Blockchain a.k.a peer-to-peer sharing alias Torrent does it ring a bell?
Or do you still feel the block to not adopt it. Well, then here is our deep down
take on the Block Chain usecases and so if you are a CTO, CXO or CIO
sit tight, block yourself for the next few minutes and hopefully you
will be happy to join the chain.
Blockchain is nothing but similar to your torrent technology a.k.a
peer-to-peer technology where any kind of data is transmitted, stored,
and transferred globally on thousands of servers.
Anyone on the torrent bandwagon can see everyone's data in real-time. The best part is no one entity can gain control of or game the network. So what is the gain in it?
Banking, remittance, hosting, insurance and healthcare. Blockchains
are being put to a wide variety of uses in several industries.
Blockchain for Banking and Remittance
Why is Blockchain making so much noice? Simply because that is where
the money lies. With Blockchain anyone can send money to anyone, anytime.
Blockchain does away with third parties; in other words, a fund bank or government a blockchain needs no backer, and that means no fees.
Agreed, banks need to ensure the safety of the transaction
but isn't a bank running because of our money.
Aren't banks actually supposed to provide us these services with any hassles,
do away with limits on the time, amount and transfer fees etc.
Blockchain in insurance
Insurance in itself has permanently changed the way the entire world
functions. Over the past few decades, it is only due to insurance that
a small business can think of becoming a multi-trillion-dollar global
business and many have in fact flourished, only thanks to the
insurance companies assurance.
However, the industry in many ways, is still stuck in the past.
Inspite of online platforms and easy ways to buy a policy till date
the most preferred way to buy a policy is by calling your freindly
neighbhourhood agent.
This more often than not leads to paper contracts. This invariably
leads to errors and and often require human supervision.
Not to forget that the whole process itself involves
consumers, brokers, insurers and reinsurers, as well as insurance’s
main product — risk. With blockchain and insurance in tandem things
can now be moved to ledger on a blockchain.
This means that we now have encrypted secured form of shared record-keeping.
This prevents potential point of failure in the overall system, no more loss of
information, lost policies, policies misinterpreted, and settlement
times delayed.
Blockchain for healthcare
Blockchain can also be a one stop platform for all the parties to add,
exchange data such as a patient's electronic healthcare record, in
real time.
Due to its inherent encryption, the technology itself acts
as a verification tool, ensuring only your medical practioner,
insurance provider or you can access the ledger a.ka. your policy.
The initial step of digitizing health data holds great promise for it
not only enables easy access to data, but on a large scale it is now
possible to monitor the health of an entire population over a
unimaginable scale.
Not to forget the lower cost of blockchain for secure patient
data exchange, including sensitive electronic medical records.
Blockchain for hosting
Blockchain has the potential to touch every industry and the it was
only time before the world wide web itself became its victim or should
we say benefactor? While the debate is on let us see, what it does for
hosting?
If the internet you are using is free then it was only matter of time
that the world wide web or website you are visiting, browsing or want
to host itself became free of cost. Yes, still not convinced, then
check for docs.ens.domains [http://docs.ens.domains/en/latest/] which
is hosted on the ethereum blockchain. It uses ENS, Ethereum Name
Service, to build the DNS service. Though the hosting is still in its
nascent stages, it makes a good case for for hosting.
Let’s take an example.
- If you have deployed an ENS registry for your
domain, “www.bestashok.com” at the address 0x55555555.
- Name the server -
for your “www.bestashok.com” to “55555555.ns1.ens.domans.”
- Now look:
for your “www.bestashok.com” will trigger fetch:
“www.bestashok.com NS 55555555.ns1.ens.domains”.
- The gateway server “ns1.ens.domain’ receives the query. It checks for
“www.bestashok.com” and gets the response.
- Gateway server queries the ENS registry.
- Gateway server asks the resolver for the zonefile for
“www.bestashok.com” It gets back the DNS zonefile data in a compact
binary form and unpacks the data in memory.
Now the getaways can use the unpacked zonefile to reply to the original inquiry.
The hosting of DNS domain on ENS is at the experimental stage. It is
still early days to be used for your website that are at production
stage. However, it is only limited by your imagination for the scope
of integration that is possible with blockchain.
Blockchain ensures you are always online and the peers, or
your servers are never down as your website is now a decentralized web
in itself. Not to forget the peer-to-peer data storage and seamless
way to generate revenues or monetization.
The significance of the blockchain technology is only to get more
louder in the coming days. Finance, government, medical and even web
hosting services can actually benefit from this technology in one way
or another. It simply makes things easier and things can be done
faster.
Its free to use, no more proprietary issues, licensing fees,
upgradation or security issues. Offcourse, it has its own pitfalls but
no system is perfect right? Now you and your client can seamlessly
transact from the word go.
The best part is you have the whole wide online domain alias
world web at your disposal as the infrastructure All this comes at
just fraction of a cost. It might not replace the corporate database
technology, but it is here to stay for anyone who wants to go open
source with their business operations.
