Can a database technology really kill an entire industry? That’s what I was asking myself at one of two blockchain presentations I recently attended. The first was a panel discussion in which knowledgeable blockchain evangelists predicted blockchain will indeed lead to the demise of entire industries. The second was a presentation by a blockchain expert for a Fortune 50 company. Not surprisingly, he offered a different perspective on whether blockchain will cause traditional industries to crater. So how could a database platform, in this case blockchain, put anybody out of business? A blockchain is sometimes defined as a shared, immutable ledger. I would add to this, “transparent”.
Put together, these characteristics make blockchain into something very valuable and potentially very disruptive: SHARED + IMMUTABLE + TRANSPARENT = TRUSTEDThe digital history recorded in a blockchain, whether of documents, transactions, or digitized records of assets or even people, can be trusted by all participants. Who did the panel of blockchain evangelists predict blockchain would put out of business? Trust brokers. Businesses whose value proposition is to ensure the validity and integrity of documents and transactions. Businesses selling trust that can be replaced by using a blockchain. Title insurance companies. Stock clearing houses. Gone. Sounds revolutionary, and scary if you make your living in the trust-broker business. But this panel was presenting to an audience of hundreds, and I didn’t get a chance to follow up with questions that were bothering me: What does it mean to “broker trust”? Does that always mean the same thing? Can blockchain replace all trust brokers or just some, and why? I was still thinking about this when I attended a second blockchain presentation two days later, this one a lively talk by an IBM “Global Blockchain Industry Leader” (that’s what they call them at IBM). The speaker didn’t mention disruption, and he didn’t even mention “trust”, but when he got to how IBM adds value to the blockchains it manages for clients, my antennae went up. IBM is a “blockchain network administrator.” Blockchain administrator? Why does a blockchain need an administrator? I thought the whole point of blockchains like Bitcoin was that they are decentralized networks that don’t need an “administrator.” Was IBM just trying to invent a way to add value to a platform that doesn’t need it? Was IBM just another trust broker trying to remain relevant? Public vs. Private BlockchainsTo answer these questions, you have to understand that there are two types of blockchains: public and private. Public blockchains, which anybody can join, get all the (popular) press. They include the cryptocurrency blockchains, the blockchains whose disruptive potential my panel of evangelists was very excited about. Private blockchains, also known as permissioned blockchains, require an invitation to join. They allow a business consortium to take advantage of all of the technical features of a blockchain platform while restricting access to, well, an invitation-only consortium. In one interesting example of a private blockchain, an entire food supply chain was digitally recorded and tracked in a blockchain, reducing the time to track the origin of a mango on a retailer’s shelf from almost a week to two seconds. You may have heard of the retailer: Walmart. (The blockchain was implemented by IBM.) Enterprise blockchains are private blockchains, and while private blockchains may not be as sexy to casual blockchain fans and soothsayers, they are seeing wide adoption in industry and are not going away. (According to a late-2016 Deloitte survey of executives across a variety of industries, 25% expected to have production blockchain deployments by the end of 2017.) So who grants permission to join a private blockchain? The answer is no different for blockchain than for any other private network. Permission is granted by a gatekeeper, and that gatekeeper could be the blockchain administrator. So on that basis alone, there’s a future in the (private) blockchain administrator business. Smart ContractsIn addition to its gatekeeper function, IBM enhances its enterprise blockchains by capturing business rules in what are called smart contracts. Smart contracts are snippets of code that capture business rules applied to blockchain transactions. They define what actions should be taken when given conditions are met, such as delivering payment upon confirmation of shipment. The only thing that makes them any smarter than any other codified business rules is that they are stored on the blockchain alongside documents, so they are shared, immutable, and transparent (and therefore trustworthy). Smart contracts, just like any other contracts or business rules, have to be written and maintained by somebody. For a private blockchain, that somebody may well be the blockchain administrator. Once again, it appears a form of trust brokerage (defining and maintaining the business rules encoded into a blockchain) is here to stay. Who will blockchain put out of business?
While blockchain technology has the potential to be enabling and disruptive in exciting ways, clearly it won’t disintermediate all intermediaries or make all trust brokers go broke. Here’s my take on the factors that will determine blockchain winners and losers:
If an entire business process can be reduced to general-purpose blockchain transactions, blockchain can and will replace companies whose only business is ensuring trust in that process. I think those companies will be the exception, not the rule. Companies that serve as gatekeepers for enterprise consortia or, more generally, implement or integrate specialized business rules will not only survive but thrive. Also published on CTO Craft
4 Comments
Mark Greathouse
1/4/2018 04:49:22 pm
Great coverage of the blockchain concept, Larry. For non-techies like myself, it was helpful.
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Larry Cynkin
1/4/2018 05:50:37 pm
Thanks, Mark, glad you liked
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1/4/2018 05:03:37 pm
Larry, thanks for writing this succinct and informative article on blockchain. You clearly get it and you're adding clarity to its evolving definition. Of course, a sufficiently large and visible failure somewhere in the world, accompanied by enough scandal, will be the catalyst for pivot and growth in the gatekeeper and other related portions of the emerging blockchain industry. Enough events of that nature and "blockchain" itself may appear to be put out of business, although repackaging and rebranding would be the more likely route.
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Larry Cynkin
1/4/2018 06:07:46 pm
Patrick, I agree blockchain applications will evolve to gain mainstream acceptance. That being said, I never thought people would hop into a complete stranger's car to get from one place to another. People will learn to trust blockchain applications that provide clearly superior solutions, so the equilibrium may swing further toward ungated applications than one might think.
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AuthorLarry Cynkin is founding principal of GreenBar. Larry's articles have appeared on The Startup (Medium.com's largest publication) as well as CTO Craft and CTO Vision. Archives
February 2021
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