A comprehensive paper on blockchain technology. It covers blockchain technological aspects, blockchain evolution, future trends in blockchain implementation and reference architecture.
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1.Foreword
Cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, etc. have become few of the most trending hashtags
in social media and indeed there is that game changing underlying technology-
“Blockchain”, which is awaiting its due recognition.
This paper is an honest effort to drill down into Blockchain technology,
underpinning the Cryptocurrencies, in order to explore and showcase
opportunities for enterprises, governments and society as a whole. An effort to
look beyond basic utility of blockchain “who did what when”.
If, blockchain were to dominate future computing, indeed it will be a great idea
for developers to start applying their mind and contribute in nurturing this
technology further, along with other open source community. This paper is
prepared with a hope that futuristic developers & organizations, who envision
future computing, resonate with blockchain technology. Their out of the box
ideas of implementing this technology, could help resolve some of the issues
before society.
In times to come, “Trust” will emanate from the information systems, having
blockchain as an underlying technology. It will be interesting to see, how
efficacious this technology is, not just for transactional economic ecosystem, but
also social and political arena.
This paper deep dives into this technology, its components & architecture. Some
future trends of blockchain deployment are getting visible, with evolution and
maturing of this technology.
In the process of preparing this paper, I referred lot of research papers, articles
and lectures on YouTube & TED Talk by some of the renowned institutions and
developers. We acknowledge their efforts of moving this technology ahead.
….. Udayan Modhe
Co-founder, CEO – Ridgelift Labs
www.ridgelift.io
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Cryptocurrencies, BlockChain and
Decentralization is potential $ 10
Trillion Ecosystem and protocol
Layer is where most of the value
will be realized …Royal Bank of
Canada
2. Executive Summary
Blockchain has come long way, in last nine years. From a technology underpinning crypto
currencies to a technology which can disrupt the way transactional commerce takes place.
Large Tech companies like Intel & IBM have contributed heavily to this technology and
offered their work in public domain. Hundreds of large corporations have started working on
this technology, on pilot. Many more have announced their intentions.
Blockchain has write-only type of data structure
which resides across multiple computer devices
(either intranet or internet), generally spread across
locations or regions. It includes technology to store
data in the form of Blockchain with time stamp &
smart contracts. Bitcoin Block-Chain is different
from the successive iterations, in terms of
technologies such as shared computational power
along new sets consensus algorithms. In summary,
Blockchain consists of three basic components:
• A data model that captures the current state of the ledger
• A language of transactions that changes the ledger state
• A protocol used to build consensus among participants around which transactions will
be accepted and in what order, by the ledger.
In block-chain every new block (A block refers to a set of transactions that are bundled
together) gets added at the end of the ledger. Each block is time stamped, which is another
unique feature. Every block has a reference to previous block within a cryptographic key –
hash. Immutability of transaction for some could be a great security feature but for cynics, it
would be a drawback.
To some “Block-Chain” is disruption in Fintech, which is not the case. It is by no means a low
cost alternative to some existing business models, processes or products. However, it has
potential to change the way people transact. It can cause a shift in paradigm for political,
social and economic systems. While it has a potential of great impact, it will be gradual,
probably spanning over couple of decades, before blockchain occupies our day to day
transactions. For wider reach of the technology, it will be imperative for all stake holders to
come on board. No Government, Corporation or intermediary should feel threatened.
In times to come, trust in the intermediary will be replaced with trust in the underlying
code and consensus rules. This technology can be extremely effective in Governance,
Provenance, Public Health, e-Commerce, Supply Chain Management, Construction,
Manufacturing, etc. apart from Fin-tech. Social sector initiatives involving crowd funding, can
be an effective use case for block-chain.
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3. Introduction to Blockchain
Amidst the global financial meltdown in second half of 2008, research paper “Bitcoin: A peer
to peer electronic cash system” by Satoshi Nakamoto was published. It spoke about an
online system, for direct payment from one party to another without an intermediary, such as
banks, etc. Timing couldn’t have been better for release of this paper. However, it was not
spontaneous response to people’s loss of trust in banking system, during that phase.
3.1 Big Picture
Launch of Bitcoin and other such digital currencies, has disrupted financial markets, with
billions of dollars chasing these currencies. However, at the core of this Fintech Disruption
was, emergence of “Tamperproof decentralized cryptographic blockchain computing
technology, to facilitate intermediary-less transactions in not so trusted economic,
social & political ecosystems”.
After a surge in the combined market value of Cryptocurrencies, from less than $20bn to
more than $540bn, the phenomenon — and the blockchain technology that underpins it —
has become impossible for the businesses, especially from financial world to ignore, despite
its denunciations of bitcoin in particular as “a fraud”, “index of money-laundering” and worse.
Blockchain technology, initially considered very slow but extremely safe, is coming of age with
newer iterations offering not just speed of transactions but, modularity and portability. Last
couple of years blockchain has attained lot of traction, in terms of use cases in financial
sector, where 100+ large institutions are working on adoption; IoT, where large consulting
groups are working fusing blockchain technology, with IoT to eliminate security risks.
Blockchain is also being piloted in other areas like Real Estate, Supply Chain Management.
Credit Suisse’s report suggest that by 2025 Blockchain will be fully matured technology. So
also others, believe that Blockchain is going to play important role in future of computing !
Imagine millions of people in a secured peer to peer network, where anyone can
interact/ transact with any one, without any controlling authority.
3.2 Market Overview
Marketcap of Cryptocurrencies has soared to 100s of billion dollars and so is the market
potential for Blockchain Technology, underpinning these currencies. Paradigm shift towards
highly secured decentralized computing is changing fortunes of blockchain technology. Royal
Bank of Canada Analyst believes Cryptocurrencies, blockchain and decentralized computing
to be $10 trillion ecosystem. IT hardware (current market $ 4.5 Billion) & energy resources for
mining, cloud services, IT services for migration of existing systems on to blockchain,
interbank payment systems, cross border remittances, clearing and settlements in financial
markets, public service records, national ID systems, digital media, healthcare records, IoT
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integrations, IT
security systems &
services, real estate
records migration,
etc. will constitute
that ecosystem.
As seen in the
graph, investments
in blockchain
technology alone
amount to $ 550
millions, in 132
deals, that to up to
2016. Most of the
current projects
under
implementation are
shaping up by collaboration among the industry players and open source community is
supporting them. Hence, economic value of these activities can’t be quantified and hence not
considered here. However, upon reaching critical mass, deployment will increase
exponentially, translating in increase in demand for commercial IT services, Indirect cost of
financial institutions will reduce drastically and consumers will benefit from reduced fees for
financial transactions.
3.3 Blockchain Technology
3.3.1 Blockchain
Block-Chain (a subset of Distributed Ledger Technology) is a data ledger, forged with
consensus, secured by cryptography, distributed over a trusted/ trustless network of P2P,
unwired/ wired, nodes over intranet / internet, which can be configured to be public or private.
It constitutes data blocks in chronological & irreversible sequence, each containing set of
transactions, bundled together and added at the same time. The block is formed, upon
consensus among the designated nodes, about the validity of transactions contained in it.
Each block contains fixed no. of transactions along with cryptographic code and reference to
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previous block and time stamp. These transactions are immutable i.e. they can’t be modified
or deleted.
First block of the block-chain is called Genesis block. As seen in the figure, each block
contains following:
• Set of transactions, executed at the same time
• Merkel tree root for transactions within the block
• Hash of previous transaction
• Consensus Nonce (number used once)
Block-chain DLT has primarily two types of actors. First is human, who is a seller/buyer of
crypto-currency or some asset using application running on block-chain. He creates
transactions for block-chain. Second could be human or node, who validates the transaction,
builds new blocks, signs them with cryptographic codes and publish in block chain. Such
validating nodes arrive at consensus based on algorithms followed in respective architectures.
Merkel tree root is a binary hash tree, a tamper proof mechanism, used to store hashes of
the individual data in the block, which facilitates verification of data.
In block-chain each block contains hash of previous block, except Genesis block. Each
block gets appended to the block-chain by linking with hash of previous block. If a block is
required to be changed, then each preceding block also requires to be modified, which makes
blockchain immutable.
Nonce is a 32 bit arbitrary no. used for mining process in Bitcoin, using game theory and
complex algorithms.
Blockchain is in essence a distributed consensus i.e. a way of agreeing on the state of
database.
3.3.2 Block-Chain DLT
Before diving into Ledger systems, let us
quickly understand General Ledger (being
used since 15 century). It is governed by
three accounting principles – Debit the
receiver, credit the giver; Debit loss and
expense, Credit profit and gain; Debit
inflow and credit outflow. These principles
are inviolable.
In Conventional ledger system, having
intermediaries, if Lucy wants to send $10
to Bob, she sends request to the bank. It
checks the authenticity and balance of
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Lucy’s account and accepts the transaction for processing. Bank then, through central
intermediary, checks credentials of Bob and transfers fund to Bob. In the process, it charges
transaction fees. Finally, bank creates ledger entry, with both sides of transactions and fees.
Both the parties will get reflection of this central ledger into their ledger. In these transactions
intermediaries have complete control over
transactions.
Blockchain Distributed ledger Technology,
consists of blockchain, smart contracts and
consensus logic. Ledgers are distributed among
users of network. When Lucy transfers funds to
Bob, this transaction is broadcasted on the
network for validation. Depending on the type of
DLT adopted, through a consensus mechanism,
transaction is validated. This write only, time
stamped & immutable record is appended in the
block chain as a new block. This transaction
has cryptographic key and reference to previous
block, making it a chain of blocks. This block
gets registered to the ledger of all the users in
the network, so everyone has same copy of
ledger.
From Public block-chains, underpinning Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. to Federated or Consortium
block-chains adopted by sectors e.g. banks, energy, insurance on R3, Corda, etc. to Private
block-chains e.g. Multi-chain, etc, Distributed Ledger Technology has come long way in last 9
years. In the last couple of years, with the advent of Hyperledger project, governed by Linux
Foundation, few more iterations of Open Source DLTs are available for corporations to adopt,
tune up and deploy.
3.3.3 Distributed Ledger Technology
In DDBMS, data is not stored centrally on a server, rather it is distributed over few servers,
PCs or cloud. There are many examples, Hadoop, No SQL, Peer Network Node data stores,
Distributed SQL, etc. These are architectures widely used by likes of Facebook, Google,
Amazon. After launch of Bitcoin, Distributed Ledger Technology came in light, though it was
discussed in some research papers, during 1990s. People may say DLT is an extension of
DDBMS.
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is transactional type of DDBMS. DLT deploys time
stamping which is used for a while in many DBMSs. Time stamp based concurrency/ ordering
control algorithm ensures time linked sequencing of transactions. It endorses immutability of
transactions, which is already used by Google HDFS, etc. It incorporates consensus
mechanism for validation of transactions in the network, the same is used outside DLT space
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in Raft & Paxos. However, DLT has a leverage of Cryptography over DDBMS. Its true
decentralized read/write network, that doesn’t have parallels. Along with that ability of DLT to
secure transactions, using host of protocols, sets it apart from all the conventional ones.
Smart Contract are integral part of DLT, they add capabilities of building business logic and
business processes, which
can facilitate automation of
transactions, based on
predefined conditions. These
technologies, encapsulated in
DLT, forge trust among not so
trusted users.
There are two users in DLT -
Transactional users & miners/
blockchain operator/
blockchain generators, these
users operate DLT through
processes in following
sequence - Network discovery, Transaction creation (including asset creation & developing
smart contracts, Block generation & submission (Mining and consensus process) and Block
validation.
Broadly DLT data model constitutes 3 components – transaction, block and block header.
Together they capture the state of ledger. Block and Block Header are standard and
essential to every block-chain platform. Block contains transactions. The block's metadata is
kept in the Block Header, consisting of hash, previous hash, markel tree, nonce.
Language of transaction consists of methodology for registering ledger services, testing
deployed ledgers, reference implementation for storing on-chain configuration settings,
Handling on-chain permissions for users and identity management, as a whole.
Every other Block-chain DLT uses different protocol for consensus management e.g. Proof of
work (PoW), Proof of elapsed time (PoET), Proof of Stake (PoS). The selection is based on
business applications.
3.3.4 Distributed Database v/s Distributed Ledger
Over last fifty years, information technology has come long way. From days of card readers,
mainframes with enterprise applications and centralized database, dumb terminals for access
to information, rise of PCs & Servers, relational database, Intranet, Client-Server applications,
Internet, Cloud computing, global data access, social networking to current transition from
centralized computing to decentralized architectures and systems.
Distributed database & distributed ledger terminologies are getting entwined over last few
years. Some people question, what’s new in distributed ledger technology, we had distributed
database for long?
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“Distributed ledgers – or decentralized
databases – are systems that enable parties
who don’t fully trust each other to form and
maintain consensus about the existence,
status and evolution of a set of shared
facts”… Richard Gendal Brown, R3
In Distributed Database (DDBMS), entire data is not stored on single server or CPU. It is
stored across network, even it can be configured to use cloud storages solutions. This
network is essentially under control of an
organization or group, which utilizes this data.
Multiple nodes within this network have partition
or complete dataset or full replicas of dataset,
stored on them. They freely share and seek
information with users. Each node is trusted by
others for the data being shared. They also offer
a consistent view to external users, through
strict access control. They validate the external
information received for use or processing. It is
network of “Trust” that is bonding these
terminals, within a homogenous group. The
network architecture and workflow environment
is controlled by administrator.
In Distributed ledger, it is network of nodes,
spread across geographies, organizations and
users, which don’t necessarily trust each other. However, outcome is same- consistent data,
shared within network. The data stored in immutable, i.e. it can’t be modified or deleted. This
is achieved with the use of complex algorithms and cryptography to offer decentralized
concurrent control mechanism to secure consensus about the existence and status of shared
information in trustless network. In this
technology control of read-write is truly
distributed. Ability to maintain data security over
trustless network is X-factor of Distributed Ledger
Technology. Many DLTs, underpinning crypto-
currencies e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. share data
in public networks, which can be seen by anyone.
However, Hyperledger, R3-Corda, etc. share
data, in controlled private network environment.
In nutshell, nodes of a distributed database trust each other and collaborate with each other to
present a consistent, secure data. By contrast nodes within network of distributed ledger
technology, don’t trust each other. They independently verify data they receive from each
other and only share data they are happy to be broadly shared.
3.3.5 Smart Contracts
In 1996, Nick Szabo proposed an idea of Smart Contracts, in the context of IT. He described
a smart contract as “a set of promises, specified in digital form, including protocols, within
which the parties perform on these promises.” These contracts would be executed between
two entities, be individual or enterprise. These will work on flow chart control principles, e.g. if-
then, do-while, etc. It was around the time, when internet had started blossoming. Over the
years internet exploded with billions connected through it. But, what could have been a great
bonding among them, “the smart contract”, went into oblivion; Until emergence of blockchain
based distributed ledger technology.
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"Proof-of-work (PoW) is the outcome
of a successful mining process and,
although the proof is hard to create,
[it] is easy to verify."…. Kudelski
Security Report
It is a conditional contract,
which will get executed
digitally, upon trigger of
predefined set of
conditions. Output of every
smart contract, can be
verified objectively. Hence,
they are language of
transactions to automate
transactions which are
repetitive or conditional in
nature. Ethereum,
Hyperledger and few other
block chains incorporate
smart contracts. Consider a
normal business situation,
A company buys machine
from B company. After
testing the machine,
company A initiates the
procedure of payment to company B. It involves
processing delays, which costs company B. If Smart Contracts are implemented in their value
chain. The positive test report of the machine will trigger payment for company B, by virtue of
the programs defined for such scenarios. This will be game changer in commerce in terms of
avoidance of delays and in turn cost saving. Implementation of smart contracts would improve
business confidence and trust among companies.
3.3.6 Consensus Algorithm
In Blockchain based DL technology, data is distributed over lot of nodes and for effective
functioning of the DL, all the nodes should have identical data. It is achieved by consensus,
which is a process of agreement among all the nodes, about the correct state of data. It is a
complex algorithm, which results in, all nodes sharing same data set and protects blockchain
against malicious actors. Every different flavor of blockchain DLT, has its own Consensus
Algorithm.
Bitcoin blockchain uses “Proof of Work” algorithm.
In this blockchain there are two types of actors,
first who transact i.e. they buy/sell Bitcoins,
second are “Miners”, who certify the transactions
and add them in the blockchain. These miners
solve complex mathematical puzzle, based on
game theory, which is called mining. Upon mining,
they are rewarded with Bitcoins. This is a tamper proof process wherein, to manipulate
blockchain, malicious actor has to collude with more than 51% of miners, spread across
world. PoW consumes extremely high electricity power in mining process, since it takes long
time to solve the mathematical challenge, with high configuration nodes.
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Proof of Stake was designed for Ethereum networks. It has Validators, who validate
transactions. They don’t have to go through resource hungry mining process. Nodes are
randomly selected and selection depends on stake of the node in network vis-a-vis other
node. Node with higher stake has high probability for selection. Here too, Validators are
rewarded with coins, which are already in the system.
Broadly in Permissioned networks algorithms are lottery-based or voting based algorithms.
Lottery based can scale higher with moderate finality; Whereas, voting-based algorithms
provide low-latency finality. Hyperledger Sawtooth uses Proof of Elapsed Time algorithm. It is
a random lottery system, on first come first serve basis, rather than a mining process of
solving cryptographic puzzle. Validators are given random wait time, leader with shortest wait
time creates new block.
SBFT and PBFT are focused on this byzantine fault tolerance, in a Permissioned network
scenario. A designated validator, selected from network, bundles proposed transactions and
forms a new block. Consensus is achieved by satisfying 2F + 1 formula to certify new block,
i.e. in a network of 7 nodes where 2 nodes are faulty, remaining 5 must reach consensus. The
speed reduces as the size of network increases.
Proof-of-Authority (PoA) is used for Permissioned ledgers. Designated nodes within the
network are 'authorities', which are tasked to create new blocks and secure the ledger. In PoA
algorithm majority of authorities are required to arrive at consensus, in order for a block to be
created.
Consensus Algorithm is designed and adopted, depending on the type of blockchain
(Permissioned or Permissionless), target audience/ market of the blockchain,
scalability- finality trade off.
3.3.7 Types of Blockchains
Blockchain can be broadly categorized based on access to it. First, for public access, called
Permissionless, which can be joined or viewed by anyone across the world. The other being
for private access only. Which requires authentication of user credentials and subsequent
permission to access the blockchain. It is called Permissioned blockchain.
Selection of blockchain depends on use case, i.e. particular application under consideration.
Example, If a startup decides to launch a platform for Buying/ Selling of used goods, it will
adopt a Permissionless blockchain. In this application two transacting parties can build
transaction, based on the trust of transparency, offered by the platform. Similarly, crypto
currencies or Initial Coin Offerings can be launched on Permissionless blockchain. In this
blockchain, people can view every block of transaction, right from Genesis block, however
users will be anonymous.
However, if a corporation goes for blockchain in supply chain management, its choice would
be Permissioned blockchain, which will be deployed across value chain, spread across
multiple organizations, be them vendors or clients. Each organization in that blockchain would
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have at least one designated authorizer. This will be a true enterprise application of
blockchain DLT, where the shipment can be seamlessly tracked at each stage.
The following table explores the differences between permissionless blockchains and
Permissioned distributed ledgers. These parameters will help organizations in selection of
right blockchain DLT for their applications.
. 3.3.8 Blockchain Landscape
Bitcoin had a humble beginning with almost a decade in existence and ever since,
development has taken place in the blockchain technology, underpinning Cryptocurrency and
a big time. It has emerged as a computing system of highly secured open distributed ledgers,
having a potential of disrupting transactional ecosystems across economic, social & political
arenas. This development can be tracked in following contexts:
• Emergence of public blockchains for cryptocurrencies with mining process
• Integration of smart contracts and faster blockchains
• Development of Private blockchains with interoperability & modularity between various
frameworks of blockchains, auxiliary software used for deployment and maintenance
of blockchains, examining the data on the ledgers, as well as tools to design,
prototype, and extend blockchain networks, APIs to facilitate communication between
various layers and user applications.
• Development of Consensus algorithms
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Blockchain developed traction steadfastly between 2009 to 2017, from being a secured but
slow public distributed ledger system underpinning bitcoin, to fast, scalable & modular
blockchain with wide iterations intended to suit unique needs of businesses, e.g. choice of
permissionless or Permissioned, smart contract to automate transactions and interfacing to
match current technology trends. These advancements in blockchain technology resulted in
diversity in blockchain arena, with wide option of iterations with unique features to suit
business requirements. Companies like Intel, IBM developed their versions of blockchain and
offered to Linux Foundation for taking in forward in open source arena. With more than 100
companies like there collaborating in Hyperledger project, another 100+ financial institutions
working together on R3 and few hundred on Ethereum.
There has been a lot of activity on Github, which is the largest software collaboration platform
in the world, with 68 million projects and 24 million participants. That makes it barometer for
gauging software development activities, across spectrum of IT & across geographies. In the
specific case of blockchain, it provides details about people and organizations behind
blockchain development, type of programming, talent pool & its concentration, structure of
networks and communities in blockchain, risk factors of deploying resources in blockchain,
etc.
After the “Code Drop” of Bitcoin blockchain in April of 2009, activities grew steadily for first few
years, with projects growing upto 86,000. However, initial pace of projects, till 2012 was very
low till 2012. But, after 2012, it rose exponentially with 2016 with 27000 projects. It averages
to approx 8600 projects, per year. Following are few highlights about blockchain activities on
Github (as on 12, October, 2017 | Source : Delloite report)
• Total no. of projects – 86034
• Projects by companies, research institutes & startups – 9375+
• Average projects, per year – 8603
• Highest no. of projects in a year – 26885 in 2016
• Only 8% projects are maintained
• Average project life 1.22 years
As seen above, almost 89% projects were created by individual developers and
organizational interest was just about 11%. However, less than 10% projects are maintained
and updated (i.e. once in 6 months) with average life of just over 1 year. Initially the developer
community engaged in Blockchain projects were mainly new technology enthusiasts, but over
a period developer community has increased steadfastly, but not as much as required.
Currently major developers are concentrated in USA, UK and surprisingly China, as against
expectation in Israel or India.
In terms of programming language association is concerned, needless to mention that C++
has highest association. Slowly over last couple of years, developers have started getting
associated with Go language ( launched by Google in 2009). It is now second largest
language used for blockchain projects on Github, people have started taking note of its simple
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language and scalability. Clearly for integration of other technologies with blockchain is
concerned, Go appears to be highest preference of developer community.
If we consider statistics about developer community (source : Evans Data Corporation), out of
21 million estimated developers, 9 million are Java Developers (largest pool) and 4.4 million
C++ developers, with Go far distant from these languages. In spite of Java being the
largest developer community, there is no platform for Java developers to synchronize
with blockchain. A development of this front will help Blockchain reach critical mass,
for wider acceptance.
Let us discuss some of the popular iterations of blockchains.
Bitcoin blockchain, which first started in Jan, 2009, enables direct transaction between two
parties, without need of a trusted intermediary e.g. banks, etc. This is write only, irreversible
transaction, appended at the end of a blockchain. This results in economic benefits to the
parties e.g. reduced transaction fees, reduced credit cost for micro transactions, prevents
double spending. Above all, it supports a crypto-currency.
Ethereum is open source DLT, with smart contracts, which are programs for automation of
conditional transactions. This block chain oriented platform has a decentralized virtual
machine called the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which carries out Turing-complete
(computationally universal) smart contracts over network spread across the world. It supports
native cryptocurrency, Ether. Open source Ethereum platform and EVM can be used for
developing decentralized applications, using power of smart contracts. With this platform,
launching Cryptocurrency has become very easy.
Ripple, an open source, public DLT platform with a native crypto-currency, XRP, was first
issued in 2012 with The Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP), which facilitates free, instant
transaction across the world without any chargeback. This protocol supports transaction of
any currency, commodity or any asset. Lot of financial institutions are using this infrastructure
for their operations.
Hyperledger, governed by Linux Foundation, since 2015, is again an open source project,
mostly working on iterations for Permissioned DLTs, meant for private implementation of
blockchain. It is supported by tech giants such as IBM, Intel, etc. They have few blockchain
frameworks, under development such as Indy, Burrow, Iroha, Sawtooth and Fabric supported
by tools such as Explorer, Composer and Cello for implementation and monitoring. These
frameworks support enterprise applications & identity management, which are useful for
deployment of blockchain for international trade, supply chain management.
Corda by R3 is open source DLT, which supports consortium or federated type of blockchain.
It is controlled within a group of organizations. It is faster and offers secured environment for
transactions. R3 was created by consortium of over 100 financial institutions, designed to
record, manage & automate legal transactions between organizations. It offers security while
achieving scalability and speed.
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Quorum is Permissioned flavor of Ethereum blockchain, designed by J P Morgan, offers data
visibility, on need to know basis, using voting based consensus mechanism. Chain Core is an
enterprise Permissioned blockchain, mostly focused on financial services, e.g. currencies,
securities, derivatives, gift cards and loyalty points. The company partners with clients to
launch and operate a network under the client's brand.
Steller Network is unique blockchain with Lumen as native currency. It offers public
blockchain and currency exchange services at fractional cost, which is USP. Validating nodes
are called “Stellar Core”, which anyone can install, to be part of stellar network. These nodes
validate transactions using stellar consensus protocol. Every transaction has small fees,
which prevents malicious actors from spamming the network. It has best use case in currency
exchange. Apart from base account, there are other entries which can be added e.g. Trust-
line, offers and data. These add-ins allow account controller to have credit lines, offer entries
and relevant data to their accounts. Smart contract layer can be used to automate
transactions on those lines. Typical transaction record time is 5-10 seconds. Integrated
Horizon API server offers RESTful API to allow client applications with steller network. It has
SDKs for Java, JavaScript, Go, Python, C#, etc. It also has libraries for Java, Java Script &
Go. This platform offers complete solution to build wallets, banking applications, payment
systems and currency exchanges.
IOTA is a unique crypto currency with M2M blockless blockchain technology, Offering
machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity for devices participating in Internet of things. It is a
Cryptocurrency on a platform, which entails generalization of the blockchain protocol (the
technology called Tangle) that sits at the backend of the IOTA platform. Instead of paying
miners to validate the transactions, the architecture of the network involves peer-based
validation. This allows the platform to be completely free of cost, without facing the scaling
challenges that are inherent in the first generation of blockchains. Use of this platform for IoT,
makes it true end-to-end solution blockchain solution for businesses. It enables businesses to
explore new business-to-business models by making every technological resource, a
potential service to be traded in an open market in real time, with no fees.
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4. Block-Chain Evolution & Use Cases
4.1Blockchain evolution
Overwhelming majority of transactions have been digitized since the advent of internet and
that vast majority of those transactions require a centralized intermediary. But even with such
a preponderance of digital transactions, we still find 62 % or 2.5 billion of the world’s adult
population is unbanked (source :World Bank Index measuring financial inclusion around the
world) and we find transaction costs in some cases, as high as 20%. These circumstances
gave birth to the necessity for an invention like blockchain. But blockchain was not alone in
trying to alleviate these problems. There were contenders such as distributed databases, key-
value stores (like AWS S3) which could have scaled to requirements. Blockchain survived this
test of evolution by enabling decentralized, cryptographically secured currency, which
enabled two mutually distrustful parties to transact. In the event of a breach of contract, the
nature of blockchain - which exposes in the clear, parties involved in transaction & the amount
and enables the network to obtain commensurate remuneration to the honest party.
In the traditional financial systems, enabler of the transaction is the central authority/
intermediary and custodian of the ledger, which stores all the transactions. Fierce competition
between few intermediaries to gain trust of individuals, results in creation of monopolistic
organizations. Such organizations are moral hazard for the entire financial ecosystem, as they
are “too big to fail” and this led to the financial crisis in 2008.
On the hindsight, when we look at the evolution of blockchain, launch of Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency & blockchain source code, in 2009, was genesis event in the evolution of
blockchain. This was disruptive technology for traditional transactional systems explained
above. It offered cryptography and immutability for transaction security and decentralized
control of transaction approval to dismantle monopolistic system of intermediaries. This was
perceived as a threat of ceasing to exist for those intermediaries and contending computing
systems. Evolution of Blockchain happened on the principles of biological evolution. Biological
evolution is change in heritable characteristics of biological populations, over successive
generations. Similarly, every new generation of blockchain had heritable characteristics e.g.
cryptography & immutability and changes happened in characteristics of consensus
algorithm, nature of blockchain (only public to public –private). Evolutionary processes give
rise to biodiversity and decedents replace members of population and are better adapted to
survive, as natural selection takes place. To draw parallels, in every next generation of
blockchain, there was a diversity, in terms of characteristics, adoptability to the demands of
ecosystem and they survived the tests conducted by stakeholders of the ecosystem
(Developers, intermediaries & user organizations).
18. Page 18 of 41
However, introduction of
Smart Contracts in
blockchain was trailblazing
event, which has changed
the dynamics of transactional
computing, something similar
to a strike of meteorite, which
changed the dynamics of
biological ecosystem.
Blockchain has evolved to
be a “Potential Future
Computing Backbone
Infrastructure”
This potential to be a
computing backbone infrastructure, has opened plethora of opportunities for businesses and
developers, to help blockchain evolve into its next generation, which will happen around:
• Interoperability between blockchains
• Speed to match future demand of transactions
• Scalability for enterprise applications
• Distributed platforms to build blockchains & supporting interfaces to facilitate all types
of transactions, without any intermediary, with extremely low cost of operations.
• Platforms offering application interfacing to bridge disconnect between legacy
computing systems & blockchain
4.2 Blockchains Use Cases
Blockchain computing architecture is in public domain for almost a decade now. It has always
been co-related to Cryptocurrencies, e.g. Bitcoin, Ether, etc. For a new technology to realize
its full potential, lot of pieces need to exist before network effects can be realized. The
blockchain community is indeed witnessing unprecedented levels of industry collaboration
between players who are otherwise competitors. Apart from that, open source technologies
are typically adopted by limited techo-savvy people/organizations first, but over the period as
the successful use cases crosses critical mass, adoption of technology increase
exponentially. We are not there yet! However, it will be interesting to see current use cases.
Till 2009, only currencies world had seen were, sovereign fiat currencies. Nobody had even
dreamt of a digital currency, floating in virtual world. But, Bitcoin became first such digital
Cryptocurrency, minted in cyber world. With that floodgates opened for many more
Cryptocurrencies getting floated at drop of a hat. These are native currencies, of those
respective blockchains. Cryptocurrencies are traded world over, on some of the busiest
exchanges, without any reported security breach of currency itself. Ethereum claims that it
19. Page 19 of 41
can support fiat currencies with asset backing too. Venezuela is working on oil backed crypto
currency on blockchain technology, even Russia has similar plans.
Traditionally, payment transfers between two entities is routed through multiple intermediaries
e.g. central bank and banks at both ends, this network of intermediaries validates credentials
of both sender & receivers and then effect payment transfer. These intermediaries charge
fees for the same. However, Bitcoin can be used for online payment transfers between two
entities, without need of intermediary. Users can create online wallets and Bitcoins can be
transferred from one such wallet to other, instantly, in most secured manner with blockchain
technology, with very low transaction cost. This technology can be best used for cross border
remittances. As originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto, blockchain can form backbone of
any financial infrastructure, irrespective of stream of operations, in the financial world.
Technically, it has capabilities to blow off the whole bunch of financial intermediaries, from
banks to brokers to exchanges and what have you. However, in the interest of financial
markets, blockchain is best adopted by financial intermediaries and reduction of cost, better
transparency is passed on to the consumers & public at large.
Financial markets typically have 3 day clearing & settlement cycles, e.g. D+3, T+3, etc.
These are common to most investment markets today. This is due to time taken for
processing humongous quantity of transactional records, through intermediaries such as
custodial services (CSDs), central counterparty clearing systems (CCPs) and complex
collateral management systems, together it costs billions in overhead. Migrating these
transactions on blockchain will reduce the duty cycle of their clearing and settlement
processes, where all counterparty balances are matched, reconciled and resolved across
global trading system.
This will positively impact
large no of investors, day
traders, pensions funds,
market makers, asset
managers. This is by far
one of the most rewarding
use cases of blockchain
in financial markets,
because in short time
span there is visible cost
savings. According to
Santander’s 2015 report,
moving into digital
records, near real-time &
over the internet, will save
the industry $20 billion a
year or more.
20. Page 20 of 41
In supply chain management, ethical source, compliances, record of transactions and
processes are critical. However, due to grey areas such as questionable sourcing, aging of
raw material, wrong routing of materials, etc. the chain produces negative results, impacting
entire business value chain. Therefore, it is totally about the trust among intermediaries and
intermediate processes. However, with deployment of blockchain in supply chain
management its dynamics have changed. The need for trust is eliminated because of the
system, consisting of immutable record of transactions with time stamp associated with every
asset/product in the chain. The products bought and sold in various supply chains of the
world, are getting recorded in near real-time on a shared ledger, at every stage. Real time
bills of landing & letters of credit are recorded & documented against asset movements.
Products & their values, tax and any other statutory compliances are available on screen.
Using block chain an irreversible & immutable trail of transactions is established in the supply
chain management, which is reflected in transparency of process, e.g. Fish caught by
fishermen are tagged by IoT enabled sensors and tracked all through the supply chain, from
place to place and recorded on blockchain. That offers transparency and result in rewarding
ethical fishermen.
Currently, it is difficult in tracking movement of products across value chain, which give rise to
production delays, delayed project execution and such similar scenarios. Inputs of blockchain
based supply chain management system can be part of Smart Asset Management. Through
a tag such as RFID, product turns into a smart assets, which is easily tracked in the value
chain. Every asset turns smart, when all the details about the asset, including serial numbers,
value and any other information we need to know about that asset. They are digitized right
from manufacturing stage till end of life cycle, e.g. who is it coming from and where is it going
to; how it relates to other assets, etc. This is a great competitive tool for market players to win
clients with richness in data availability.
Normally, when a car exchanges hand, the transaction is based on the trust buyer has, in
what seller says about the car, apart from what meets the eye. There are situations where
seller cheats. This is where blockchain deployment for Provenance comes in picture. Where
blockchain of a car has records, right from manufacturing stage to all services/ repairs it
underwent, which will again offer transparency. It can be similarly deployed in apparel
industry, where tracking from cotton to T-shirt, is recorded on tamperproof blockchain. It can
deployed for manufacturing of canned foods/juices, wherein a QR code on can of juice can
offer, details about various stages of juice making and for that matter every manufactured
product. Using blockchain one can track product, through its life cycle. It can offer trail about
exchange of ownerships, repairs/ damages and any such important aspect of a product.
There are instances of data thefts, every now and then. Confidential records, financial data,
personal details are vulnerable in current setup. Blockchain was conceived on the foundation
of trust for trustless environment. It was open and transparent to an extent any anonymous
entity can be part of blockchain, with malicious intentions. However, in private Permissioned
networks, vulnerability of data diminishes with privacy by design principle incorporated in
some iterations of blockchain. This opens a use case of Digital Identities which are recorded
21. Page 21 of 41
on blockchain protocol, then my things can have authorization to transact on my behalf. In
other words, I have an identity recorded on a shared ledger, and then can add devices to my
identity. Over time, I add smart objects too, from my shoes to my fridge to my car to my
heating to my spectacles to my anything.
Currently, in legal structure there are just too many papers. Solicitor firms, lawyers keep
voluminous records of contracts/ agreements between the parties. They are custodians of the
trust in financial, social and political ecosystems. Control of every legal aspect is vested with
these people. This at times is reason for failure of many agreements, contracts and rise in
disputes. Smart Contracts of blockchain ecosystem is game changer for the legal industry.
Legal contracts can be embedded in transactional computing, using control mechanisms.
Wherein, legal agreements would be executed automatically, upon hitting the trigger
condition.. If all the legal agreements/ contracts are digitized, those contractual instruments,
would be self executing programs. In true sense, blockchain is something which tell you what
happened and how it happened, leaving a irrefutable digital trail, that this thing happened at
that time on this date between these counterparties. This could be anything from a marriage
vow to a divorce proceeding; a house sale to a land reclamation, etc.
There is a lack of transparency in land and real estate transactions. Inefficiencies get added
with no. of intermediaries operating in that sector. Apart from that real estate transactions
involve numerous parties and transactions continue to be paper-based. Overall sector is
vulnerable to disputes, defaults, frauds, etc. If blockchain is adopted in construction sector,
It can help the sector in multiple ways, first it can create blockchain of land records, housing
records, taxes and statutory obligations pertaining to construction sector. Once this underlying
layer of data in place, government departments, builders, aggregators in real estate, buyers &
sellers would have a transparent records about every detail pertaining to any property or land.
Online aggregators can list properties, which will allow sellers, buyers & their realtor
representatives to see all offers and transactions at the same time in real time. Smart
contracts can facilitate automatic execution of transactions, once parties have agreed on its
conditions, also solve the confirmation and verification process.
There are few other use cases under consideration, e.g. for data security during its
exchange between disparate cloud services, blockchain based forecasting for shares &
commodities, decentralized micro-blogging, etc. In times to come market would be flooded
with use cases for newer areas.
There are challenges for DLTs to reach critical mass, e.g. lack of standards, regulatory
challenges and the lack of knowledge & non availability of experts in the area of DLTs. These
challenges are inherent to any new technological infrastructure that replaces an older
infrastructure. As an infrastructure technology, all major stakeholders such as academicians,
research institutions, market players, developer community need to work together in defining
standards in a democratic manner. Indeed, there is a development with establishment of
standards framework ISO / TC 307, though early days.
22. Page 22 of 41
5.Future Trends and Opportunities
5.1 Future Trends
Seeds of future trends are sown in the evolution of blockchain, piloting on blockchain and
results thereof. By now, almost every possible use case or potential of blockchain has been
discussed in research reports, articles, TV shows and social media. Most large organizations
are looking at this technology seriously, whether this wave of blockchain poses danger of
tsunami to their businesses or it is perfect wave, which they can surf and extract pleasure of
profits. Every technological reform has always been realized on the hindsight e.g. world
before and after internet, world before and after Google, etc. Most technological
advancement coming from large IT companies, come with force e.g. new versions/updates
in MS products, Apple phones, Intel CPUs, where people are literally forced to adopt
changes. However, technological advancement coming from open source community is not
forceful. To that extent technological advancement from private corporations is push type,
where as it is pull type, in case of open source development. Applying the same logic to
Blockchain being an open source initiative, it will move with its own pace, much like Linux.
It will have its place, but not necessarily that of leader, because much depends on the large
corporations, who currently are custodians or intermediaries of the existing setups and their
businesses may get impacted by blockchain. Another factor to our mind, implementation of
blockchain is one way street. We don’t see that people can have option of rolling back
blockchain implementation, which can be easily done in current computing environment.
Hence, piloting will have to be rigorous one.
There is rampant corruption across countries
at every level of governance, be it release of
subsidies, tax compliances, public benefits,
etc. Because of this menace people are
deprived of the benefits, they are entitled to.
This can change with implementation of
blockchain in governance. It will enforce
transparency and trust in the governance.
However, precisely this could be the
challenge for acceptance of such a system
by powerful people in governments.
However, if implemented properly, it will
change the governance mechanism for good.
It can optimize delivery of public services and
create value for its citizens. In will add
efficiencies in governance. Public blockchain,
can record all activities & transactions on the
decentralized database permanently and
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more so, securely. By allowing people to track the movement of government funds,
government spending, subsidies, etc. blockchain can establish accountability for state and
create a cohesive environment across layers of governance and public life and restrict
misappropriations of public tax money. Blockchain not only can deter corruption through
accountability, but it can also do so by bypassing the middleman entirely. It can be deployed
to manage international missions of humanitarian aid, refugee management, medical aid, etc.
Every nation has a national ID system for its citizens to first prove he/she is a legitimate
citizen of the country, then to rationalize services and processes in areas such as social
services, taxes, local voting and administration but also to promote private services by
stimulating the digital economy, all while reducing costs and adding transparency. However,
there have been frauds recorded, often abusing this system. Blockchain can be deployed in
National ID systems such as India’s Aadhaar. It can be deployed with 'Privacy by Design'.
approach. It is all the more important that digital identities be handled with the utmost care,
keeping human values front and center. It can lead to be truly a digital economy, wherein tax
compliances and public services such as subsidy transfers, utilities, etc can be seamlessly
managed. Given the immutable nature of the technology, there can’t be any fraud committed
on this system and if committed, it will be caught in real time.
Every project has few stakeholders – e.g promoter of project (private or government),
contractors, beneficiaries. Every project is governed by project specifications and framework
within which every stakeholder play their roles. Currently project management has lot of pitfalls
due to many challenges e.g. lack of clarity about work specifications, payment delays, lack of
24. Page 24 of 41
failure trail, etc. If blockchain is deployed in project management right from agreement to
delivery under binding principles of smart contracts, the execution will be smooth. At every
stage, process and activities get registered on blockchain, leaving audit trail for failures, if any.
By automating payments through escrow account, upon completion of stages, it will create an
environment of dependability, which arises out of trust embedded in the system. It will dilute
the risk perspective towards project of the stakeholders themselves.
In customer relationship management entire value chain is people dependant. Hence, there is
a risk due to negligence or acts of omission, commission, etc. Such vulnerabilities are
impacting businesses adversely. Customer Relationship Management will have a utility of
Permissioned/private blockchain, which can be implemented across value chains of the
customers and suppliers. It will create an atmosphere of transparency and clarity across
various organizations, which are blockchained. Every immutable transaction recorded on the
system, be it purchase order, invoice, shipment documents, etc. will facilitate audit trail. Smart
contracts can be deployed as closed loop control system for all processes, e.g. invoicing,
payments, etc.
There is an alarming state of education, in developing countries. There is low accountability
for the institutions, teachers and even students. There are vulnerabilities around entire
training process, examinations/ assessment and certification. Also existing paper-based
certification systems may be subject to loss or fraud. If blockchain is embraced by or forced
up on educational institutions, most activities can be streamlined right from admissions to
certifications. Frauds, if tried can be traced quickly. While, actual certificates and other
relevant documents could be in “data lakes”, but references can be part of blockchain. There
will be transparent system of records, easy for institution to mine from and students & alumna
access. Same applies to learning processes in corporate training, in terms of keeping track of
continuing professional development and learning. Blockchain could potentially take data from
conference attendances, courses & other forms of learning and store them securely in
reputable systems. Imagine a blockchain of a student or a professional, which
showcases entire learning curve, across the education institutions, detailing what
happened and how it happened.
There are large no of NGOs working in social sector with different focus areas such as
health, sanitation, agriculture, women empowerment, malnutrition, etc. However, biggest
challenge for the social sector is fund raising, due to issues related to non-transparency, lack
of clarity of past work, financial compliances, etc. There few miscreants in social sector, as in
every field, because of them people look at every NGO with suspicion. Good NGOs can adopt
blockchain for all their activities, financial recording, fund-raising, subsequent deployment of
funds and all such activities. It will reflect transparency in their operations and offer audit trail
for every activity. Thereby donors can get details of utilization of their funds. Same applies to
Crowd-funding in social sector, a transparent link between donors, NGOs or fund raisers
and beneficiaries will ensure growth of the eco-system.
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Given vulnerabilities of voting machines and allegations of malpractices, election procedures,
world over are under cloud of doubt. This can be eliminated with deployment of public
blockchain in election process. Credibility can be achieved with immutable transactions and
verification of digital identity of voter through private keys, while maintaining anonymity of
voter. Every casted vote can be audited, while maintaining secrecy of voter identity. Some
countries are already piloting this technology in electoral procedures.
Market watchers can expect 2018 to be a year in which "certain products go viral" and "new
providers/models emerge," says Credit Suisse report. According to the bank, a survey
conducted by the World Economic Forum found 58% of executives anticipate 10% of global
GDP to "be stored on the blockchain before 2025." That's the year Credit Suisse expects
the technology to reach full maturity. At the moment, the technology is in the middle of the
prototype and pilot stage. As for 2018, the bank said it will be a critical year. "Blockchain
solutions will come into production as the "low-hanging fruit" of the industry is addressed - i.e.
where blockchain’s use is immediately obvious, such as payments and trade finance," the
bank said.
5.2 Challenges with Blockchain
• Initial cost of migration to blockchain. Though blockchain is open source software,
there is a definite cost of consultation for selection of right iteration of blockchain,
development & customization of blockchain for existing applications, testing and
commercial implementation, etc. It will be challenging to integrate the technology with
existing legacy infrastructure.
• Storage space issues, especially in the public blockchains. As no. of transactions are
increasing there is ever increasing need of resources like speed and capacity.
• Identification of peers and creating hierarchies who can be trusted to access the data.
• Privacy and security challenges that might arise from the decentralized access of data,
in the context of legal framework, prevailing in respective countries.
• Probable resistance from existing market intermediaries, government staff.
• Developing a regulatory framework in guiding the application of the new technology.
• A key challenge with blockchains is ensuring that an industrialized version of these
systems emerge that provide scalability, robustness and security required to handle
the transactions required by large-scale supply chains and the associated governance
issues.
• Security issues around the authentication and encryption of the database. While the
database is considered highly secure, the accuracy of each entry ultimately rests on
the entity in control of each private account.
• As with all areas of online security, there is also an increased need to protect against
hacking. If tradeoff between flexibility & security falls apart, blockchain networks may
be vulnerable to hack attacks or external threats.
• Scalability is viewed with skepticism, as it involved speed and storage. Since, early
days of adoption for large data, pitfalls are yet to be realized.
26. Page 26 of 41
5.3 Opportunities
$ 10 trillion is the potential size of
Blockchain technology ecosystem
consisting of Cryptocurrencies,
blockchain technology and
decentralization - says Royal Bank of
Canada report. Mark Cuban has
announced that his basketball team
Dallas Mavericks will begin accepting
Cryptocurrency during next season.
Companies, the owners of the logos in
this picture, along with likes of 1800-
flowers, Bloomberg, etc have started
accepting cryptocurrencies. Blockchain ETFs attracted $ 240 million investment in a single
week. All this point to, beginning of an era for Crypto economics and blockchain technology.
Currently focus and economic activity in this sector is concentrated on speculation in
Cryptocurrencies and related activities. This involves mining and trading of bitcoins,
Ethereum, etc. Sale of ASIC / GPU based mining equipments is big business with current
market size of approx $ 7 Billion and growing fast, as more people are aspiring to be miners.
There are exchanges hosting wallets and facilitating Cryptocurrency transactions, at fees per
transaction.
However, bigger opportunity lies in underlying Blockchain technology (a system which
enables migration of trust from entities to computing systems) and decentralization.
Evolution of blockchain and crypto economics is triggering rainbow of opportunities. For
example, development of platforms for various financial services, business platforms, IoT
integration and development of decentralized applications (e.g. decentralized social networks,
instant messengers, cloud storage, search engines, commodity exchanges, information
aggregators, etc.). Broadly, this technology will expand many markets, more people will be
connected online to embrace this evolution and entities would save transactional costs. Let us
understand the opportunities in detail.
Currently, there are 2.6 billion unbanked adults across world. Most of them have access to
internet, but they don’t have exposure to formal financial world, consisting of digital payments,
personal finance, insurance, etc. At the same time, it is difficult to obtain information about
these potential beneficiaries. There as an opportunity to build a platform facilitating
financial services with backbone infrastructure of decentralized blockchain technology
offering data privacy, information sharing, immutability and a full stack of security protocols.
This platform can facilitate creation of public, as well as private blockchains, for people to
chose from, in the context of their unique requirement. There should be interoperability
between public and private blockchains. For example, KYC credentials, can be managed on
private blockchain network and functions of public interest can be maintained on public
27. Page 27 of 41
blockchain, e.g. information systems, etc. It should offer tools to build & manage blockchains
and develop APIs/ Rest APIs, particularly for lean businesses and small enterprises, who
want to reduce or eliminate the effort required in creating, managing and terminating
blockchains. The platform should have infrastructure to facilitate development of
decentralized apps for blockchain networks. It should facilitate developing smart contracts for
process automation. It should facilitate deployment of blockchains to the cloud. Users can
create and manage such blockchains through a user friendly dashboard and mobile users
should get blockchain instance
immediately. They should be able move
in & out of the apps, seamlessly. This
platform can enable the underserved
people to avail financial services such
as payment transfers, personal
banking, insurance, microfinance,
crowd funding, peer funding, payment
wallets, etc. People can have online
wallets and they can exchange funds
among themselves instantaneously
(without any intermediary, such as
Bank, etc.) at fraction of cost. They can avail personal insurance or insurance for their house,
crop (available in certain countries), automobiles, machinery, etc Due to tamperproof nature
of blockchain records of their purchases and any subsequent modifications, repairs, etc. will
create a trail of instances. This will be a record they can showcase, while selling/ mortgaging
the house, machinery, etc. to peers or any institution. Availability of their financial records on
secured blockchain network, will create a seamless, tamperproof credit history. Which will be
a reference for banking or microfinance institutions to offer them loan for education,
automobile, marriage or any incidental reason, through the course of life, that too, at nominal
rate. Typically, banks accept deposits at X rate of interest and offers loans to entities at X + Y
rate of interest. On demand availability of credit history, can be a major enabler for peer to
peer funding. People can seek loan among themselves, by showcasing their tamperproof
credit history to peers, willing to finance them. Here the financer can bypass the banking
institutions and offer loan to needy at X rate of interest and needy also saves Y rate of
interest. Such peer to peer
transactions, built on blockchain
platform will be a game-changer in
financial markets, as a cost saving
mechanism. It will save cost for both
consumers and institutions/ individuals
offering financial services. This will
realize global financial inclusion.
There is an opportunity to offer cost
saving to the tune of 2-4% in
28. Page 28 of 41
manufacturing cost, by building a blockchain platform around Durable product lifecycle,
which will maintain records about each durable product, right from the raw material stage, to
production, to inspection, to product sale to customer and further covering stages, till end of
product life cycle. It can be integrated with supply chain management to facilitate lean
manufacturing. Integration of smart contracts across value chain will automate many inter
corporate transactions, resulting in savings of financial cost. This platform will have mix of
public and private blockchains. The public blockchain will carry records of product from raw
material stage to end of life. Whereas, private blockchains will be implemented for intra
organization operations, e.g. vendor, manufacturer, dealer, service centre, etc. will have their
private blockchains.
A product blockchain, a permissionless one, flows through various organizations, across
value chain. At every stage new record blocks will be added in the blockchain. First,
manufacturer decides to manufacture a product. He generates bill of material. Places order
with few vendors for material. Vendors send material to manufacturer. Here product
blockchain will have genesis block, consisting of records of various components for product.
As the manufacturing stages advance, so does, the product blockchain will add records
related to specific recordable details about product during manufacturing. As the products are
sold to end customer, the customer details get added in the blockchain. Whenever, customer
services the product, details related to service get added in to product blockchain, till the
product life cycle ends.
While, the product blockchain will be public, it will have interoperability with private
blockchains, which will keep financial records with channels of privacy. They will be
accessible only to restricted members. For example, price of particular component of the
product, will be known only to purchase department user of manufacturer and sales
department of the vendor of the product. In case of product failure, there would be trail of
events, which can be scrutinized to find stage of the fault and accordingly remedial course
correction can be implemented, to avoid future failures. At the end, the product blockchain will
have transparent record of every instance of intervention with the product. For example,
manufacturer receives parts of a car, the car is manufactured, sold through a retailer to end
user, serviced multiple times across various service centers. Now there is a situation, the
owner wants to sell that car to an interested buyer. At this stage, immutable records about the
car, available on blockchain, will help buyer finalize his purchasing decision. Even, product
financing peers or banks can refer to the blockchain records, to decide about financing. In
such ecosystem, there are multiple stakeholder such as, vendor of parts, manufacturer,
dealer, service centre, spare part dealer, etc. All of them must have consensus in accepting
this system or compliance regulations enforces such a system, which will eliminate need of
trust.
Different sectors of industry can have such decentralized platforms. These platforms should
have tools for blockchain deployment, APIs for user applications. Smart contracts will
automate financial procedures and other inter corporate transactions. By participating on such
platform, businesses will have great opportunity to improve their credibility, reduce operating
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cost, increase efficiencies and improve transparency, by deployment of blockchain in end-to-
end value chain, consisting of vendors and clients or dealers.
There will be 21 Billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices in 2020, up from 6.4 billion in 2016,
according to Gartner and 10s of billion dollars are getting invested in this space. Smart city
projects in many countries, manufacturing automation through AI/robotics and smart homes/
offices will be driving engines for this phenomenal growth projection. Intel, Cisco & Autodesk
are some of the prominent players along with many startups, taking IoT forward. At local level
IoT devices communicate through internet protocols, either through blue tooth, wireless
Ethernet, etc. They are controlled through applications hosted in cloud with AWS, MS Azure,
etc. However, in an IoT connected infrastructure, a network is only as strong as its weakest
link. This means security will always be a necessary topic of discussion for the businesses
and stakeholder at larger, participating in the IoT, including vendors and end users.
The future of cities, communities and businesses is getting shaped in their dependency on
connected IoT devices and their controlling systems. As a result, the prize is getting bigger for
hackers, to exploit these devices and systems for their own gain. The centralized security
model in market today will struggle to deal with vulnerabilities in IoT infrastructure. They will
increase with no of IoT devices, i.e. more the sensors, actuators and other devices in an IoT
installation, more the threat of
hacking attack. These devices
collect lot of data at local level and
dispersed in cloud for processing
and monitoring. Security of this data
at centralized & distributed level
along with integrity at REST and
transport level is challenging.
Further, full potential of IoT can’t be
realized without internet of value IoV
(internet of value) and in turn MoIP
(money over internet protocol).
More the devices/ node,
vulnerability of IoT increases, where
as more such nodes, security of
blockchain enhances. The adversities and challenges of IoT is a great opportunity for
integrating blockchain technology in IoT installations.
There is an opportunity to build a platform, which will offer immutable and cryptographically
secured blockchain layer, underneath IoT installations. This platform can have channels of
private blockchains, to be made available for IoT installations. This platform should have
choice of consensus algorithms for users to choose from, depending on their unique
requirement. It should have cluster container approach, where in, low bandwidth wireless
data from IoT devices can communicate well with platform given the lightweight virtualization
in containers. The platform should have wide amount of APIs to connect with the wide range
30. Page 30 of 41
of devices, operating systems and languages involved in this ecosystem. More specifically, it
should have a support for Java applications, as most of the existing IoT devices are working
in Java environment. The platform should have following features :
• Interfacing and integrating capabilities for wide range of operating systems
• Highly responsive to large no. of IoT devices
• Security at every layer of stack
• Compatibility with wide standards of IoT devices
• Facility for scalability
• Support for step by step modular adoption of IoT
• Support for integrating financial services with IoT to realize IoV
Some of the IoT devices/ nodes collecting data from sensors and transporting to blockchain
network, will themselves act as validators and as it goes in blockchain, more the validators,
stronger the network. Such platforms will transform the way manufacturing, industrial process
control and even financial processes in industrial arena, happen today. Blockchain will offer
MoIP, in turn IOV to IoT to realize its full potential across value chain. Machine to machine
manufacturing operations in IoT will extend to payments structure, which will enable machine-
to-machine commerce. Such platform based on blockchain will eliminate the cyber security
related vulnerabilities and IoT would evolve as a catalyst for Industrial Revolution 4.0
$ 335 Billion is the estimated size of sharing economy in 2025, meteoric rise from $ 14
billion in 2014, says report of Brookings. The sharing economy is “the peer-to-peer based
activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing access to good and services”. Alternative names for
this phenomenon include gig economy, platform economy, access economy and collaborative
consumption. This augurs well with the peer-to-peer, decentralized network without any
control of central authority, the hallmark of blockchain ecosystem.
Currently there is a large cost of aggregation required to be paid by people, to benefit from
sharing economy; to that extent, it is centralized and needs to evolve as true peer-to-peer
economy, with fractional cost of aggregation. There is an opportunity build a blockchain
platform, which will act as a hub for peer-to-peer instances of economic activities at, local
community/ city levels. For example, car hailing, home sharing, social networking, local
business promotion, local exchange of used goods, crowd bidding for agriculture produce and
many such activities. Deployment of blockchain can make it cheaper to create and operate an
online platform. For example, transparency in offers & transactions will result in competitive
environment, benefitting the consumer. The financial transactions can be coordinated by self-
executing smart contracts, using native Cryptocurrency or fiat currency.
This platform can have public blockchain, where in anyone with internet connection can be
part of this blockchain. There will be transparent record of all assets and their respective
ownerships. It will offer chronologic sequence of offers and transactions, which will be guiding
principles for future transaction. Consensus algorithm of proof of stake could be suitable for
such platform, however there has to be choice of consensus algorithms. Trinity of blockchain,
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smart contracts and IoT will ensure speedy and automated processes. For example, A person
can offer to rent out his house. Smart contract can enforce agreement with highest bidder and
ensure automated transactions. Next level of automation using IoT can ensure, locking and
opening property rights, through passwords.
This platform should support mobile devices, offer APIs for various IoT systems and easily
programmable smart contracts.
Another case in point, used goods market. It is growing by year, not in absolute terms, but
by virtue of higher discovery of those goods in each household, occupying storage spaces,
without yielding any use benefit. Current mechanism facilitate transactions, but there are
vulnerabilities in those transactions, e.g. stolen goods, duplicate goods, lack of transparency
about offers, etc. An ecosystem with blockchain technology, offering options to households for
renting, selling, exchanging, pawning, donating, etc. of such goods, will eliminate those
vulnerabilities. Transparent blockchain will reveal ownership trails of the goods. It will help
realize value for unused goods and immutable trail on blockchain will ensure transparency in
each such transactions. Smart contracts can automate financial transactions, offering finality
to the deals. A native digital coin within such system with blockchain backbone will be a
negotiating tool for the users of this ecosystem.
There are going to be immense opportunities in Blockchain arena. But, what will matter is first
mover advantage.
5.4 Reference Architecture
We propose development of a platform, by customizing open source blockchain framework, to
achieve far reaching economic and societal impact in peer to peer environment, without a
presence of central controlling authority.
The Platform
A model blockchain platform is proposed, as a holistic ecosystem to facilitate technological
development for betterment of economic transactions and social interactions. At technological
level, it can offer facility to build modular private (Permissioned) blockchains with smart
contracts, supporting tools and libraries for deployment in mobile/ web environment.
At functional level, it can host spectrum of use cases for commercial and social ecosystems,
e.g. Fintech, eCommerce, peer finance, etc. This platform can facilitate development, testing
and deployment of enterprise grade, as well as fast & responsive end user facing
applications. It will have Integrated Smart Contract management, development tools, libraries
& distributed data lakes to build and manage blockchains, for wide range of applications.
Some key technology features are:
• Permissioned enterprise grade & lightweight user application facing blockchains
• Infrastructure to develop new APIs & consensus algorithms
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• Runs on demand arbitrary smart contracts
• Multiple options for ordering services (consensus algorithm)
• API server library
• iOS, Android, Python and JavaScript library
• Blockchain Explorer / data visualization suite
• A client SDK (Node.js) to interface
• Support for basic REST APIs and CLIs
• Support for creation and management of digital assets
A digital asset, in the form of a token is proposed to emanate from the platform. The utility of
the token is primarily aimed at needs of various applications built on the platform, it can be
used across applications.
This platform will be based on the following proposed reference architecture of blockchain
system. Reference Architecture of blockchain ecosystem is modeling a unique process, in
which a service maintains some state, clients invoke operations that transform the state and
generate outputs. Let us understand it, through following facets – Technology Stack, key
elements of blockchain ecosystem, Actors & roles, Services, Processes and Data Model. This
reference architecture will safeguard against failure of orderers, by offering different
endorsers for each smart contract. It will offer scalability through right level of alignment
between endorsers, smart contracts, orderers and removing smart contract from critical
path of the ordering service. This architecture will facilitate deployment of smart contracts
that have confidentiality requirements with respect to the content and state updates of its
transactions. This platform will offer modular and pluggable consensus (i.e., ordering
service) implementations.
Technology Stack
Here is the proposed technology stack of Blockchain, which will form basis for the reference
architecture. Blockchain is
the base of all blockchain
based applications. On this
platform two types of
blockchains are proposed,
first, an enterprise-grade,
open-source blockchain
framework and second,
lightweight and responsive
framework. There will be
interoperability between
these two frameworks,
wherein libraries, APIs of
lightweight blockchain can
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be deployed on to enterprise grade one.
Next layer could be referred as overlay networks, as it is just a distributed decentralized
network. This layer allows creation of smart contracts, which are codes defining the terms of
agreement between two transacting parties. These can be used to trigger automated
transactions. Next there will be distributed data lakes, storing supporting transactional data
files, which are referred in blocks. Modularity of ordering services(consensus algorithms),
will allow pluggable consensus, resulting in multiple options for ordering services, which can
be selected based on requirement of applications. Sidechains facilitate applications to
transact digital assets from one blockchain network to a completely different blockchain
network in a secure manner, e.g. Bitcoin can be invoked on to this platform for application
requirement. These are catalysts for fast micropayments.
In the next layer digital identity management is proposed. Given the immutable nature of
blockchain, it is all the more important that digital identities be handled with the utmost care,
keeping human values front and center. Digital identities will be managed on the principle of
Privacy by design. This layer will facilitate creation and management of digital assets, which
could be Digital IDs, Tokens, etc. This layer will also initiate and manage communication with
network of peers, for validation of transactions and eventually creation of blocks.
At support layer, there will API’s for Java, JavaScript, C++ & Python, libraries for various
operating environments, e.g. Android, iOS and JavaScript and support for Rest APIs. It will
have Visualizer tools to facilitate deploy, view and query blockchains. It will have tools for
cloud deployment of blockchain.
Application layer will be used by the end users on a daily basis. The users will find the apps
to be more people oriented, like a peer to peer app and no third party requests will be needed.
There will be eCommerce apps, social networking apps, gaming apps and apps which are
concerned requirements of day to day life.
Components of Blockchain ecosystem
Blockchain is a peer-to-peer network of nodes, who are engaged in transactions, without any
controlling elements. Mobile devices, web apps or even smart IoT devices can be designated
nodes, in the network having credentials to initiate and execute transactions.
A shared, Permissioned ledger is a immutable, irreversible and append-only system of
records and serves as a single source of facts. The ledger contains the current world
state of the network and a chain of transaction invocations.
The membership service provider (MSP) manages identity and Permissioned access for
clients and peers, while ensuring privacy of users. It defines the rules in which identities are
validated, authenticated and granted permission to the blockchain. It maintains digital
identities of users, who are designated to join the network. It offers necessary permissions for
users to create transaction. It interfaces with certificate authority that verifies user digital
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identities. In a consortium network, where multiple organizations are part of blockchain
network. The blockchain can incorporate multiple MSPs.
The Smart Contracts (chaincodes) are programs which contain business logic and asset
definitions for automating transactions, around assets. Invoking transaction results in
changes to the ledger.
The world state reflects the current data about all the assets in the network. This data is
stored in a database for efficient access, e.g. CouchDB.
Channels are programmable data privacy mechanisms that allow transaction visibility for
defined set of stakeholders of the ecosystem. Each channel is an independent chain of
transaction blocks containing transactions only for that particular channel.
Stake holders and Roles
There are few stakeholders/ actors in blockchain system, which have designated roles, to be
performed in the blockchain system.
Users are the ones which initiate transactions. Users are applications that act on behalf of a
person or device (through smart contracts), to propose transactions on the network.
Each peer maintain copy of ledger, along with the state of the network. There are two types of
peers: Endorsing peers and Committing peers. However, there is an overlap between
endorsing and committing peers, in that endorsing peers are a special kind of committing
peers. All peers commit blocks to the distributed ledger. Endorsers simulate and endorse
transactions. Committers verify endorsements and validate transaction results, prior to
committing transactions to the blockchain.
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Consensus mechanism (Ordering Services) accepts endorsed transactions, orders them
into a block and delivers the blocks to the committing peers. In a blockchain system
consensus is the process of reaching agreement on the next set of transactions to be added
to the ledger.
Services and Processes
It starts with network discovery process. Where in, a user acquires blockchain IP and logs into
blockchain network through API. His credentials and identity are validated, by membership
service provider, in accordance with user profiles deployed by Certificate Authority (CA). After
handshaking with network, the user discovers designated endorsing peers, committing peers
and ordering services. The ledger is synchronized with peers, having most recent world state.
User then initiates a transaction through web/ mobile app. The transaction can be a standard
transaction involving transfer of asset to another user in the network or it can be a part of
smart contract, where transaction automatically completes upon triggering the conditions,
specified in smart contract.
The transaction is sent to endorsing peers. Endorsing peer then simulates the transaction of
user, as if transaction were executed. But without updating the ledger, it adds RW sets with
transactions, signs and send back to user. Different endorsement policies can be specified for
different smart contracts, at the time of deployment. Endorsement policies can also be
channel specific.
The user then submits the endorsed transaction and the RW sets to the consensus
mechanism. In this mechanism, consensus happens for all the users, who have submitted
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endorsed transactions & RW sets. It delivers blocks, containing data of the endorsed
transactions & RW sets, to all committing peers. The blocks would have time stamps and they
would be added to blockchain in the sequence of block generation time. This platform will
have choice of consensus mechanisms, which can be selected and plugged, as per
requirement of use cases.
Committing peers are responsible for adding blocks of transactions to the shared ledger and
updating the world state. For transactions to get committed to the blockchain, their RW set
should match most recent world state. Then only, the committing peer will append the
blockchain with this transaction and the world state is updated. In case if RW set doesn’t
match the world state, transaction will be still added in block, but it will be marked invalid and
they would notify user about the failure of the transaction.
If the transaction fails, that is, if the committing peer finds that the RW set does not match the
current world state, the transaction ordered into a block will still be included in that block, but it
will be marked as invalid and the world state will not be updated.
Data Model
In proposed blockchain system, every peer will
maintain most recent ledger. The ledger
maintains Block Storage, State Database and
history database. Each block contains block
header, block data and block metadata.
Block storage is append only file system which
stores the serialized bytes of block structure.
Blocks are stored on a file system rather than a
database which might affect query capability on
the transaction logs, but a that makes it
tamperproof.
A state database (CouchDB) will be used to
maintain the current state of all smart contracts.
As a result, a smart contract can use the query
capability of underlying database to retrieve and
update current state.
History of values assigned to a given key is
present in the block storage along with who
issued the transaction, who all endorsed it, RW sets of the transaction, etc. Though these
values can be stored directly in a database for efficient querying for now, only index to the
block for each key is maintained. A single index to block storage is maintained by history
database.
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Web Deployment Model
The platform is proposed to be hosted in the cloud, in the form of Blockchain-as-a-Service
(BAAS). Businesses can have enterprise wide deployment of blockchain in calibrated mode,
with a modular approach. They can break their entire requirement in parts and build one part
at a time with underlying blockchain. Even, lean businesses and small enterprises, can deploy
blockchain in cloud. That will save them of the effort required in creating, managing, and
terminating blockchains. Their IT teams can create and manage such blockchains through a
dashboard and users (typically, smart contract developers) can obtain a blockchain instance
immediately. Platform aims to offer on-demand “As-a-service” deployment model for
blockchain ecosystem. Developer community and IT teams of organizations can create and
manage the blockchain network using the modular, customizable dashboards, offered on the
platform. Organizations can create group of blockchain network in cloud known as ‘container
clusters’ and then manage and monitor those networks with configurable dashboard.
Cloud deployment model of the proposed blockchain platform is shown in the figure. Let us
understand the various facets of the model, through a flow of process. Certificate Authority
provides identity with security, privacy and protection for the blockchain users, for their
designated roles. User -A initiates a transaction with User-B, on a decentralized app. The
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request is sent to cloud edge gateway (Firewall, load balancers) which routes it through API to
container cluster services, which offers it a transaction instance. Authenticity of both the users
is verified as per valid user list of certificate authority at identity management system. Along
with supporting privacy management system, (working on privacy by design principle), it
ensures that participating users have permission and have entitlements granted based on
their roles in the blockchain network. The users then are enabled to participate in a
transaction using APIs. Thus, from a web browser the users connect to the blockchain
service. The blockchain system receives the transaction request. The committing nodes
communicate to establish consensus. Upon consensus (as per consensus algorithm), the
transaction is validated by these participating designated peers. The smart contract
agreements are evaluated & enforced and the validated transaction is committed to the
ledger.
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6.References
1. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – Satoshi Nakamoto
2. Hyperledger.org
3. IBM Blockchain Platform
4. Credit Suisse Report – Blockchain, August 2016
5. Business Intelligence Bitcoin Report, Dec 2017
6. Deloitte Insights Report – Evolution of Blockchain, October, 2017
7. Smart Contracts: 12 Use Cases for Business & Beyond, December 2016
8. A comprehensive Reference Model for Blockchain-Based Distributed Ledger
Technology, Andreas Ellervee, May 2017
9. Distributed Ledger Technology- beyond blockchain, Government office for science,
UK, 2016
10. Blockchain- A beginners guide, blockchain hub, September, 2017
11. Some simple economics of blockchain, Christian Catalini & Joshua S Gans,
September, 2017
12. Architecture of the Hyperledger Blockchain Fabric, Christian Cachin, IBM, July 2016
13. Blockchain Technology in India- opportunities and challenges, Deloitte & ASSOCHAM,
April, 2017
14. Financial Services – Building blockchain one block at a time, Cognizant
15. Coin desk article available at https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-blockchain-create-10-
trillion-market-rbc-analyst-says/
16. Blockchain technology - a very special kind of Distributed Database, Sabastien
Muenier, December 2016 available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blockchain-
technology-very-special-kind-distributed-meunier/?trk=mp-reader-card
17. Wikipedia
18. Blockchain available at http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Blockchain
19. The four layers of blockchain, David Xiao available at
https://medium.com/@coriacetic/the-four-layers-of-the-blockchain-dc1376efa10f
20. Ethereum.org
40. Page 40 of 41
21. Understanding blockchain, Johannes available at
https://correlaid.org/blog/posts/blockchain-explained
22. Github available at https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha-android
23. In 2020 Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today, World Economic
Forum, available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/bitcoin-consume-more-
power-than-world-
2020?utm_content=bufferdc4c3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&ut
m_campaign=buffer
24. Smart Contracts- 12 use cases for business and beyond available at
https://www.ccn.com/smart-contracts-12-use-cases-for-business-and-beyond/
25. Corda.net
26. Why blockchain is future of sharing economy, Forbes available at
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribarzilay/2017/08/14/why-blockchain-is-the-future-of-
the-sharing-economy/#1549a6f73342
27. Blockchain powered project management and CRM available at
https://www.pupaclic.com/web-app/blockchain-powered-project-management-system-
crm/
28. Fusing Blockchain and IoT available at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/fusing-
blockchain-and-iot-interview-filaments-ceo/
29. Blockchain: a new hope for IoT security available at
https://connectedworld.com/blockchain-a-new-hope-for-iot-security/
30. Current and Future state of Sharing Economy, Brookings India available at
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/sharingeconomy_032017final.pdf
31. Ripple.com
32. Quorum blockchain, available at https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/Quorum
33. Iota.org - IOTA blockchain
34. Kubernetes available at https://kubernetes.io/
35. Architecture of Hyperledger blockchain fabric, IBM, July 2016
36. Senthilnathan’s blockchain blog at https://blockchain-fabric.blogspot.in/
41. Page 41 of 41
37. Read the docs at http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release/arch-deep-
dive.html
38. Blockchain for business – introduction to Hyperledger technologies at
https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-
v1:LinuxFoundationX+LFS171x+3T2017/course/