Empower the maximum future potential with Blockchain
The world is changing — digitalization and new technologies changed already the world and are going to change the world. AI, VR, Robotics, Blockchain and any more. Yes, Blockchain — that technology behind the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and many more. But is it more hype or revolution? Perhaps something between, but one thing is clear — Blockchain is one of today’s taking points. Experts see a technology that influence our new life, a new phase of the Internet and their possibilities within. Blockchain or best known as Distributed Ledger Technologies, DLT for short describe digital databases shared and replicated amongst all parties — not centrally in cloud, but locally on each computer in the network, functioning as a decentral peer-to-peer network with a creation of trust. However, it is a revolution — the possibility to transact now any value peer to peer with no “middle man” or intermediaries.
“Proof-of-work”, which is the best-known consensus mechanism for example of Bitcoin and many others, uses computing capacity of the members to validate the transactions. This form of mining is very resource intensive due to the laborious computing caused by complex calculations.
We should examine exactly these resource intensive consensus mechanism approach. But let us go one step back — back to the digitalization and the responsibility associated with it. Yes, the world is changing, sometimes positive but unfortunately sometimes too often negative. Especially the climate change and the associated CO2 emissions. Fridays For Future, Greta Thunberg and many other people or projects— a movement against climate change has been omnipresent for years and even the politics has more or less realized that it is high time, and there is no more time to waste!
But it is done with it, when plastic straws and partially diesel driving bans are introduced? No, it may be the right approach, but it is still not enough to gain an effective use. Especially that on the other side, according to the Technical University Munich, just for the mining of Bitcoins, in 2018, the annual power consumption of the Bitcoin network is at around 46 Terawatt hours, with increasing number — assuming the lower limit of the possible range. And it does not matter even though it is estimated that about half of these resources were consumed by renewable energy. However, overall the researchers come to the conclusion that the Bitcoin system causes between 22 and 22.9 megatons of carbon dioxide per year. That equates to an amount that is between the CO2 emissions of Jordan and Sri Lanka or the city Hamburg. In addition, there are at least several hundreds more cryptocurrencies based on mining, of course sometimes with different and more flexible consensus mechanism ways to secure the consensus, such as “proof-of-stake”, for use cases where the safety requirements are not as high, but where users with more tokens have more power in the concensus finding process.
However, it has to be said repeatedly that we have a responsibility towards our environment — the main goal should be the approach to create added value with technologies like DLT for our whole economy. Blockchain and their mining behind it should be scrutinized transparently and critically in order to analyze what benefits are generated compared to the intensive effort. In the near future regulators will probably play a decisive role here.
An alternative approach could be making use of the DLT variant Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). In contrast to blockchain, consensus finding, in DAGs is achieved if the user or machine validates for each new transaction, at least two previously not validated transactions. With every user or machine participating in the network the transaction rate is increased. Additional on that there are no miners and no transaction fees. However, this advantage of scalability is currently at a research stage, but these DLT variants contains a huge potential for the future and its possibilities — for example like outsourced computation, where each participant in the network has the opportunity to purchase computing capacity, just to mention one possibility. It’s going to be exciting.
Overall, we can say Distributed Ledger Technologies are highly relevant in the future, to enable an Economy of Things to build the backbone for future transactions and verification processes, in a secure trusted decentralized network. Especially in the Industrial IoT — Smart Manufacturing with audit trails & digital twins, additional enabling Smart Communities and Smart Cities, as well as Supply Chain with track and trace to bring transparency into production processes. But another very big taking point should and must be the Social Impact — the responsibility to achieve added value with DLTs. Additional to decentralized marketplaces and decentralized ID, the impact in social projects are much higher to achieve an environmental added value — especially in the establishment of carbon credits, to bring transparancy when making environmental purchases or investments, or generally in the producing environments. Carbon credits or generally social investments in their current form are hard to track and easy to forge. We now have the possibility to certify carbon credits and avoid an environmental collapse, bringing transparency in social investments, and avoid illegal deforestation and CO2 emissions with very simple and basic devices like sensors and novel technologies like smart DLT solutions.
It is in our hands which goals we are aiming on what we want to achieve with the possibilities of new technologies. As an appeal, to collaborate to create an added value with the right new technologies, which have the right approach, maybe not to save the world immediately, but to make it a bit better and greener.
Let´s collaborate: Get a quick start into DLT, transform your processes with DXC Technology to a secure trusted decentralized network and build your own M2M ecosystem. At DXC, especially with our colleagues from Luxoft we are aiming to introduce you to the latest Distributed Ledger Technologies. Feel free to get in contact with us and benefit from our unique network.
Published at Sat, 24 Aug 2019 15:15:23 +0000
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