Blockchain Architecture — The 4IR ID Foundational Tech
When we speak about Blockchain technology we cannot put all in the same basket. Blockchain architecture is large and like we speak about the internet as a holistic platform we need to apply the same thinking to Blockchain tech. Blockchain is one of the core architecture of the 4IR — The Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“Data is becoming a new asset class — one that may trump previous asset classes.” p. 13
“Privacy is the foundation of free societies.” p. 13
“We believe that the economy works best when it works for everyone, and this new platform is an engine of inclusion.” p. 25
Imagine a technology that could preserve our freedom to choose for ourselves and our families , to express these choices in the world, and to control our own destiny, no matter where we lived or were born. What new tools and new jobs could we create with those capabilities? What new business and services? How should we think about the opportunities? The answers were right in front of us, compliments of Satoshi Nakamoto.” (p. 28)
“To be sure, the blockchain provides opportunities to stop the stampede to a surveillance society.” (p. 44)
“Regulators are still trying to manage this machine with rules devised for the industrial age.” (p. 56)
Extract from the Book “Blockchain Revolution” by Don Tapscott
Blockchain technologies are part of the so called Fourth Industrial Revolution — 4IR or another important concept — Society 5.0.
As we get into the new stage of the 4IR we will need to create a digital ID and trust for the internet and digital transformation. There is no turning back to make the global economy and society digital. Because of its ubiquitous reach, 4IR technologies and specially Blockchain open a lot of new opportunities to create digital ID for the world society and at the same time raise all kinds of new concerns, and nations have to adapt and change.
Our global society is digital profound interconnection is also the result of the way in which billions of people behave and connect globally, through the use of mobile devices, smart devices and sensors, all of which have unprecedented processing capacity and power.
There are more than 8 billion people in the world and they are using over 3.5 billion mobile devices. These numbers will grow and this will imply that as you read this article two or more people are talking digitally. The mere presence of a digital device, normally a computer or a mobile phone on the table between them or in their peripheral vision, shifts their attention and changes both what they talk about and their degree of connectedness and this needs to be certified. This is something that happens in any country and that surpasses all kinds of physical frontiers and we need increasing digital trust for these operations. As we interact all day long through our devices, smart phones, computers with the inorganic and also organic biological world, we incessantly create a parallel digital world of escalating data.
There is also an increasing need to pass the paper based certification of our economy to digital as we keep increasing the data processing capacity and storage capacity, and this access to unlimited data and knowledge at a global scale, is leading to breakthroughs in all kinds of emergent technologies, which mutate and transform quickly.
This is particularly true in the main fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing and special Blockchain.
The architecture for anything perceives both the multiple processes and the product(s) of planning, designing, and certification of almost anything. The blockchain architecture implies to start a new cultural shift, symbols that open new perceptions and ways of looking at the world we live in.
- Blockchain is an unstoppable force that is impacting the creation of digital ID trust, business, government and organisations and the very way we live and work.
- Blockchain is a foundational technology or emergent technology because of its disruptive nature.
- Blockchain technologies offer a departure from the current centralised model of record-keeping. It will transform business operations and in particular supply chain operations.
- Blockchain technologies enable a standard trust architecture that allows untrusted entities (both human and nonhuman) to undertake commercial transactions and exchange value with a diverse range of assets.
We have to ask why are the world’s most powerful influencers, companies and governments excited about a technology that was initially created by cryptographers and part of it was based on the inception of Bitcoin. Bitcoin one has to remember was initially created as a subversion, criticism to the financial industry that exploded in the financial crisis of 2007 and a tech that was the basis of a cryptocurrency that initially was used by the dark web, in platforms beloved by criminals and radicals.
In an era when trust and ID are the biggest currency and when institutions of all kinds shift faster than ever and in some cases collapse, the blockchain tech offers a new vision and solution hope: distributed ledgers of data and smart contracts that communicate through nodes of cryptography and confidence.
Since its emergence Blockchain changed the way we will digitise the global economy that is still based in paper ledgers. Blockchain offers the opportunity to digitise the paper global economy in a new digital transformation solution. A decade ago after the inception of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, spawned hundreds of global companies, a market that in December 2017 reached over 700 billions of dollars.
Blockchain has now been adopted by major governments, companies, banks ranging from Chinese, Netherlands, Dubai governments, and from the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan to Walmart. Yet it remains wildly misunderstood.
In order to look in-depth, and do a balanced analysis of the blockchain’s true capacities and potential, as well as its limitations and dangers one has to analyse its holistic architecture.
One needs to map the often-confusing hybrid DLT landscape, and understand how a technology resting on foundations of cryptography tech and sometimes parts of mutual mistrust when it comes to the crypto part of its usage can become the foundational tech of our time. Blockchain technology is creating the path to trusted digital new tokenomic economics that run through smart contract based governance, regulation, and law. But of course we are in the inception of this tech and the architecture is still being written and has fragilities like any tech. Also very important, no technology is pure and has to go through various phases of evolution and maturity.
Based on the engineering and inseparable areas of Blockchain we need to look at blockchain architecture starting with:
4 verticals that are on the foundations of Blockchain DNA:
I. Business
II. Financial / Trading
III. Legal — regulatory
IV. Technology
We can not consider Blockchain — Distributed Ledger technologies without bearing in mind the business implications, the financial and trading increasing associations, very important the legal and regulatory implications and of course its powerful and disruptive technology with so much applications and uses.
With this as a basis Blockchain architecture takes into consideration:
DLT eight Powerful Areas:
1. Holistic concept — Internet of trust
2. Decentralised / distributed database(s)
3. Cryptoeconomics / Tokeneconomics Crypto Assets
4. Cryptocurrencies / Tokens — ICOs — Funding — Trading
5. Ledger full scale ID — Trust identity
6. Smart contract machine learning AI DNA
7. Consensus (un)breakable protocol
8. Unplugging blocks — nodes bitcoin origins — mining
To finish a quote from Don Tapscott:
The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generation — powered by blockchain technology — is bringing us the Internet of value: a new platform to reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better.
Blockchain is a vast, global distributed ledger or database running on millions of devices and open to anyone, where not just information but anything of value — money, but also titles, deeds, identities, even votes — can be moved, stored and managed securely and privately. Trust is established through mass collaboration and clever code rather than by powerful intermediaries like governments and banks.
