Category: Peer Networks

The Logic of tuka

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Many people, introduced to the concept developed here under the tuka ecosystem model, have asked, “So, what makes tuka different?”

Cribbing from Socrates, we would answer that question by posing two of our own:

  1. Why do people use the Internet?

I believe we can come up with a lot of different reasons people have embraced the Internet, despite the fact that sitting in front of a computer screen or thumbing a smartphone for hours is bad for the eyes, the hands, the posture and the back! But, one gains access to the world’s information at one’s finger-tips. We can be much more efficient and productive by having access to more information at much lower cost than in the past.

But those reasons just beg the question as to why having access to more and more information is important. Well, yes, information can be valuable, especially if it makes us more productive with our scarce resources of time and energy. In other words, information is valuable because informed knowledge empowers us to do more of the things we want to do, at less cost.

So, what is it we want to do? [That’s really a rhetorical question because there are literarily billions of valid answers.]

Let’s move on to question #2 and maybe it will become clear what we’re getting at.

2. Why do so many people use Facebook?

I think the answers to this question are quite different from the answers to the previous question. I doubt Facebook makes anybody more productive, unless one is running viral ad campaigns. Facebook and its fellow social media platforms actually seem to be the biggest time-wasters since the advent of the Internet! But apparently users are not only attracted to social media, they become addicted to it. How and why?

I believe the answer is found in psychology and the human need to be connected to others. As Aristotle wrote, “Man is a social animal,” (and woman perhaps even more so?). And we connect by sharing information with each other that ranges from silly gossip to important and relevant knowledge (like how to survive a natural disaster).

And the connection is as, if not more, important as the information being shared. This is a key insight into information technology because it tells us what’s really going on behind all this BIG DATA.

If we work backward from this goal of connection we see that connection is driven by the human instinct to connect by sharing, which is rooted in some initial step to create whatever it is we wish to share. Connection <- Sharing <- Creating. Here we have reverse engineered the internal logic of the tuka creative social media ecosystem: Create -> Share -> Connect, which repeats in an endless feedback loop.

So, the point of this post is to show that tuka is not really about what a new technology tool can do for us, but about what we can do with technology to be more like who we really are.

Can’t We All Just Be Friends?

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This is the nefarious side of social media. A NY Times article on how Russian hackers used Facebook to try to influence the US and French elections.

“Will Mark Zuckerberg ‘Like’ This Column?”

tuka offers a bit of an alternative to uncontrolled social media. First, there is no anonymity. Second, the user feed is content only, not status or opinion or any other distracting things like cat and food photos. This means we know who is posting and what they post is tangible creative content. These two criteria ensure that the connections people make on tuka are meaningful and real.

The final caveat here is to remind ourselves not to be so easily manipulated by emotional triggers.

Next-Gen Social Media

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This article from Bitcoin.com is a year old, but most people are unaware of these new innovations that define Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is basically the decentralization of Web 2.0 that was/is dominated by central distribution servers like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Web 3.0 will put the users in control of their own personal data and information networks. This means the value will be distributed according to the ownership and control of information data. These central distribution servers are the richest companies in the world today – just imagine if they had to start paying you for all the information you upload to their servers. The new services, such as tuka, will share that value.

Is Facebook About to Get ‘Myspaced’ by Next-Gen Social Media?

August 26, 2016 |

By Jamie Redman

Social media is a major component of the Internet and has already transformed how humans communicate and interact. Looking to take things to the next level, a few projects are trying to combine social media with the blockchain.

Steemit

Blockchain-based social media platform Steemit has gained quite a following in the past few months. The project was built by Daniel Larimer, the founder of Bitshares, using graphene architecture. The company is also led by Ned Scott, who is a technical analyst with a background in financial data.

Steemit launched in March 2016 with moderate enthusiasm from the community and a small following. It has since been a hot topic in cryptocurrency circles and social media.

During the summer, Steemit attracted a lot of artists, writers, and vloggers to the platform because it pays people for sharing content. People have been paid thousands of dollars per post in some instances, with the most popular articles netting close to $15,000 USD.

The platform, which combines the concepts of Facebook, WordPress, and Reddit, operates on the Steemit blockchain and uses three types of crypto-tokens:

Steem Power gives users the ability to throw their weight around on the platform. The more power you have, the more significant your vote will be when you upvote a post or even a comment. Comments have been seen to be upwards of $20-40, so all interaction is rewarded.

Steem is a token that powers two smart contract protocols similar to Ether’s gas, and is tradable on cryptocurrency markets. The token is supported on exchanges like Bittrex or Poloniex. However, holders also have the option to use their coins to boost their Steem Power..

Steem Dollars are designed to be pegged to $1 USD and be the equivalent of one dollar’s worth of Steem for conversion over the platform. On cryptocurrency exchanges, SBD’s can be seen trading for a dollar or less depending on the current market value. So, in essence, it makes more sense to use the system’s seven-day conversion over a third-party exchange, though lots of people cash out their content earnings elsewhere.

Steem Adds New Features

Steemit developers has just announced the addition of highly-requested features to the site. The services will enhance the social media experience by adding private messaging, notifications, and follow buttons. The team believes implementing these new features will facilitate interaction between community members and attract new people currently using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Steemit CEO Ned Scott explains:

Enhancing the diversity of our application-specific blockchain is a natural progression for Steemit. Private messaging is perfectly suited for a decentralized system and will empower users in a similar way to how direct messages empower users on Twitter. The ‘follow’ feature will enable community members to receive notifications as soon as their favorite authors post, and the notifications will work just like Facebook in that users will be alerted immediately upon a new post or upvote from their favorite contributors. These features are the pillars of current social media giants and we look forward to integrating them into Steemit over the coming weeks.

Big Names & Skepticism

Steemit’s popularity has attracted quite a few well-known people to share content over the platform, including personalities like Trace Mayer, Larken Rose, Charlie Shrem, Roger Ver, Tatiana Moroz and Rick Falkvinge. Some of these famous users regularly take in four figures for introducing themselves, writing stories, and posting video and podcast content.

However, there have been some naysayers who believe the project is a scam, or resembles somewhat of a ponzi. Brave New Coincontributor and bitcoin technical analyst Tone Vays says Steemit appears to be a ponzi scheme. Vays highlighted many points on why he believes the platform is set up like a pyramid scam. He even debated the issue on the Dollar Vigilante’s podcast, Anarchast. Many people are waiting to see if the project can continue to hold its own, keep up its significantly large payouts, and ultimately survive as a social media platform with perks.

Competition Is Coming

Soon Steemit won’t be the only blockchain-based social media platform on the market. Tel-Aviv-based Synereo, founded by Dor Konforty and Greg Meredith, also aims to create a decentralized social media protocol.

The team has recently announced a prototype of the Synereo platform, which is in its alpha phase and works on top of the software’s distributed stack.

With Synereo’s blockchain-based social network, the protocol puts content creators in charge of the media they produce — just like Steemit. Users control their personal information and produce content that can be monetized within the Synereo community.

Unlike Twitter or Facebook, the Synereo application doesn’t store data on its users and cannot sell the information to third-parties. Instead, the platform works through transactions on the Synereo blockchain and is only available to network participants.

The Synereo social media network will operate without any central server, and will compensate its user base for their content and shared computational power. The team also says that the project “adheres to principles of the attention economy” that in essence rewards network users for creation and curation.

The platform includes text posting, image posting, content labeling, taggable posts and hashtags, decentralized searching and content amplification. Users will also be able to promote content by charging with the Synereo blockchain’s native currency, AMP. Users viewing content loaded with AMP will be compensated, encouraging people to interact with amplified content.

During last week’s developer and community hangout, the Synereo team talked about its recent joint venture with wewowwe.com.

The developers’ news update states:

The wewowwe.com project has now API functionality and is able to work with outside networks, so that users can now be compensated automatically with AMPs for their contributions to their social network.—Also the components of the Synereo ecosystem are starting to converge and reveal a detailed picture of its capability.

Will Centralized Social Media Fall to the Wayside?

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are still the prominent social media applications everyone uses. The mechanics of these websites are very much centralized, as third-parties benefit from users’ content, targeted ads, and personal information.

Meanwhile, other social media services like Diaspora, TSU and others haven’t been able to grasp widespread attention on par with the reception received by Steemit so far.

Given the rising popularity of Steemit, the next generation of social media will make it easier to monetize content, resist censorship and provide users with a true peer-to-peer experience. It may be a few years until Facebook loses its supremacy the way MySpace did, but the trend towards decentralization and better security will ensure that users do not only retain their privacy, but also share in the spoils of their online community.

Who Owns the Internet?

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Good New Yorker article referencing Jonathan Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things and Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind discussing the state of affairs in the creative digital industries and the role of information in politics and society.

Who Owns the Internet?

What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture.

Both writers take the approach of legal copyright and the effects of piracy 0n revenue streams. We believe the focus should be on how content is valued and monetized through network effects. Taplin alludes to this when he suggests a streaming service as a non-profit cooperative (why non-profit?).

Such a streaming/lending service is consistent with the tuka ecosystem model and the revenues generated would be distributed accordingly to the content creators, profitably. This is an essential part of how content is distributed these days according to how consumers want to consume it. The network data generated by the ecosystem can also be monetized through advertising and ancillary marketing, supplementing the decreased income users receive from sales.

This recognizes that the primary roadblock to a thriving ecosystem is the connection costs associated with excessive supply of unfiltered content. This is a problem for consumers as well as creators. Solving that problem helps solve the revenue problem.

Why musicians are so angry…

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…at the world’s most popular music streaming service

Slide09
Washington Post
By Todd C. Frankel July 14
With the money from CDs and digital downloads disappearing, the music industry has pinned its hope for the future on online song streaming, which now accounts for the majority of the $7.7 billion U.S. music market.

But the biggest player in this future isn’t one of the names most associated with streaming — Spotify, Amazon, Pandora or Apple. It’s YouTube, the site best known for viral videos, which accounts for 25 percent of all music streamed worldwide, far more than any other site.

Now, YouTube is locked in an increasingly bitter battle with music labels over how much it pays to stream their songs — and at stake is not just the finances of the music industry but also the way that millions of people around the world have grown accustomed to listening to music: free of cost.

Music labels accuse YouTube of using a legal loophole to pay less for songs than traditional music-streaming sites, calling YouTube the biggest threat since song piracy crippled the industry in the early 2000s. The industry has pressed its case to regulators around the world in hopes of forcing a change.

“I do think YouTube is starting to panic a little bit,” said Mitch Glazier, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

But YouTube is not backing down, stressing the benefits to musicians of promotion on one of the Web’s most popular sites — which allows ordinary users to integrate music into their uploads. YouTube also warns against attacks that could reduce competition among streaming services.

“The industry should be really, really careful because they could close their eyes and wake up with their revenue really concentrated in two, three sources,” said Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, referring to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Prime Music. (Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The music industry counters they are backed into a corner when negotiating with YouTube — a unit of Google-parent Alphabet — which is mostly shielded by federal law from being responsible for what users post on the site.

“It isn’t a level playing field,” said one executive at a major music label who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk, “because ultimately you’re negotiating with a party who is going to have your content no matter what.”

Now, the battle is heating up as the European Union is expected to release new rules later this year for how services such as YouTube handle music, potentially upending some of the copyright protections that undergird the Internet.

Online streaming works like a digital jukebox, with fractions of a penny paid each time a song is played. The money comes from ads and subscriptions.

The E.U. has formally recognized that there is a “value gap” between song royalties and what user-upload services such as YouTube earn from selling ads while playing music. YouTube is by far the largest user-upload site.

How such a law would address the gap is still being decided, but the E.U. has indicated it plans to focus on ensuring copyright holders are “properly remunerated.”

Even the value gap’s existence is disputed.

A recent economic study commissioned by YouTube found no value gap — in fact, the report said YouTube promotes the music industry, and if YouTube stopped playing music, 85 percent of users would flock to services that offered lower or no royalties.

A different study by an independent consulting group pegged the YouTube value gap at more than $650 million in the United States alone.

“YouTube is viewed as a giant obstacle in the path to success for the streaming marketplace,” Glazier said.

The dispute boils down to what YouTube pays for songs.

Musicians from Arcade Fire to Garth Brooks to Pharrell Williams say they earn significantly less when their songs are played on YouTube than on a site such as Spotify — even though many listeners use these services in the same way. Both YouTube and Spotify allow users to search for music and find song recommendations. On YouTube, users can find music alongside cat videos and toy reviews in what is generally a free-for-all of content, while people go to Spotify and the like for a more refined experience. Some audiophiles argue the sound quality on music streaming sites is superior.

YouTube pays an estimated $1 per 1,000 plays on average, while Spotify and Apple music pay a rate closer to $7.

Irving Azoff, the legendary manager for acts such as the Eagles and Christina Aguilera, said he has one artist — whom he declined to name — who gets 33 percent of her online streams from YouTube but only 10 percent of her streaming revenue.

Smaller acts see it, too. Zoe Keating, an instrumental cello player, showed The Washington Post a statement from YouTube showing that she earned $261 from 1.42 million views on YouTube. In comparison, she earned $940 from 230,000 streams on Spotify.

“YouTube revenue is so negligible that I stopped paying attention to it,” Keating said.

YouTube admits that it pays less for songs.

But the reason for this disparity is where the two sides split.

The music industry claims YouTube has avoided paying a fair-market rate by hiding behind broad legal protections. In the United States, that’s the “safe harbor” provision, which essentially says YouTube is not to blame if someone uploads a copy-protected song —unless the copyright holder complains.

This, the music industry argues, leads to a costly game of “Whac-A-Mole”: hunting for illicit song uploads and filing notices with YouTube.

“You can’t prevent something from going up on YouTube. All you can do is ask them to take it down,” said Stephen Carlisle, who runs the copyright office at Nova Southeastern University. “At some point, it’s not worth it to do this.”

YouTube says it has the solution: Its Content ID system automatically checks for violations by comparing songs detected in new uploads against a database of claimed songs, capturing 99.5 percent of complaints. The company says it averages fewer than 1,500 traditional copyright claims from the music industry a week.

YouTube also pointed out that it has licensing deals with music labels large and small.

Earlier this year, Warner Music Group — one of the “big three” music labels — signed a new licensing deal with YouTube, and a memo from Warner chief executive Steve Cooper leaked out, saying the deal was signed “under very difficult circumstances.”

“There’s no getting around the fact that, even if YouTube doesn’t have licenses, our music will still be available but not monetized at all,” the memo continued.

Warner confirmed the memo’s authenticity, but, like the other major labels, declined to comment for this article.

Cooper’s complaints surprised Cohen, who worked at Warner until leaving for YouTube last year.

“I never heard that from his mouth during the entire negotiation,” Cohen said.

Cohen’s move to YouTube created waves in the industry. After all, Cohen was famous for taking one of the hardest stands against YouTube when, in 2008, he pulled Warner’s entire song catalogue from the video service to protest low song royalties. It was the nuclear option.

And it failed. After nine months and spending $2 million trying to keep its music off YouTube, Warner capitulated.

Cohen said he was sympathetic to his former colleague’s complaints. But YouTube pays $1 billion in song royalties worldwide each year. Cohen said his company has been hindered by its global reach — ad rates are lower outside the United States — and its slower rollout of a subscription option, YouTube Red. Song royalties are higher with monthly subscriptions than ads.

“What I’m trying to do with YouTube is be a cheerleader to build a subscription business that the industry can be proud of,” Cohen said.

Nabila Hisham, 22, is a music fan on YouTube. Recently, the college student in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has been playing one song repeatedly: “Despacito,” a chart-topping Latin pop remix featuring Justin Bieber. The YouTube video — which has a total of 412 million plays — is a photo of Bieber’s tattooed neck. The video is beside the point. For, Hisham, it’s about the music.

“I’m glad that YouTube exists,” she said.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated YouTube’s ContentID system automatically handles 98 percent of copyright management for songs. The system handles 99.5 percent.

tuka Integration = Web 3.0

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tuka aligns the primary needs of a creative market–to promote, transact and connect–through three integrated digital technologies. These are an online social network (OSN) that is more accurately termed a online media network; a peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing protocol to exchange digital media; and a blockchain transaction ledger to keep track of information data flows and transactions.We might put it more simply in these terms:

OSN + P2P + BC = tuka.

1. Promote.

The purpose of the OSN platform is to share and promote content. It’s different from Facebook because postings are limited to sample files of creative content. In other words, good-bye to white noise and push ads. Through a timeline feed, users curate their feeds so creators can discover their audiences and vice-versa.

2. Transact.

Resulting transactions among users are enabled over a peer-to-peer [P2P] file-sharing distribution and payments network.

3. Connect.

The flow of transactions data and shared information is recorded by the Blockchain (BC). Peer networks are managed through a dedicated user dashboard.

Control Your Peer Network.

Blockchain is a distributed public ledger that records all transaction/data flows between users, whether monetary or non-monetary (read more here and here). Smart contracts can be programmed into the metadata of digital content so the Blockchain can distribute value to every user who contributes to the final transaction, meaning promotional efforts by fans can be rewarded by content owners, contingent upon sales. Successful promotion and marketing receive remuneration after the sale; while unsuccessful or free promo incurs no costs.

A Blockchain ledger system also means users have the power to build out and control their own peer networks on the platform. Users can reap the value of their data networks rather than surrendering that value to network servers.

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Blockchain’s New World

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blockchain-business-1
What is the BlockChain?

Why it’s disruptive: Blockchain promises to make firms’ back-end operations more efficient and cheaper. Eventually, it could replace companies altogether.

Interesting article on the broad business/economic implications of blockchain technology with a wealth of relevant links to additional resources:

Executive’s guide to implementing blockchain technology

The technology behind bitcoin is one of the internet’s most promising new developments. Here’s how businesses can use it to streamline operations and create new opportunities.

By |

 

Blockchains are one of the most important technologies to emerge in recent years, with many experts believing they will change our world in the next two decades as much as the internet has over the last two.

Although it is early in its development, firms pursuing blockchain technology include IBM, Microsoft, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, Nasdaq, Foxconn, Visa, and shipping giant Maersk. Venture capitalists have so far poured $1.5 billion into the space, with storied firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and Khosla Ventures making bets on startups.

A blockchain is a golden record of the truth that creates trust among multiple parties.

The applications for blockchain technology seem endless. While the first obvious ones are financial — international payments, remittances, complex financial products — it can also solve problems and create new opportunities in healthcare, defense, supply chain management, luxury goods, government, and other industries. In more advanced stages, the technology could give rise to what Gartner calls “the programmable economy,” powered by entirely new business models that eliminate all kinds of middlemen, machine networks in which devices engage in economic activity, and “smart assets” in which some form of property such as shares in a company can be traded according to programmable or artificial intelligence-based rules rather than the control of a centralized entity.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

What is blockchain: A blockchain is a single version of the truth made possible by an immutable and secure time-stamped ledger, copies of which are held by multiple parties.

Why it matters: It shifts trust in business from an institution or entity to software and could someday spell the demise of many traditional companies. It also promises to make trade-able many assets that are illiquid today, enable our devices and gadgets to become consumers, and bring trust to many areas of business, eliminating fraud and counterfeiting.

How it works: Cryptography secures the data and new transactions are linked to previous ones, making it near-impossible to change older records without having to change subsequent ones. And because multiple “nodes” (computers) run the network, one would need to gain control of more than half of them in order to make changes.

Why it’s disruptive: At the least it promises to make firms’ back-end operations more efficient and cheaper, but down the line, it could replace companies altogether.

Business opportunities: New services and products will pop up in areas such as creating and trading assets, tracking provenance, managing supply chain, managing identity, and in providing ancillary services to the software itself.

Main vendors: More than a dozen platform vendors have sprung up, and several dozen consulting and implementation providers assist in adopting blockchain projects.

Career options: The main blockchain specialists include developers and business and technical architects. But roles are also needed in risk management, security, cryptography, business process management, product strategy, and analytics.

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN

A blockchain is a golden record of the truth that creates trust among multiple parties. Specifically, it’s a secure, tamper-proof ledger with time-stamped transactions, distributed amongst a number of entities.

BLOCKCHAIN IN THE NEWS

This means a blockchain — a piece of technology — can replace an intermediary in situations where a trusted third party is required. So, for instance, while we now need a bank (or several) in order to make a payment to a foreign country, a piece of software — the program running bitcoin — can now send money to someone across the world for us. And the latter is much cheaper and faster — and, in the case of bitcoin, transparent so you can see when the money arrives, whereas with a bank wire, you have to find out from the recipient. (Blockchains can be made private as well, to protect data.) Overall, blockchain technology promises greater security and lower costs than traditional databases.

“The problem in the market is that blockchain is being used as a collective noun for the bitcoin blockchain and everything else in between, and that’s not exactly true,” says David Furlonger, Gartner vice president and fellow. Blockchain has become the catch-all phrase for a larger group of technologies called “distributed ledger technology” or DLT. Technically speaking, it is possible to have a distributed ledger that is not constructed as a blockchain (as described below), however, when people refer to blockchain technology, they are often speaking about DLT.

And if you want to get really technical, “DLT falls short because it assumes information gets distributed when in many cases it doesn’t,” says Javier Paz, senior analyst at financial services research firm Aite Group. But “blockchain,” “distributed ledger,” or “DLT” should suffice for all but the most technical discussions.

Additional resources

WHY IT MATTERS

“The key differentiator between a database and blockchain is that a database is managed and controlled by someone,” says Eric Piscini, principal of financial services technology at Deloitte. “A blockchain doesn’t need to be managed by someone, so you don’t have to trust someone to run the platform. It’s run by everyone at the same time. That’s a shift in business models.”

Eventually, blockchains could give rise to a number of peer-to-peer networks not run by any centralized parties that enable the creation and transfer of money or other assets. For instance, the technology could be used to create an Airbnb-like network without the company Airbnb. When combined with the Internet of Things (IoT), it could create an Uber-like program without Uber. Such peer-to-peer networks are often referred to as distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs), and someday, they could transform our whole conception of companies.

Gartner projects that blockchain will result in $176 billion in added business value by 2025, and $3.1 trillion by 2030.

Additional resources

HOW IT WORKS

Not every blockchain works the same way. For example, they can differ in their consensus mechanisms, which are the rules by which the technology will update the ledger. But broadly, a blockchain is a ledger on which new transactions are recorded in blocks, with each block identified by a cryptographic hash of that data. The same hash will always result from that data, but it is impossible to re-create the data from the hash. Similarly, if even the smallest detail of that transaction data is changed, it will create a wildly different hash, and since the hash of each block is included as a data point in the next block, subsequent blocks would also end up with different hashes. This is what makes the ledger tamper-proof. Finally, security also comes from the fact that multiple computers called nodes store the blockchain, and so to change the ledger, one would need to gain control of at least 50 percent of the computing power in order to change the record — a difficult feat especially for a public blockchain such as bitcoin’s.

Additional resources

WHY IT’S DISRUPTIVE

A common saying is that blockchain technology will do what the internet did to media — disrupt — but to sectors such as financial services, law, and other industries offering trust as a service.

“The industry has lived and breathed off the back of intermediation,” Furlonger says. Noting that banks typically control financial activity and governments usually control the economic assets we use, he adds, “If you think about the way authentication and identification is done, the way you onboard customers, the way you share records, all of this is done through siloed, decades-old channels and processes. And here you have a technology that basically says you no longer need a middleman, you have one golden copy of a record that no one can change … anyone can join any time because it’s open source … it’s kind of free, anyone can create any asset and distribute it to anyone else on the planet. You’re basically saying, we’re going to change the way the economic models that have grown up for the last several centuries operate. As a result, we’re going to change the way society operates as well.”

He believes the outcome will be what Gartner calls “the programmable economy,” which it defines as a global market powered by algorithmic businesses and DAOs running on blockchain-based networks whose assets engage in economic activity by rules coded in software or artificial intelligence. The two most commonly used public networks so far are bitcoin and Ethereum, a public blockchain like bitcoin’s that is focused on smart contracts, which are software programs that execute transactions when certain conditions are met.

But that’s at least a decade off. To start, the technology will make the back-end operations of many companies more efficient because, now, firms that work with each other and even different departments within one organization often maintain their own ledgers, duplicating work. “At least we will see it impacting the back and middle office, eradicating the problems and cost associated with sustaining multiple versions of the truth,” Paz says.

A recent report by Bain and Company estimated that the savings from implementation of blockchain technology would amount to $15 to $35 billion annually. As services at certain companies become more efficient and cheaper, marketshare among incumbents is likely to change. And because the technology is open source, “You can build that platform for a fraction of what it would cost you with traditional technologies,” Piscini says. That gives both startups as well as the software itself an opening. For instance, people could use the bitcoin network, which is not run by any one company, to make payments cheaply, quickly, and efficiently. “If you just enable transactions for others, you’re in big trouble,” he says, “because the blockchain can replace you as an entity without the need for a legal entity to run it.”

Additional resources

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

Though some executives might fear software replacing their role or their company’s, even email hasn’t killed snail mail. Though the technology does promise to change existing marketshare, Piscini says companies can avoid becoming obsolete by seizing upon new opportunities. “If companies provide incremental services, if they provide you the ability to dispute transactions, to do some analytics on top of that platform — incremental value that you don’t have today — that’s how they’re going to survive.” In fact, blockchain technology will enable companies to offer services that previously were impossible without it. Gartner predicts that by 2022, at least one new business based on blockchain technology will be worth $10 billion.

Blockchain technology makes possible new offerings in industries as diverse as financial services, healthcare, supply chain, oil and gas, retail, music, advertising, publishing, media, energy, government, and many others. In finance alone, it can be used for making international payments, trading stocks, bonds, and commodities, and providing an audit trail for regulators. It can create new forms of assets and make it possible to trade existing illiquid ones, such as mobile minutes, energy credits and frequent flyer miles. It can be used to track provenance, stamping out fraud and counterfeiting in areas such as luxury goods, fine art, pharmaceuticals, food, and government documents. It makes it possible for musicians, writers, and other artists to embed royalty payments into their MP3s, ebooks, and other creations to pay themselves every time their work is bought or resold. It can be used by publishers to run publications funded not by ads but by micropayments issued by readers’ browsers. It can enable people to manage their identity and the privacy of their data instead of having to rely on centralized entities such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter. It can show an individual voter that their vote was counted correctly and the entire electorate that no votes were fraudulent or counted more than once. And those are just some examples.

Gartner projects that devices or things using blockchains to transact will comprise 30 percent of the global customer base by 2030. One of the more popular futuristic scenarios is that we may someday tell our self-driving car that we’re in a rush and to send a micropayment to any car that is willing to be passed on the highway. The money will be transmitted via a combination of blockchain and IoT technologies.

Additional resources

VENDORS

A host of platform vendors to enterprise have already cropped up. Although the space has more than a dozen players, the most active groups (two are not companies), in alphabetical order, are:

  1. Chain, which, together with Nasdaq, created the first private blockchain in production (though on a small scale) — Nasdaq Linq, which is used in managing shares in private companies. It also has partnerships with Visa, Citi, and Capital One.
  2. Ethereum, a P2P network that’s public like bitcoin but focused on smart contracts, not payments, and that has an enterprise initiative, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).
  3. Hyperledger, the open-source effort run by the Linux Foundation and closely affiliated with IBM which counts companies as diverse as Airbus, American Express, Daimler, and Intel as members.
  4. R3, a consortium of financial institutions whose distributed ledger offering, Corda, is not structured as a blockchain, meaning that transaction data is not published to the ledger of every participant in the network. Instead transactions are published only on the ledgers of the relevant parties.

Others include Axoni, Digital Asset Holdings, Monax, Ripple, SETL, Symbiont, and T0 (T-zero, as in settlement in zero days).

Businesses helping firms implement blockchain solutions include Accenture, CapGemini, Chainsmiths, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, IBM Global Services, Infosys, KMPG, PwC, Polaris, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, and others. IBM and Microsoft are leaders in cloud blockchain services.

Additional Resources

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Blockchain 101

tukaglobal708 Comments

Blockchain is a new buzzword in technology. It’s the basis of all the excitement about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and Fintech. If you’re unfamiliar with blockchain technology, think of it is as a trustless decentralized general ledger. What that means is – everything written to this ledger is considered the “truth” only after consensus is supplied by a significant majority of participants hosting the blockchain. This makes the blockchain “trustless” because no party can manipulate the results without conspiring with that large majority. Imagine a card game where everybody had to show their hands. There would be no bluffing (though it wouldn’t be a very interesting card game).

Participants of the blockchain are often “anonymous” so understanding who you would potentially conspire with is also challenging and quite impractical. (On tuka the parties to an exchange would not be anonymous, so you would know exactly who you were dealing with.) Furthermore, the blockchain leaves an audit trail of all previous transactions for transparent traceability and the continual lengthening of the block structure makes it difficulty to create a forgery. On tuka this means a user can trace his or her own peer network that can yield significant value.

The blockchain is physically decentralized like a large distributed peer-to-peer database. The single source of truth information it holds is virtually centralized and all data is publicly accessible. Information written to that blockchain can be verified without understanding what the contents are because of how blockchain works in trustless mode.

In plain English, blockchain technology eliminates the need for a 3rd party middleman to insure trust in the system. This applies to banks and insurance companies as financial intermediaries, lawyers and politicians as legal intermediaries, and, in the creative industries, online middlemen like centralized retailers and distributors (Apple, Amazon, Google). This has broad and deep implications for the business models of these industries. Such 3rd parties are quite costly to transactions and in the case of digital content, often take the lion’s share of the value.

We’re learning here as we go, but this should provide some food for thought…(to be continued)

Links:

What is the Blockchain?

 

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