Blockchain technology has evolved into an indispensable part of global IT Industry. Read on to know the future of this technology…
The innovative power of blockchain technology — the core engine of Bitcoin and other cryptos — offers the ease of anonymous transactions with the possibility to disrupt financial institutions. This may have been one of the factors that led to inflated expectations and fueled the hype around Bitcoin.
Great Potential
Blockchain technology has the potential to provide a much faster and cheaper alternative to traditional cross-border payments methods. Indeed, while typical money remittance costs might be as high as 20% of the transfer amount, blockchain may allow for costs as low as 2%, as well as guaranteed and real-time transaction processing speeds. There are hurdles to be passed, including regulation of cryptocurrencies in different parts of the world and security concerns. Nonetheless, this is one of the most promising and talked about areas of blockchain technology application.
Smart contracts are often seen as a highly powerful application of blockchain technology. These contracts are actually computer programs that can oversee all aspects of an agreement, from facilitation to execution. When conditions are met, smart contracts can be entirely self-executing and self-enforcing. For proponents of smart contracts, these tools provide a more secure, more automated alternative to traditional contract law, as well as an application that is faster and cheaper than traditional methods.
The potential applications of smart contract technology are essentially limitless and could extend to almost any field of business in which contract law would normally apply. Of course, while highly touted, smart contracts are not a magical substitute for old-fashioned diligence. In fact, the case of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a cautionary tale and a warning to investors to not assume that smart contracts are any better than the information and organization that a user puts into them. Nonetheless, smart contracts remain one of the most exciting ways that blockchain technology has already extended beyond the cryptocurrency space and into the broader business world.
The Road Ahead
In conclusion, with the continued development of blockchain technology, we are not far from a reality where people can exchange value in a peer-to-peer manner without powerful market regulators and central authorities. Value transactions could be programmed and enforced in code, verified through mass collaboration, making fraud or any other interference an impossible task.
This technology opens up new opportunities. It could potentially revolutionize the current models of commerce, energy, finance, politics, real estate, and many more industries. If the rise of billion-dollar marketplace platforms marked the last decade in the history books of technology, I do not think that it will be far-fetched to imagine that the next 10 years to be defined by blockchain, when we will see networks disrupt and decentralize entire markets, redistributing wealth and maximizing economic efficiency in the process.
First proposed as a research project in 1991, blockchain technology has come a long way and is comfortably settling into its late twenties. Like most millennials its age, blockchain technology has seen its fair share of public scrutiny over the last two decades, with businesses around the world speculating about what the technology is capable of and where it’s headed in the years to come.
With several practical applications of blockchain technology being implemented and explored, blockchain technology has finally made a mark in the global industry. As a buzzword of several investors globally, blockchain stands to make business and government operations more accurate, efficient, and secure.
As we prepare to head into the third decade of blockchain, it’s no longer a question of “if” legacy companies will catch on to the technology — it’s a question of “when.” Hence we should remain optimistic about the blockchain revolution.
