INTRODUCTION

A blockchain is essentially a distributed database of records or public ledger of all transactions or digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties. Each transaction in the public ledger is verified by consensus of a majority of the participants in the system. And, once entered, information can never be erased. The blockchain contains a certain and verifiable record of every single transaction ever made. Bitcoin, the decentralized peer­to­peer digital currency, is the most popular example that uses blockchain technology. The digital currency bitcoin itself is highly controversial but the underlying blockchain technology has worked flawlessly and found wide range of applications in both financial and non­financial world.

The main hypothesis is that the blockchain establishes a system of creating a distributed consensus ​in the digital online world. This allows participating entities to know for certain that a digital event happened by creating an irrefutable record in a public ledger. ​It opens the door for developing a democratic open and scalable digital economy from a centralized one. There are tremendous opportunities in this disruptive technology and revolution in this space has just begun.

Bitcoin is the most popular example that is intrinsically tied to blockchain technology. It is also the most controversial one since it helps to enable a multibillion-dollar global market of anonymous transactions without any governmental control. Hence it has to deal with a number of regulatory issues involving national governments and financial institutions

However, Blockchain technology itself is non-controversial and has worked flawlessly over the years and is being successfully applied to both financial and non-financial world applications. Last year, Marc Andreessen, the doyen of Silicon Valley’s capitalists, listed the blockchain distributed consensus model​as the most important invention since the Internet itself. Johann Palychata from BNP Paribas wrote in the Quintessence magazine that bitcoin’s blockchain, the software that allows the digital currency to function should be considered as an invention like the steam or combustion engine that has the potential to transform the world of finance and beyond.

Current digital economy is based on the reliance on a certain trusted authority. Our all online transactions rely on trusting someone to tell us the truth—it can be an email service provider telling us that our email has been delivered; it can be a certification authority telling us that a certain digital certificate is trustworthy; or it can be a social network such as Facebook telling us that our posts regarding our life events have been shared only with our friends or it can be a bank telling us that our money has been delivered reliably to our dear ones in a remote country. The fact is that we live our life precariously in the digital world by relying on a third entity for the security and privacy of our digital assets. The fact remains that these third party sources can be hacked, manipulated or compromised.

This is where the blockchain technology comes handy. It has the potential to revolutionize the digital world by enabling a distributed consensus​where each and every online transaction, past and present, involving digital assets can be verified at any time in the future. It does this without compromising the privacy of the digital assets and parties involved. The distributed consensus​and anonymity​are two important characteristics of blockchain technology

ADVANTAGES

smart contracts​”.

• The advantages of Blockchain technology outweigh the regulatory issues and technical challenges. One key emerging use case of blockchain technology involves “smart contracts​”. Smart contracts are basically computer programs that can automatically execute the terms of a contract. When a pre-configured condition in a smart contract among participating entities is met then the parties involved in a contractual agreement can be automatically made payments as per the contract in a transparent manner.


• Smart Property​is another related concept which is regarding controlling the ownership of a property or asset via blockchain using Smart Contracts. The property can be physical such as car, house, smartphone etc. or it can be non-physical such as shares of a company. It should be noted here that even Bitcoin is not really a currency--Bitcoin is all about controlling the ownership of money. Blockchain technology is finding applications in wide range of areas—both financial​and non-financial​. Financial​institutions and banks no longer see blockchain technology as threat to traditional business models. The world’s biggest banks are in fact looking for opportunities in this area by doing research on innovative blockchain applications. In a recent interview Rain Lohmus of Estonia’s LHV bank told that they found Blockchain to be the most tested and secure for some banking and finance related applications

Non-Financial​applications opportunities are also endless. We can envision putting proof of existence of all legal documents, health records, and loyalty payments in the music industry, notary, private securities and marriage licenses in the blockchain. By storing the fingerprint of the digital asset instead of storing the digital asset itself, the anonymity or privacy objective can be achieved.

SIMPLE DIAGRAM ON HOW IT WORKS

APPLICATION OF BLOCKCHAIN

Financial Application

Private Securities

It is very expensive to take a company public. A syndicate of banks must work to underwrite the deal and attract investors. The stock exchanges list company shares for secondary market to function securely with trades settling and clearing in a timely manner. It is now theoretically possible for companies to directly issue the shares via the blockchain. These shares can then be purchased and sold in a secondary market that sits on top of the blockchain. Here are some examples:

NASDAQ Private Equity: ​NASDAQ launched its Private Equity Exchange in 2014 . This is 6 meant to provide the key functionalities like Cap table and investor relationship management for the the pre-IPO or private companies. The current process of trading stocks in this exchange is inefficient and slow due to involvement of multiple 3rd parties. NASDAQ has joined hands with a San Francisco based Start-up called chain.com to 7 implement private equity exchange on top of BlockChain. Chain.com is implementing BlockChain based smart contracts to implement exchange functionality. This product is expected to be fast, traceable and efficient.

Medici is being developed as a securities exchange that uses the Counterparty implementations of Bitcoin 2.0. The goal here is to create a cutting edge stock market. Counterparty is a protocol that implements traditional financial instruments as the self-executing smart contracts. These smart contracts facilitate, verify or enforce the negotiation of contract and eliminate the need for a physical document. This eliminates the need for an intermediary, such as broker, exchange or bank. Blockstream ​is an open source project with focus on sidechains--interoperable blockchains--to avoid fragmentation, security and other issues related to alternative crypto-currencies. Uses can range from registering securities, such as stocks, bonds and derivatives, to securing bank balances and mortgages.

Coinsetter ​is a New York based bitcoin exchange. It is working on a Project Highline, a method of using the blockchain to settle and clear financial transactions in T+ 10 minutes rather than the customary T+3 or T+2 days.

Augur ​is a decentralized prediction market that will allow users to buy and sell shares in anticipation of an event with the probability that a specific outcomes will occur. This can also be used to make financial and economic forecasts based on the “wisdom of crowds”.

Bitshares ​are digital tokens that reside in the blockchain and reference specific assets such as currencies or commodities. The Token holders may have the unique feature of earning interest on commodities, such as gold, and oil, as well as dollars, euros and currency instruments.

Insurance

Assets which can be uniquely identified by one or more identifiers which are difficult to destroy or replicate can be registered in blockchain. This can be used to verify ownership of an asset and also trace the transaction history. Any property (physical or digital such as real estate, automobiles, physical assets, laptops, other valuables) can potentially be registered in blockchain and the ownership, transaction history can be validated by anyone, especially insurers

Non­Financial Applications:

Notary Public

Verifying authenticity of the document can be done using blockchain and eliminates the need for centralized authority. The document certification service helps in Proof of Ownership (who authored it), Proof of Existence (at a certain time) and Proof of Integrity (not tampered) of the documents. Since it is counterfeit-proof and can be verified by independent third parties these services are legally binding. Using blockchain for notarization secures the privacy of the document and those who seek certification. By publishing proof of publication using cryptographic hashes of files into block chain takes the notary timestamping to new level. It also eliminates the need for expensive notarization fees and ineffective ways of transferring documents

Stampery is a company which can stamp email or any files using blockchain. It simplifies certifying of emails by just emailing them to an email specifically created for each customer. Law firms are using Stampery’s technology for a very cost effective way to certify documents.

Viacoin is the one of the companies which uses clearinghouse protocol for notary service.

Block Notary is an iOS app which helps you to create proof of existence of any content (photo, files, any media) using TestNet3 or Bitcoin network.

Crypto Public Notary which uses Blockchain of Bitcoin to notarize documents by using trivial amount of bitcoins to record the file’s checksum in public blockchain.

Proof of Existence is another service which uses blockchain to SHA256 digest of the document in bitcoin blockchain.

Ascribe is another company which does authorship certification using blockchain. It also offers transfer of ownership service with attribution to the original author.