used to store a cryptographic 'has of the original digital music file, associating it with the addresses and identities of the people involved in its creation. The blockchain could also store the instructions, in the form of a smart contract, for how the artists would be compensated for the song or music.

Imogen Heap is an artist who released the song Tiny Human, using the blockchain.

Another example is Ascribe, a startup using blockchain technology and machine learning, that makes sure that artists and content producers are being paid fees for the use of theoir iomte;;ectual property. Ascribe lets you lock in attribution, securely share and trace where your digital work spreads

Blockchain could as such help with copyright theft and illegal file-sharing, plus giving artists the ability to manage their intellectual property ensuring that the way their content is used and paid for is controlled.
9. Verified Data
Data is a critical element of the Blockchain technology as with its operations the user or company has a control of its data and can use the operations to verify data sources and sign up in flows of information and relations. Therefore big data and blockchain are already being united in many ways as a way to establish veryfication and credibility of data sources.

Blockchain can be used to create a verifiable record of any data, file, or business process on the blockchain. Examples of companies working on this area are Tierion and Factom.
10.Ethereum
The fast growing Ethereum ecosystem is probably the most powerful global platform using Blockchain. Ethereum is a global decentralised multiple usage platform for applications that run on a custom built blockchain. This enormously powerful shared global platform has been using Blockchain in its DNA and has been growing as a swiss knife for digital applications and even digital currencies.
Conclusion
In this article, we reviewed some of the possible application of the blockchain technology, to the physical world and we covered various types of organization working with bitcoin.

We conclude with a heartwarming example: Sean's Outpost, perhaps the world's best-known Bitcoin-accepting charity run by Jason King, first started accepting Bitcoin in March 2013, carrying a simple message:

"When we break down cost, it runs about $1.25 to make a bagged lunch and get it delivered to a homeless person. 40 meals = $50. $50 is K1 BTC. Here is your chance to make a guaranteed, phenomenal return on your investment. Donating 1 bitcoin right now will put food in the tummies of 40 homeless people."

Four days later, Sean's Outpost had raised over over $600, and over the months that followed Sean's Outpost and the Bitcoin community developed a symbiosis closer than either had thought would happen.

Sean's Outpost is now the largest provider of meals to the homeless in Escambia County Florida, having in 2013 bought nine acres of wooded land that will now become, as Jason King describes it the charity's leader "a homeless sanctuary." namede after the inventor of bitcoin: Satoshi Forest.

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Blockchain is a fastest growing revolutionary technology that has been disrupting the financial world and now different areas of society, as developers and tech entrepreneurs realise that it can be used almost in everything. Some say it is the so much needed innovation for the coming age of the Internet of Everything (IoE) as it has the potential to become the structural ledger of everything.

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It's so disruptive because it takes us 'back to the basics'

Today, the digital world has more interactions than the physical world, bringing many new implications not only to the way we do business but also to the way we interact with each other on a daily basis.

With the rise of new technologies such as cloud computing, big data and machine learning, there is a need for a simpler and more efficient way to perform transactions.

In November 2008, when bitcoin was brought into the public eye, it was a very exciting time; a paper posted on the Internet under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, "bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", stated a brand-new way to approach any economic or non-economic transaction.

Years later, there's new excitement about one of the pieces of the bitcoin puzzle - blockchain, the technology used for validating and recording those transactions, is now seen as having the potential to reshape the digital era.

Whether you work in the financial world, real estate or any other sector, most likely you've already heard about blockchain and how this new technology is expected to disrupt most industries in the coming years, in some cases having been compared to the early years of the Internet.

Blockchain is be considered one of the most disrupting technologies simply because somehow it takes us "back to the basics" of any transaction where there is no central authority, all parties can maintain a copy making it impossible to manipulate, and it allows you to know "who did what and when" at all time. To try to make it simple, the way blockchain works is by allowing you to make and record a transaction (i.e., the sale of a house); this transaction will become a permanent entry in the system and will create a "block" as long as this is validated by all participants. This transaction will be linked to all the previous blocks creating a "chain of evidence" feeding into an ever-growing, unchangeable and encrypted ledger that can be viewed by anyone who has the proper access to it.

The benefits are substantial: whether you look at cost and risk reduction, immutability of data, or adding transparency to transactions, companies from most industries can benefit from this new technology. Telcos are not the exception, providing operational efficiencies by cutting internal cost and also enabling new value-added digital services for their customers.

The Government of Dubai has been a pioneer in the exploration of blockchain technology, leading the way with the definition of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy. This strategy is a joint effort between the Prime Minister's Office, Dubai Future Foundation and Dubai Smart City Office, with the objective to achieve a high degree of efficiency between all government institutions.

The establishment the Global Blockchain Council (GBC) also comes in line with this strategy. The GBC is a 46-member initiative designed to test and accelerate blockchain technology in the UAE. The initiative, established by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, is one of the most ambitious private-public sector collaborations.

Electronic health records (EHR) in the UAE are set to be revolutionalised in the future using blockchain.

Du has partnered with NMC Hospitals in a commercial pilot to deploy EHR with blockchain technology for 100 per cent data security. As a result, EHR through blockchain will provide a number of benefits, including data integrity, security and trust to the flow of the patient's information between the health providers and the patients. It will also enable NMC to be 100 per cent certain of the accuracy of all the retrieved records of the patients for seamless communication.

Moreover, EHR through blockchain will also help UAE government to develop a big data analytical tool for the residents of the UAE, which can assist civil defence and health authorities to plan strategies to overcome any medical emergencies or epidemics.

Looking to the future of blockchain, although the concept has already expanded beyond its use by cryptocurrencies and its benefits are starting to be clear, it is still early in the game to fully understand the implications this technology will have in our lives.
The writer is the chief operations officer of du. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.

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Blockchain: Why you're sure to benefit from it

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It's so disruptive because it takes us 'back to the basics' Today, the digital world has more interactions than the physical world, bringing many new implications not only to the way we do business but also to the way we interact with each other on a daily basis.

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Blockchain: How The 'Big 4' Are Experimenting | InterQuest Group

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Blockchain is a revolutionary technology. Here is a timeline to demonstrate how each of the four largest accounting firms is experimenting with blockchain.

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With interest in blockchain technology gripping the institutional financial sector today, there is a great deal of confusion about the true nature of the technology, and specifically how it is different from what has come before. The promise to dramatically improve financial infrastructure is well established, but it's often not clear why the benefits associated with blockchain technology cannot be had with traditional technology.

The problem that the financial sector hopes to solve by using blockchain technology is that of duplication and reconciliation of administrative processes and data. To illustrate, standard practice in the syndicated loan market involves a dozen banks receiving the same fax, each entering the same data contained on that fax into their internal ledgers, and then reconciling any discrepancies which arise. Blockchain technology solves the duplication-and-reconciliation problem by creating a distributed ledger: a single record of financial transactions that may be shared among multiple institutions. The adoption of a distributed ledger can solve very real, very great inefficiencies that financial institutions face in the coordination of all of their back-office systems and associated operational costs.

The naïve solution to this problem is to appoint a single entity to maintain a master set of records for the entire market to use. However, this third party must be trusted to keep all records accurately, securely and (if applicable) confidentially. A blockchain, by contrast, allows multiple parties to share records in a manner that all can trust as valid, simply by the design of the protocol.

But if the problem is solved by allowing parties to share a master copy of data, why not use just a distributed database instead of a distributed ledger? The majority of the most popular SQL and NoSQL databases can function as distributed databases, in fact... Problem solved? No.

A distributed database is a type of database that shares its data among multiple computers. We want a database that can share information among multiple institutions. That's something else entirely. In fact, no existing database was designed to do this. Even the most scalable, globally distributed databases are all designed to be hosted by a single party, and this assumption is baked into their design at a very low level. You can't just take an Oracle database, give each bank a node and call it a day. The security model is totally different. Everyone would be able to see and change everyone else's data, as well as bring down the whole network on a whim.

For a distributed ledger to work what you really need is not only a distributed system but also a decentralized system: one that multiple, independent parties can use to share information. There are plenty of decentralized systems out there, though you may not think of them as such. Faxes are a great example of a decentralized system. Email, the Web, BitTorrent, and Git are others. The problem with any of these systems, though, is that everyone's data is inconsistent, based on which messages or files each particular user happened to send and receive. What you really need is something like Google Docs, but without Google. And for finance!

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Blockchain Technology and Institutional Finance

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With interest in blockchain technology gripping the institutional financial sector today, there is a great deal of confusion about the true nature of the technology, and specifically how it is different from what has come before. The promise to dramatically improve financial infrastructure is

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A history of the PC in two parts. Here's part 1 (8,000 words)

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A history of the PC in two parts. Here's part 1 (8,000 words)

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Review of blockchain consensus mechanisms.

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Cryptocurrencies use distributed ledgers or blockchains to record information - primarily about the balance of every address for value transfer platforms (like bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies), though the approach can be extended to any kind of information. Key to the operation of the blockchain is that the network should collectively agree on the contents of the ledger: instead of authority for keeping accounts being centralised in one entity, like a bank, it is shared amongst everyone.

This requires that the network maintains consensus around the information recorded on the blockchain. How this consensus is achieved impacts the security and economic parameters of the protocol. Here are five examples of how it's done.

1. Proof of Work (PoW)

Proof of work is the first distributed consensus mechanism, pioneered by bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Many cryptocurrencies followed suit, including Ethereum. In PoW, all the computers in the network that are tasked with maintaining the security of the blockchain - known as Miners in bitcoin - work to solve a puzzle consisting of a mathematical function called a hash. This task is straightforward (for a computer) but extremely repetitive, and therefore computationally expensive. Computers compete to find a hash with specific properties. The computer that finds the answer first - the proof that they have done the necessary work - is allowed to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain. They are rewarded with a tranche of newly-minted bitcoins (currently 12.5 BTC per block, or roughly every 10 minutes), plus all of the small transaction fees users have paid to send coins.

PoW operates on the principle that it is expensive to add a tranche of new transactions to the blockchain, but very easy to check if the transactions are valid due to the transparent nature of the ledger. Miners collectively verify the entire blockchain, and transactions aren't considered to be fully 'confirmed' until several new blocks have been added on top of them. If a malicious actor tries to spend coins fraudulently, those transactions will be ignored by the rest of the network. The only way that an attacker could commit such a fraud is to possess a huge amount of computational power, such that they could mine block after block, winning the proof of work competition time after time. This is known as a '51% attack' due to the need to possess more than half of total network hashrate. The reality is that no miner has such a proportion of total hashing power. Thus attempting such a fraud is 1) extremely expensive (since it costs as much as the hardware and energy required, plus the opportunity cost of not supporting the valid version of the blockchain and receiving rewards in return) and 2) extremely unlikely to succeed. Consequently it is better (i.e. more profitable) for miners to remain honest.

2. Proof of Stake

Due to the amount of computational power required, PoW is costly and energy intensive. A whole industry has grown up around creating custom chips designed only for mining. Proof of stake (PoS) is an alternative approach that has gained popularity in recent years and that requires no specialist hardware. In PoW, hashrate determines how likely a participant is to add the next block of transactions to the blockchain. In PoS, the participant's coin stake determines their likelihood. That is, each network node is linked to an address, and the more coins that address holds, the more likely it is that they will mine (or 'stake', in this instance) the next block. It is like a lottery: the winner is determined by chance, but the more coins (lottery tickets) they have, the greater the odds. An attacker who wants to make a fraudulent transaction would need over 50% of coins to process the required transactions reliably; buying these would push the price up and make such an endeavour prohibitively expensive.

The PoS system was pioneered by Nxt. Because it is not energy-intensive, like PoW, the costs do not need reimbursing in the same way as they do for bitcoin. Thus PoS systems are well suited to platforms where there is a static coin supply, without inflation from block rewards. Stakers' rewards consist only of transaction fees. This is the approach taken by most crowdsale-funded platforms, where tokens are distributed based on investment, and diluting this with more coins would be viewed unfavourably.

Proof of stake is now a well-established consensus mechanism, but is not often used in its original form. Two variations, LPoS and DPoS, offer certain advantages.

3. Leased Proof of Stake (LPoS)

In classic PoS, holders with small balances are unlikely to stake a block - just as small miners with low hashrate are unlikely to mine a block in bitcoin. It may be many years before a small holder is lucky enough to generate a block. This means that many holders with low balances don't run a node, and leave maintaining the network to a limited number of larger players. Since network security is better when there are more participants, it is important to incentivise these smaller holders to take part.

LPoS achieves this by allowing holders to lease their balances to staking nodes. The leased funds remain in the full control of the holder, and can be moved or spent at any time (at which point the lease ends). Leased coins increase the 'weight' of the staking node, increasing its chances of being allowed to add a block of transactions to the blockchain. Any rewards received are shared proportionally with the leasers. This is the approach taken by Waves.

4. Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)

A similar but different approach is taken by BitShares and a number of other platforms. With DPoS, coin holders use their balances to elect a list of nodes that will have the opportunity to stake blocks of new transactions and add them to the blockchain. This engages all coin holders, though may not reward them directly in the same way as LPoS does. Holders can also vote on changes to network parameters, giving them greater influence and ownership over the network.

5. Proof of Importance (PoI)

A final variation on these consensus mechanisms is PoI. The first cryptocurrency platform to implement this was NEM. With PoI, it is not simply coin balance that matters. NEM's consensus system is based on the idea that productive network activity, not just the amount of coins, should be rewarded. The odds of staking a block are a function of a number of factors, including balance, reputation (determined by a separate purpose-designed system), and the number of transactions made to and from that address. This provides a more holistic picture of a 'useful' network member.

There are many variations on these broad approaches, and some platforms use a combination of PoW and PoS - often using the first to distribute coins, and then shifting to the second at a later point to maintain the network. Another approach is to use Masternodes in conjunction with PoW mining, as is the case with DASH and Crown. These help to process transactions and receive a share of the block rewards from miners' activity.

In all cases, the aim of the consensus approach is to secure the network, predominantly through economic means: it should be too expensive to attack the network, and more profitable to help protect it.

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Review of blockchain consensus mechanisms - Waves Platform

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Cryptocurrencies use distributed ledgers or blockchains to record information - primarily about the balance of every address for value transfer platforms (like bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies), though the approach can be extended to any kind of information.

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History of transactions - from barter to blockchain

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History of transactions - from barter to blockchain

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FinTech progress has come to a halt in South Korea as regulators carefully try to piece together new technology with existing privacy laws. In October 2016, Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Yim Jong-Yong revealed South Korea's plans for the acceptance and regulation of bitcoin. He announced in a public speech, "The government will push for the systemization of digital currency on a full scale in tandem with a global trend in the U.S., Japan, and other countries." At the time, the top three Bitcoin exchanges in the country processed around $1.3 billion between January 2015 and October 2016, according to data from the FSC.

In December of 2016, the Korea Financial Investment Association launched its first blockchain consortium consisting of 21 financial investment companies and five blockchain tech firms to function as a leading blockchain think tank in the local capital market. Then, in January 2017, South Korea's financial authorities revealed their plan to launch a full-scale pilot project for blockchain-powered financial services. The plan involved implementing blockchain technology as the core infrastructure for a sweeping financial services platform.

Progress continued in April 2017. Hongik University in Seoul and the Bank of Korea (BOK) released a research paper entitled, "Crowding out in a Dual Currency Regime? Digital versus Fiat Currency" which describes how cryptocurrencies and fiat monetary systems can exist side-by-side in the future in what is referred to in the paper as a "dual currency regime." This research paper shows great interest from the BOK and Korea's financial authorities in pursuing cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech in an effort to overhaul the traditional, less efficient methods of financial transaction. Also in April 2017, Seoul-based South Korean life insurance company, Kyobo Life Insurance, was officially selected by the government to trial the first real world implementation of blockchain technology for commercial insurance money payments in Seoul.

Now Korea has hit a bump in the road and stumbled upon a problem which is threatening to hold up progress. It is a question of how to move forward with regulation for blockchain technology while maintaining citizens' privacy rights regarding credit information and personal data. Two laws, in particular, are on the front lines in this discussion. The first called the Credit Information Use and Protection Act, maintained by the FSC, states that a financial company must remove personal data within five years after a transaction is completed. The second law, the Personal Information Protection Act which is under the control of the Ministry of the Interior, declares that any personal information should be destroyed immediately after use.

Because any system built on blockchain technology requires records in a block of transactions to remain permanent with no option to alter them retroactively, allowing this type of system to engage with citizens' personal data might be construed as a breach of regulations on handling private information. Unless another option reveals itself, financial authorities in South Korea now have to decide whether to exempt blockchain technology from regulations on financial privacy or to abandon pursuing this technology altogether.

Professor In Hoh, a computer science professor at Korea University commented on this dilemma, "Current regulations are the biggest challenges against the fourth industrial revolution wave's foray into South Korea. Changes in the law should keep pace with technological advances." Professor In Hoh also noted that existing laws are only applicable to centralized servers, and there are currently no laws regulating peer-to-peer decentralized ledgers.

Although this seems like a fork in the road with only two unattractive options; abandon privacy laws for blockchain systems or leave blockchain systems entirely, there just might be a third, much more attractive alternative on the horizon. As distributed ledger technology evolves and becomes smarter and more flexible, and as AI is weaved into these decentralized governing systems, blockchains might be able to adjust themselves to fall into line with existing laws as they adapt and fit more comfortably into the human world. We may find that we do not have to sacrifice privacy to gain security, and tamper-proof systems can be maintained while allowing data to be securely altered according to predefined parameters controlled by an intelligent blockchain. The next phase of blockchains is coming, and it may bring solutions we have not yet considered to be possible.

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South Korea's Hurdles for Blockchain Innovation | BTCMANAGER

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FinTech progress has come to a halt in South Korea as regulators carefully try to piece together new technology with existing privacy laws. In October 2016, Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Yim Jong-Yong revealed South Korea's plans for the acceptance and regulation of bitcoin.

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American Banker - Banks pick IBM blockchain to expand digital ID project in Canada 

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American Banker - Banks pick IBM blockchain to expand digital ID project in Canada 

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Canadian banks will use blockchain technology to manage consumers' digital identities.

The banks bought into the idea of managing digital identities for consumers five years ago. Initially they focused on authentication: letting customers maintain one username and password for multiple websites, mainly bank and government sites. The Concierge system, managed by SecureKey, was a way to simplify customers' lives. The system stores 7 million Canadian consumers' credentials currently with 250,000 added each month.

On Monday morning, the banks, which include Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Desjardins Group, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank, along with IBM and SecureKey, announced they would build on the progress by making it a fuller identity solution running on IBM's blockchain.

Diagram of the Concierge identity system. "We didn't want to create honeypots of data where all the data went to one place," says one of the architects.

When the technology pieces are all in place, customers will be able to use an app to verify their identity to anyone, from an Airbnb owner to a bouncer at a bar, in such a way that the service provider sees only what it needs to see and all other personal information is private.

The companies are piloting the technology now and plan an official launch later this year. It's a model from which U.S. banks could learn. While few, beyond U.S. Bank and BBVA Compass, have expressed much interest in managing their customers' identities, the Canadian banks say they believe offering this service could be critical to survival in the fast-moving world of digital commerce and eventually a source of revenue.

"Increasingly the payment is the afterthought of the commerce transaction," said Chuck Hounsell, senior vice president of payments at TD Bank. The bank providing the card or account the money is being drawn from is invisible.

"If we can add value by being part of more transactions or purchases, we'll be able to be there to lend our payment capabilities to that transaction as well," Hounsell said. "It will enhance our overall relationship with the customer."

And over time, the banks in the program expect to receive revenue from other participants, say, telecommunications companies or landlords, who use their digital identity service to verify customers.

For the technology base of the expanded digital identity program, SecureKey chose IBM's blockchain-as-a-service offering, which is built on the Linux Foundation's open source Hyperledger Fabric v1.0. It's a permissioned blockchain meant to provide privacy, security and the ability to put the consumer in control of their identity information. It also comes with a price of up to $10,000 per month for the banks running the service, depending on the volume of digital identity requests. For developers, it's free.

Greg Wolfond, founder and CEO of SecureKey Technologies, said the company looked at digital identity models around the world and realized it didn't want to have a broker-in-the-middle model.

"We didn't want to have a piece of hardware or software in the middle where customers' private data is running through," he said. Hackers and snoopers would try to break into such a system. "We didn't want to create honeypots of data where all the data went to one place," Wolfond said. That would obviously be alluring to cybercriminals.

Another important consideration was how to share only the information the requester really needs. For instance, a landlord might not need the customer's actual credit score, only the fact that it's over 700.

"Right now I would argue a driver's license shares too much," Wolfond said. "A girl goes to a bar, and she has to share her name, address and weight with the bouncer. That's crazy. All he needs to know is that she's over 21. How to make this work electronically we couldn't solve well until we saw it on Hyperledger."

The consumer registers for the identity program at a bank using the bank's normal routines related to Know Your Customer compliance. Through a mobile app the bank provides, customers choose which types of data they want to share with which types of providers.

"Then we'll share it for you, but only with your explicit consent every time," Wolfond said.

To commit account takeover, a fraudster would have to have the user's online banking username and the SIM card from his phone, which would be invalid if the phone was reported lost or stolen.

SecureKey and IBM hope to take this offering global.

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Banks pick IBM blockchain to expand digital ID project in Canada

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Canadian banks will use blockchain technology to manage consumers' digital identities. The banks bought into the idea of managing digital identities for consumers five years ago. Initially they focused on authentication: letting customers maintain one username and password for multiple websites, mainly bank and government sites.

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There’s finally a commercial use for blockchain tech in finance 

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There’s finally a commercial use for blockchain tech in finance 

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IBM and SecureKey Technologies to Deliver Blockchain-Based Digital Identity Network for Consumers 

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IBM and SecureKey Technologies to Deliver Blockchain-Based Digital Identity Network for Consumers 