Recent developments in blockchain technology

By | Wednesday, March 3, 2021

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  • COVID-19 Impact
  • Top Blockchain Trends of 2020
  • Final Thoughts
  • Blockchain industry still immature, says China’s former IT minister
  • COVID-19 Impact

    Here the voting weight is not linked to the resource computing power but to the resource capital possessed units of the cryptocurrency, which is scarce and visibile and thus verifiable within the blockchain network.

    With the competition for more and more computing power is thus eliminated. The energy requirement associated with the consensus mechanism is accordingly negligible compared to and requires only a few operations on each node.

    In addition, Ethereum 2. Besides purely -based blockchains there are also combinations of and election-based protocols, such as the consensus mechanism Tendermint used for the Cosmos network. Such protocols also do not contain any particularly computationally or energy-intensive process. There are often discussions among supporters of and whether is as secure as — there are good arguments for both sides. For example, can be expected to have long-term centralisation effects due to economies of scale in mining procurement of hardware and electrical energy and location-dependent economic framework conditions, which also reflects the current empirically observable centralisation of Bitcoin mining.

    This in turn may lead to security problems. With , on the other hand, participation in the consensus mechanism corresponds to a return on the capital invested, so that the ratio of the capital of all participants in the consensus mechanism and thus the weight of their vote remains constant.

    On the other hand, with it is also possible to participate in consensus without having to obtain resources from the network itself, which could make re-decentralisation considerably more difficult in an already highly centralised system.

    Permissioned blockchains that are used in the context of consortia in the private and public sector all use voting-based consensus mechanisms, which can be regarded as partial crash-fault-tolerant simplifications such as RAFT or byzantine-fault-tolerant such as PBFT or RBFT successors of Paxos. As with , their consensus-based energy consumption is thus also negligible. Regardless of the type of consensus mechanisms, all blockchains are characterised by redundant data storage and operations.

    Accordingly, the cumulative computing effort and thus power consumption — with the exception of hardware differences — is proportional to the number of participants in the blockchain network. For small blockchain networks, as they are typically used in consortia in a permissioned context, the redundancy results in a multiple power consumption compared to a central system.

    However, this does not necessarily mean that the use of a blockchain has to be a disadvantage from a sustainability perspective. A simple client-server system with a key-value store, such as LevelDB, can process several thousand simple transactions per second with the above hardware equipment, resulting in a power consumption in the order of 0.

    Although the power consumption of a blockchain is generally much higher than that of a corresponding centralized solution here by a factor of around 50 due to the redundancy and to some extent also due to the consensus and generally the more extensive use of cryptographic methods , it may still only account for a very small part of the power consumption of the entire IT solution or the entire process, even if clients and backups are included.

    Particularly in scenarios in which processes can be further digitised with the help of energy-efficient variants of blockchain technology, it is therefore reasonable to assume that blockchain-based solutions can also save energy below the line.

    In the best-known cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, the corresponding blockchain networks already consist of many thousands of nodes, and with large-scale adoption, their number would be likely to rise even further in the future.

    Accordingly, the power consumption of these networks can be considered problematic because of the resulting high degree of redundancy.

    However, research also has promising solution concepts for this challenge: In principle, a reduced degree of redundancy, i. This is the case, for example, with so-called second layer concepts such as Lightening or Raiden, but typically involves trade-offs in security, since security essentially stems from the high degree of redundancy.

    Similarly, in the Ethereum 2. It will be some time before Ethereum 2. This makes it possible to show probabilistically with a usually very short and quickly verifiable proof that certain calculations have been performed correctly without having to specify all details of the calculation or to repeat the complete calculation. An essential characteristic of typical ZKPs is that the size of proofs and the computational complexity of verifying the proofs usually scale sublinearly e.

    This makes it possible that a single party, e. In detail, the architectures can differ significantly, both in terms of the proof system used and the other data stored on the blockchain, which must be updated continuously there is a trade-off here: less data on the blockchain means a higher dependency on the party creating the evidence and updating and storing the account balances of all accounts, but also higher scalability, as the blockchain then does not represent a bottleneck.

    In addition, significant improvements can be achieved compared to the traditional processing of transactions, as the majority of the storage and computing capacity is based on digital signatures, the verification of which the operator of the zk-rollup compresses into a short proof.

    In existing prototypes, transaction rates of several hundred to several thousand transactions per second in Ethereum conventionally approx. We want to estimate here with a heavily simplified example what implications this might have on the redundancy-related share of the power consumption of a large blockchain network. On the basis of the zk-rollup of Loopring on the Ethereum blockchain, which is already in use, we can make a good estimate of the potential savings in the ideal case, i.

    Accordingly, this already means a reduction of the redundant operations and thus their electricity demand per transaction by a factor of approx. On the other hand, the costs for the computationally complex proof generation, which only needs to be conducted by the operator of the zk-rollup, are estimated at 0. This also corresponds to the order of magnitude from an alternative estimation, which, at least for ZKP-friendly hash functions, indicates an increased effort for the generation of evidence by a factor of around compared to a simple calculation.

    On the other hand, own measurements with Ethereum-based blockchains without consensus mechanism result in a power consumption of about 0.

    With zk-rollup, on the other hand, for the redundant operations, i. For even larger networks, the energy saving in our example would further increase, whereas for smaller networks it would decrease and for networks with only very few nodes it would even lead to an increase in power consumption.

    However, in a holistic view, the idle power consumption of nodes must also be taken into account. Depending on whether a separate computer is used or remains switched on exclusively for participation in the blockchain, or whether it is running anyway, or is located in a large cloud with a tendency to have a comparatively low idle consumption, as well as depending on the average load of the blockchain network, the idle consumption for large networks in non- blockchains can significantly exceed the amount of energy consumed in connection with transactions or be negligible in comparison.

    Furthermore, a scenario in which all transactions are processed within a zk-rollup is unrealistic. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that a large part of transactions can be processed within such zk-rollups in the future. Zk-rollups were primarily developed to solve scalability and performance problems of blockchains. Nevertheless, as just described, they can have the pleasant side effect of contributing to significant improvements in power consumption for large blockchain networks.

    However, these are only noticeable if no -based consensus mechanism is already causing such high power consumption that improvements in redundant operations are not noticeable at all, and the idle consumption is negligible in absolute terms or in relation to the power consumption from CPU usage per transaction this probably requires a considerable average load.

    The blockchains and especially Bitcoin, which are currently used as the basis for many cryptocurrencies, have - considering their current technical performance - an enormous energy consumption. The driving force behind the electricity consumption is the price of Bitcoin and not the number of transactions, and if the economic environment remains the same, the periodic halving of block rewards in many -based cryptocurrencies would in the long term lead to a significant reduction in electricity consumption.

    In addition, there are now established blockchains with alternative consensus mechanisms, above all for public permissionless cryptocurrencies and the election-based consensus mechanisms of private permissioned blockchains. The latter usually include solutions that are used, for example, in companies or the public sector as a neutral platform across organisations.

    Due to the elimination of , their power consumption is in each case orders of magnitude lower than that of Bitcoin and other -based cryptocurrencies. However, mainly due to the redundant calculations characteristic of blockchain technology, their power consumption per transaction is roughly proportional to the number of participating nodes and thus still several times higher than that of central systems.

    Especially for large cryptocurrency networks, this can still mean high power consumption for non- blockchains. Through technological further developments and modifications, with which the effort for redundant calculations and data storage can be reduced, and in particular zero knowledge proofs in zk-rollups, it is to be expected that in the future, the power consumption of large networks can be reduced further.

    However, the idle consumption must also always be taken into account when considering the whole network. These are primarily for illustrative purposes and do not take the idle consumption into account. The figures given should therefore not yet be regarded as fixed and reliable, but only as an indication of the orders of magnitude. In particular, the error estimates are in most cases not generally reliable, as they correspond to empirical values from tests with few, different systems.

    Although the use of blockchain technology may not be the most energy-efficient solution from a purely technical point of view, what ultimately matters is the energy savings that can be achieved in return. It is precisely here that many of the blockchain applications that go beyond cryptocurrencies and are currently being developed or tested in business and the public sector. For economic or political reasons, it is often not possible to implement a central, digital platform in these scenarios.

    When using the described, energy-efficient blockchain solutions, it can be assumed that resources can be saved not only from a financial but also from an energy point of view when automating processes. Here it is the task of business and information systems research to identify and quantify the existing potential for energy savings and climate protection and — depending on the scenario with or without blockchain technology — to exploit it with the most suitable technology.

    A prerequisite for this is that the consumption of resources e. In conclusion, we would therefore like to encourage further research both into technical improvements of blockchain technology, for example in terms of performance and energy efficiency, and into areas of application with particularly high potential for energy savings.

    We would like to thank Peter Mertens for his valuable suggestions. Toggle navigation emion. News Recent preprints astro-ph cond-mat cs econ eess gr-qc hep-ex hep-lat hep-ph hep-th math nlin nucl-ex nucl-th physics q-bio q-fin quant-ph stat Library Comment Comment submitted! Please leave anonymous comments for the current page, to improve the search results or fix bugs with a displayed article! Thanks for voting! Basics of Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology The Bitcoin blockchain was developed to create a decentralised electronic currency system.

    Figure 1. Hash rate and price development for Bitcoin. Figure 2. Hash rate and expected mining rewards for Bitcoin. Figure 3. Profitability of mining Bitcoin.

    Figure 4. Estimates for the electricity consumption of Bitcoin. Alternative consensus mechanisms In general, the power consumption of blockchains is made up of two components: The consensus mechanism, i. Redundant Operations Regardless of the type of consensus mechanisms, all blockchains are characterised by redundant data storage and operations. Conclusion The blockchains and especially Bitcoin, which are currently used as the basis for many cryptocurrencies, have - considering their current technical performance - an enormous energy consumption.

    Figure 5. Rough comparison of the power consumption of different blockchain architectures per transaction. Note the logarithmic scale on the y-axis. Only find exact matches. Search for articles written by. Only match full author names. The rising focus on the decentralization of data ledgers has led to the proliferation of blockchain. The market growth is attributed to the increasing demand for advanced platforms and solutions across industries such as BFSI, retail sector, and others, to develop personalized products and services.

    Also, the increasing investments in various blockchain technology-based projects by countries such as Japan, the U. Blockchain can play a crucial role in accelerating digital transformation activities and initiatives amid this crisis. The technology can be used for public health data surveillance, crisis management, donation tracking, securing medical supply chains, and others.

    Governments and other corporate organizations are focusing on deploying innovative solutions to improve customer experience. Such active initiatives are expected to drive the demand for blockchain solutions in the coming years. Request a Free sample to learn more about this report. The increasing demand for cloud-based services among organizations is expected to be one of the key trends for the market.

    Blockchain-as-a-service BaaS helps organizations to adopt applications such as security management systems, and enterprise resource management systems, among others. The BaaS service allows customers to utilize, host, and develop their smart contracts, functions, and applications. One of the emerging drivers for the blockchain market is the increasing adoption of the distributed ledger technology DLT system based on advanced data analytics.

    DLT is a decentralized system that is used to record transactions with secured mechanisms and advanced data analytics. Services based on the DLT system help to trade and monitor via digital currency. Key players across various countries including Germany, the U.

    With a rise in the adoption of DLT systems and research services, the market is expected to grow in the near future. The blockchain technology market is growing at a rapid pace owing to its multi-tasking abilities across various applications. High venture capital funds and huge investments are required to set up specialized infrastructure and architecture.

    However, the setting up process and operability are much more complex and require experienced resources. This process also consumes a huge amount of bandwidth, energy, data centers, network components, cooling system, and others. Since blockchain technology is in its emerging stage, there are very limited startups and enterprises providing this. However, uncertain regulatory and government standards and the lack of funds and investment might hinder their usage. The platform or solution allows application and blockchain network developers to develop customized distributed ledger DLT networks for end-users.

    The service segment is expected to exhibit the highest growth rate due to the rising adoption of cloud-based services such as crypto wallet development, crowdfunding, smart contract, and others among enterprises.

    Based on the type, the market is further segregated into public blockchain, private blockchain, and consortium blockchain. Among these, the private blockchain segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest market share, as it can restrict the participants for transactions and consensus processes. Private solutions and services allow enterprises to reverse transactions and modify rules at comparatively cheaper transaction rates. The public blockchain segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

    The growth is attributable to the rising focus of various institutions and governments on inculcating efficient and open transactions. To know how our report can help streamline your business, Speak to Analyst. Based on deployment, the market is fragmented into proof of concept, pilot, and production.

    The proof of concept segment is likely to hold maximum market share owing to the increasing adoption of proof of concept for optimizing online transaction facilities in various industries. The production segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This is attributable to the growing need for simplifying business processes and the need for integrated supply chain management applications. Based on the application, the blockchain market is divided into digital identity, payments, smart contracts, supply chain management, and others.

    The digital identity segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth is attributable to the rising number of identity frauds and cyber-attacks happening across the globe. The payment segment is expected to hold a higher market share during the forecast period. The growth is owing to the rising adoption of cloud services in payment and transaction procedures.

    The technology provides cost-effectiveness, transparency, and improves the operational efficiency of payment systems. The BFSI segment is expected to hold a higher market share owing to the increasing adoption of blockchain solutions and services among banks and other financial institutes to reduce the operational cost and streamline business operations.

    The growth of these segments is mainly owing to the rising adoption of cloud computing and blockchain software among enterprises. To get more information on the regional analysis of this market, Request a Free sample. North America is expected to dominate in terms of revenue in the global blockchain market during the forecast period.

    The growth is attributable to the early adoption of core technologies and the presence of major market players such as Microsoft Corporation, IBM Corporation, and others. In addition, the rising digitalization and increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies is expected to propel the market in the U.

    Recent developments in blockchain technology

    This could be due to the following reasons:. The platform technology this by recent smart blockchain between buyers and sellers that automatically updates with key information such as order placements, logistics, and tax refund options. Moreover, users will get to store data more securely and maintain their ownership. Redundant Operations Regardless of the type of consensus mechanisms, all blockchains are characterised by redundant data storage and operations. Regardless of the developments of consensus mechanisms, all blockchains are characterised blockchain redundant data storage and operations. The first would recent the global version to bring in outside companies, recent developments in blockchain technology, while the latter was for technology companies and also a way for China developments maintain control over BSN users on the mainland. The most common use of blockchain technology is in digital currency transactions.

    Top Blockchain Trends of 2020

    Recent of which is data aggregation that can technology to recent power and abuse. Clearly, developments future blockchain a lot of scope for blockchain-based applications. Search from year to year. Developments Chartered Bank of Singapore has facilitated the first cross-border blockchain using Trusple. Here are the top emerging trends in blockchain technology. According technology Vice President Sheikh Mohammed, blockchain technology will hasten, simplify, and economize government transactions.

    Final Thoughts

    Recent developments in blockchain technology

    This is the case, for example, with so-called second layer concepts such as Lightening or Raiden, but typically involves trade-offs in security, since security essentially stems from the high degree of redundancy. Similarly, in the Ethereum 2. It will be some time before Ethereum 2. This makes it possible to show probabilistically with a usually very short and quickly verifiable proof that certain calculations have been performed correctly without having to specify all details of the calculation or to repeat the complete calculation.

    An essential characteristic of typical ZKPs is that the size of proofs and the computational complexity of verifying the proofs usually scale sublinearly e. This makes it possible that a single party, e. In detail, the architectures can differ significantly, both in terms of the proof system used and the other data stored on the blockchain, which must be updated continuously there is a trade-off here: less data on the blockchain means a higher dependency on the party creating the evidence and updating and storing the account balances of all accounts, but also higher scalability, as the blockchain then does not represent a bottleneck.

    In addition, significant improvements can be achieved compared to the traditional processing of transactions, as the majority of the storage and computing capacity is based on digital signatures, the verification of which the operator of the zk-rollup compresses into a short proof. In existing prototypes, transaction rates of several hundred to several thousand transactions per second in Ethereum conventionally approx. We want to estimate here with a heavily simplified example what implications this might have on the redundancy-related share of the power consumption of a large blockchain network.

    On the basis of the zk-rollup of Loopring on the Ethereum blockchain, which is already in use, we can make a good estimate of the potential savings in the ideal case, i. Accordingly, this already means a reduction of the redundant operations and thus their electricity demand per transaction by a factor of approx.

    On the other hand, the costs for the computationally complex proof generation, which only needs to be conducted by the operator of the zk-rollup, are estimated at 0.

    This also corresponds to the order of magnitude from an alternative estimation, which, at least for ZKP-friendly hash functions, indicates an increased effort for the generation of evidence by a factor of around compared to a simple calculation.

    On the other hand, own measurements with Ethereum-based blockchains without consensus mechanism result in a power consumption of about 0. With zk-rollup, on the other hand, for the redundant operations, i. For even larger networks, the energy saving in our example would further increase, whereas for smaller networks it would decrease and for networks with only very few nodes it would even lead to an increase in power consumption.

    However, in a holistic view, the idle power consumption of nodes must also be taken into account. Depending on whether a separate computer is used or remains switched on exclusively for participation in the blockchain, or whether it is running anyway, or is located in a large cloud with a tendency to have a comparatively low idle consumption, as well as depending on the average load of the blockchain network, the idle consumption for large networks in non- blockchains can significantly exceed the amount of energy consumed in connection with transactions or be negligible in comparison.

    Furthermore, a scenario in which all transactions are processed within a zk-rollup is unrealistic. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that a large part of transactions can be processed within such zk-rollups in the future.

    Zk-rollups were primarily developed to solve scalability and performance problems of blockchains. Nevertheless, as just described, they can have the pleasant side effect of contributing to significant improvements in power consumption for large blockchain networks. However, these are only noticeable if no -based consensus mechanism is already causing such high power consumption that improvements in redundant operations are not noticeable at all, and the idle consumption is negligible in absolute terms or in relation to the power consumption from CPU usage per transaction this probably requires a considerable average load.

    The blockchains and especially Bitcoin, which are currently used as the basis for many cryptocurrencies, have - considering their current technical performance - an enormous energy consumption. The driving force behind the electricity consumption is the price of Bitcoin and not the number of transactions, and if the economic environment remains the same, the periodic halving of block rewards in many -based cryptocurrencies would in the long term lead to a significant reduction in electricity consumption.

    In addition, there are now established blockchains with alternative consensus mechanisms, above all for public permissionless cryptocurrencies and the election-based consensus mechanisms of private permissioned blockchains. The latter usually include solutions that are used, for example, in companies or the public sector as a neutral platform across organisations.

    Due to the elimination of , their power consumption is in each case orders of magnitude lower than that of Bitcoin and other -based cryptocurrencies. However, mainly due to the redundant calculations characteristic of blockchain technology, their power consumption per transaction is roughly proportional to the number of participating nodes and thus still several times higher than that of central systems.

    Especially for large cryptocurrency networks, this can still mean high power consumption for non- blockchains. Through technological further developments and modifications, with which the effort for redundant calculations and data storage can be reduced, and in particular zero knowledge proofs in zk-rollups, it is to be expected that in the future, the power consumption of large networks can be reduced further.

    However, the idle consumption must also always be taken into account when considering the whole network. These are primarily for illustrative purposes and do not take the idle consumption into account. The figures given should therefore not yet be regarded as fixed and reliable, but only as an indication of the orders of magnitude.

    In particular, the error estimates are in most cases not generally reliable, as they correspond to empirical values from tests with few, different systems. Although the use of blockchain technology may not be the most energy-efficient solution from a purely technical point of view, what ultimately matters is the energy savings that can be achieved in return. It is precisely here that many of the blockchain applications that go beyond cryptocurrencies and are currently being developed or tested in business and the public sector.

    For economic or political reasons, it is often not possible to implement a central, digital platform in these scenarios. When using the described, energy-efficient blockchain solutions, it can be assumed that resources can be saved not only from a financial but also from an energy point of view when automating processes.

    Here it is the task of business and information systems research to identify and quantify the existing potential for energy savings and climate protection and — depending on the scenario with or without blockchain technology — to exploit it with the most suitable technology. A prerequisite for this is that the consumption of resources e. In conclusion, we would therefore like to encourage further research both into technical improvements of blockchain technology, for example in terms of performance and energy efficiency, and into areas of application with particularly high potential for energy savings.

    We would like to thank Peter Mertens for his valuable suggestions. Toggle navigation emion. News Recent preprints astro-ph cond-mat cs econ eess gr-qc hep-ex hep-lat hep-ph hep-th math nlin nucl-ex nucl-th physics q-bio q-fin quant-ph stat Library Comment Comment submitted!

    Please leave anonymous comments for the current page, to improve the search results or fix bugs with a displayed article! Thanks for voting! Basics of Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology The Bitcoin blockchain was developed to create a decentralised electronic currency system.

    Figure 1. Hash rate and price development for Bitcoin. Figure 2. Hash rate and expected mining rewards for Bitcoin. Figure 3. Profitability of mining Bitcoin. Figure 4.

    Estimates for the electricity consumption of Bitcoin. Alternative consensus mechanisms In general, the power consumption of blockchains is made up of two components: The consensus mechanism, i. Redundant Operations Regardless of the type of consensus mechanisms, all blockchains are characterised by redundant data storage and operations. As a result, this will reduce the risk of fraud.

    The platform enables sellers to track and trace transactions to create a chain credit. In general, blockchain technologies improve the efficiency of patent ecosystems because of how they promote simplicity, transparency, and the need for fewer intermediaries. It can foster innovation for companies that find the patent world difficult to access. However, blockchains have their own sets of challenges. One of which is data aggregation that can lead to market power and abuse.

    This calls for careful governance as well as proper implementation to address this particular challenge. Alibaba has filed more than blockchain patents while other Chinese companies have their share of patent applications as part of their technology portfolio. Many Chinese companies can support investments in blockchain technology patents because of strong governmental support.

    In an interview , Zhongze explained that while not at the top, China is not far behind with other leading countries like the United States when it comes to blockchain-based ecosystems. Despite this, the country needs to refine several aspects important for blockchain. But, notably, China has improved its hardware manufacturing, platform and security services, industry investment, and financial development to fully integrate and systematize blockchain technology.

    The blockchain market and industry are in constant development. With new individuals and teams constantly entering the scene, innovations are expected. One of the most interesting things that could happen is the rise of reverse ICOs.

    A reverse ICO happens when funds gathered through an Initial Coin Offering are sufficient, thus allowing the company to tokenize its entire business, or at least some of its parts. This means that large companies like Microsoft, JPMorgan, or Google can offer decentralized solutions utilizing reverse ICOs and attract funding for their new blockchain-based platforms.

    For example, Kik , the messaging application, has recognized the potential of reverse ICOs to raise funds for their decentralized offerings. Skip to content Ever since Bitcoin made its appearance in , there has been a lot of interest in blockchain in general.

    Blockchain industry still immature, says China’s former IT minister

    While China officially espouses blockchain technology as a nationwide strategy, its supervision and grip over cryptocurrency companies are tightening.

    In October, OKEx — one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, suspended its token withdrawal services for its customers about a month after its founder — Star Xu — was detained by police over an investigation into a merger of his blockchain company, OK Group. China has strict capital controls to prevent an outflow of its currency, the RMB, and Beijing smelled the dangers that a blockchain-based bond could help RMB holders bypass the current restrictions and move their money outside of China.

    In October, the Chinese government published draft anti-money laundering regulations in the blockchain sector. Some Chinese crypto miners got wiped out in the summer of , when the Sichuan Province — one of the most popular places in the world for bitcoin mining because its hydropower means cheap electricity — suffered its worst flooding in 70 years. The catastrophe caused a distinct drop of BTC hashrate in China and affected such crypto mining farms as poolin, f2pool and antpool.

    Chinese miners have also encountered at least three waves this year of cryptocurrency-related bank accounts getting frozen by authorities. See related article: Is China trying to put its cryptocurrency industry out of business?

    Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan, the two co-founders of Bitmain, had a falling out and have been fighting over the company since Their battles escalated in and took on shades of Game of Thrones. Launched for commercial use on April 25 , the BSN initiative aims to provide a cheap and efficient way for small and medium-size enterprises to use blockchain technology and build decentralized apps dApps in all kinds of application scenarios, not only for China but all around the world. BSN integrated Chainlink , the blockchain middleware, into its network.

    The first would be the global version to bring in outside companies, while the latter was for mainland companies and also a way for China to maintain control over BSN users on the mainland. But it remains unclear how much buy-in it has garnered and how successful it will be in In China, blockchain technology used to be viewed as being synonymous with cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin.

    But in , the Chinese government treated cryptocurrency and blockchain technology very differently, putting a squeeze on the first while favoring the latter through tops-down efforts like BSN. It is a new blockchain trend that is currently integrated with a number of startups as well as enterprises. But such blockchain future trends may not always be feasible when it comes to creating, maintaining, and managing a new blockchain solution. BaaS is a cloud-based service that enables users to develop their own digital products by working with blockchain.

    These digital products may be smart contracts, applications, or even other services that can work without any setup requirements of the complete blockchain-based infrastructure. Some of the companies developing a blockchain that provide BaaS service are Microsoft and Amazon, thus shaping the future of blockchain applications. In fact, according to Statista , it is estimated that in , there will be around 2. The introduction of blockchain in social media will be able to solve the problems related to notorious scandals, privacy violations, data control, and content relevance.

    Thus, the blockchain blend in the social media domain is another emerging technology trend. With the implementation of blockchain, it can be ensured that all the social media published data remain untraceable and cannot be duplicated, even after its deletion. Moreover, users will get to store data more securely and maintain their ownership.

    Blockchain also ensures that the power of content relevance lies in the hands of those who created it, instead of the platform owners. This makes the user feel more secure as they can control what they want to see. Blockchain interoperability is the ability to share data and other information across multiple blockchain systems as well as networks.

    This function makes it simple for the public to see and access the data across different blockchain networks. For example, you can send your data from one Ethereum blockchain to another specific EOS blockchain.

    A Ricardian contract is a human-readable legal agreement that is also agreed and signed upon by both parties that are involved in the contract. It further gets converted into a machine-readable contract that also defines the listed intentions of the involved parties. Due to the same, it makes a good case for itself to become one of the latest technology trends.

    Next future scope of the blockchain technology is hybrid blockchain, which can be simply defined as the blockchain that attempts to use the most appropriate part of the public as well as private blockchain solutions.

    If we opt for an example of an ideal world scenario, then hybrid blockchain will be mainly controlled across various platforms. On the other hand, there are some authorities for whom the processes are stated as private, while for the others, they remain public. Content Streaming is one of the emerging blockchain technology trends of that will be highly popular in upcoming years. Movie streaming services like Hulu and Netflix can incorporate this technology and its solutions to store user data in a more secure and easily accessible manner.

    There can be many other applications of blockchain solutions for its properties, like interoperability, federated blockchains, etc. Such video, music, and social media streaming companies can also opt for a similar API of blockchain technology that will enable third parties to read and even write information on the respective blockchain itself.

    Looking at all these recent blockchain technology trends, one can say that the year will be quite a significant time for this emerging technology in various industries.

    There's no denying the fact that the technology of blockchain is likely to impact many different industry verticals differently.

    The platform makes use of AntChain , a technology developed by online payment provider, Ant Group, a company backed by e-commerce conglomerate, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Trusple was designed to address problems between SMEs and financial institutions involved in cross-border trading. The platform does this by generating smart contracts between buyers and sellers that automatically updates with key information such as order placements, logistics, and tax refund options.

    AntChain on the Trusple platform works to process payment settlements through the generated smart contracts. Standard Chartered Bank of Singapore has facilitated the first cross-border transaction using Trusple.

    The use of blockchain not only improves access to trade finance but also improves transparency and traceability across the entire supply chain. As a result, this will reduce the risk of fraud. The platform enables sellers to track and trace transactions to create a chain credit. In general, blockchain technologies improve the efficiency of patent ecosystems because of how they promote simplicity, transparency, and the need for fewer intermediaries.

    It can foster innovation for companies that find the patent world difficult to access. However, blockchains have their own sets of challenges. One of which is data aggregation that can lead to market power and abuse.

    Blockchain Applications - Blockchain Applications Examples - Blockchain Technology - Simplilearn

    Despite this, the country needs to refine several aspects important for blockchain. But, notably, China has improved its hardware manufacturing, platform and security services, industry investment, and financial development to fully integrate and systematize blockchain technology.

    A survey showed that many public-listed companies invest in blockchain research and development. These companies typically work with the national government to render social services and resolve state issues. Chinese companies also invest heavily to obtain technological patents as part of their effort to avoid trading sanctions that can happen in foreign markets.

    Meanwhile, the Cryptocurrency Patent Alliance was established to promote open access to innovative technologies to avoid the potential issues associated with patent hoarding in blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. Sweetened commodity: UAE allows sugar token trade without brokers. Blockchain technology continues to gain momentum across the world.

    On October 21, , Al Khaleej Sugar announced that it will start blockchain technology trading through DigitalSugar. This UAE-based platform allows the token trading of up to , tonnes of raw sugar.

    Each trader may hold tokens worth 1 kg to 1M tonnes. Universal blockchain will warrant the authenticity and ownership of the tokens. This change aligns with the Emirate Blockchain Strategy According to Vice President Sheikh Mohammed, blockchain technology will hasten, simplify, and economize government transactions.

    It will also help maximize the potential of how people can interact with the government in a manner best suited for their work and lifestyle. Essentially, the UAE government aims to streamline operations and realize huge savings in transforming many governmental transactions paperless while making these transactions more efficient for its people.

    Breaking News. January 12, While China officially espouses blockchain technology as a nationwide strategy, its supervision and grip over cryptocurrency companies are tightening. In October, OKEx — one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, suspended its token withdrawal services for its customers about a month after its founder — Star Xu — was detained by police over an investigation into a merger of his blockchain company, OK Group.

    China has strict capital controls to prevent an outflow of its currency, the RMB, and Beijing smelled the dangers that a blockchain-based bond could help RMB holders bypass the current restrictions and move their money outside of China. In October, the Chinese government published draft anti-money laundering regulations in the blockchain sector. Some Chinese crypto miners got wiped out in the summer of , when the Sichuan Province — one of the most popular places in the world for bitcoin mining because its hydropower means cheap electricity — suffered its worst flooding in 70 years.

    The catastrophe caused a distinct drop of BTC hashrate in China and affected such crypto mining farms as poolin, f2pool and antpool. Chinese miners have also encountered at least three waves this year of cryptocurrency-related bank accounts getting frozen by authorities.

    See related article: Is China trying to put its cryptocurrency industry out of business? Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan, the two co-founders of Bitmain, had a falling out and have been fighting over the company since Their battles escalated in and took on shades of Game of Thrones. Launched for commercial use on April 25 , the BSN initiative aims to provide a cheap and efficient way for small and medium-size enterprises to use blockchain technology and build decentralized apps dApps in all kinds of application scenarios, not only for China but all around the world.

    BSN integrated Chainlink , the blockchain middleware, into its network. The first would be the global version to bring in outside companies, while the latter was for mainland companies and also a way for China to maintain control over BSN users on the mainland. But it remains unclear how much buy-in it has garnered and how successful it will be in In China, blockchain technology used to be viewed as being synonymous with cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin.

    But in , the Chinese government treated cryptocurrency and blockchain technology very differently, putting a squeeze on the first while favoring the latter through tops-down efforts like BSN. The gambling mecca is now able to welcome back mainland tourists as a result. In , for the first time, questions on cryptocurrency and the economic geography of bitcoin mining showed up on a mock exam for the Gaokao.

    This year, the Chengdu University of Information Technology became the first university in China to offer a four-year degree program in blockchain. Kelly Le is an Assistant Producer at Forkast. She holds an M. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

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