Blockchain is already a huge phenomenon. But it has issues . Can blockchain fulfill its promise? Can it have a big impact on financial services, healthcare and perhaps other industries? You betcha! Here’s how. Blockchain is big
First it was BitCoin. Now it’s blockchain, which is what people call the “underlying technology” of BitCoin. Although that’s about as accurate as calling the combustion engine the underlying technology of the car, only leaving out the gas tank — it won’t work!
In any case, expectations among investors are riding high. Here’s a snapshot of investor interest: Obstacles to blockchain’s success
Probably the biggest problem with blockchain is that it’s just a kind of database with a peculiar set of characteristics. Just having a database doesn’t make everyone involved in a problem suddenly decide to digitize everything in the same format, make the same calls to the same API’s and respond to everything appropriately. So the problem is often one which blockchain simply doesn’t solve.
There’s also a deep obstacle. It’s one that is obvious to any technical person and makes common sense, but for reasons that elude me, is rarely discussed among blockchain investors and enthusiasts. The problem is the community validation protocol that assures the integrity of the ledger. As part of BitCoin, the problem is cleverly solved by miners, who are incented to provide this service by being paid in BitCoin. When you take BitCoin out of “blockchain” and apply blockchain to other applications, you take away the payment mechanism for miners to do their job. This fact alone has a long string of ramifications, among which is the integrity and security of the “distributed ledger.” History of other advanced technologies
The obstacles to success for blockchain are serious. I wonder what we could learn from looking at history? Perhaps […]
