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Blockchain for Business in 2021 – Towards Public Chains and Decentralization. Baseline Could Be The Direction to Take.

1/4/2021

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By Pete Harris, Executive Director, Austin Blockchain Collective
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​Hyperledger, the Linux Foundation’s blockchain initiative, just celebrated its fifth birthday. Initially known as the Hyperledger Project, it originally focused on a single enterprise blockchain development – a private/permissioned platform dubbed Fabric. Its early members were a couple of dozen major corporates, with IBM as a key champion, influencer and code contributor.
 
Five years on, Hyperledger has grown substantially. It now has more than 200 members big and small and comprises 16 core projects, including competing ledgers, development tools, identity frameworks, etc. Until recently, however, its focus remained on the private blockchain space. That changed in 2019 with the announcement of Hyperledger Besu, an Ethereum client built by ConsenSys, which supports both private and public chains. 
 
According to Hyperledger’s annual report for that year, “Besu represents the growing interest of enterprises to build both permissioned and public network use cases for their applications.” Another report in 2019 – commissioned by consultants EY and analyst firm Forrester Research – found that some 75% of enterprises were interested in exploring public blockchains. 
 
As those enterprises embark on their public blockchain research, they will find more than a few variants to choose from. Ethereum is by far the most established, and with its ETH 2.0 scalability upgrade now begun, it will surely remain the leader for some time to come. But many other public chains are now launched and being developed, including the Web3 Foundation’s Polkadot, Cosmos, Cardano, DigiByte, Decred, EOS, NEAR, Solana, NEM’s Symbol, VeChain, etc.
 
With so much innovation focused on (and investment in) the public blockchain space, and relatively little on private variants, bets against enterprise adoption of public chains would attract very long odds indeed.
 
Scalability aside, perhaps the most common criticism of public chains is that they are not relevant for – indeed not usable by – enterprises that need to keep their vast data assets private for competitive or regulatory reasons. It’s a valid POV, but this year the Baseline Protocol has emerged to counter it. Baseline is going to be very useful for businesses. And it’s going to be huge.


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Blockchain is Set to Lend a Hand to COVID-19 Responses — But Where, How and Why?

9/17/2020

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By Pete Harris, Executive Director, Austin Blockchain Collective
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As I write this blog, deaths globally due to COVID-19 are estimated at nearly one million. Health experts here in the US are suggesting that a vaccine should be available to everyone by the third quarter of next year. Meanwhile, some pharmaceutical company executives reckon that vaccines might take another 3 years to be distributed globally. How many deaths will this pandemic account for before it is snuffed out? It’s a big, terrifying number.
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That’s the direct human life cost. The global business collapse caused by the pandemic will impact many — probably most of us— over the next few years. A surge in unemployment, poverty, hunger, mental and physical illness are very likely. Civil unrest, regime change and even geopolitical land grabs are possible. The recovery is not going to be a V curve — methinks the affects of COVID-19 will be felt across the globe for a decade or longer.

For sure there will be gloom and doom to contend with. But there is also the promise of overcoming the pandemic and its massive fallout. Innovation in bioscience, healthcare, supply chains and technology is already playing a critical role in the comeback — and at a bold and rapid pace not witnessed since the Apollo space program.


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Healthcare is All About Data … And Data Means Big Business

2/11/2020

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By Pete Harris, Executive Director, Austin Blockchain Collective
​I’ve known for a long time that healthcare relies on data in order to operate (no pun intended) effectively, safely and efficiently. It’s also been apparent that current processes to capture and share data are pretty much broken — one example that most patients can relate to are badly designed paper forms, usually partially completed with bad handwriting, and then faxed between providers. Some of it might end up being manually entered into an EHR system, mistakes and all, which of course can’t communicate digitally with similar systems at other providers.
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All that paper, manual processing and silo-ed databases will need to change, and not just to make healthcare delivery more efficient and less costly for payers and providers, and to offer better outcomes for patients. Here’s why …

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A Prediction for the Next Decade: Web 3.0 Means (Decentralized) Business

1/24/2020

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By Pete Harris, Executive Director, Austin Blockchain Collective

​It’s too late for 2020 predictions so here is one for the decade ahead … read this blog to the very end …

Web 3.0 describes the next phase of the internet where control and privacy, and hence power, will be restored back to individuals and away from big tech companies that millions of people and businesses have come to rely on (to their benefit for sure, but at potentially great cost).

Blockchain technology — specifically public blockchain — is a key enabler of Web 3.0. So too is decentralized storage and query mechanisms, decentralized telecommunications, tools to build decentralized applications. And integration gateways with other public blockchains, private blockchains and non-blockchain applications and databases.

The Web 3.0 term was coined in 2014 by Gavin Wood, a Brit computer scientist who was the first CTO of Ethereum. He went on to found Parity Technologies and the Web3 Foundation, which is now rolling out its first public blockchain projects, known as Substrate and Polkadot.

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    About the CURATOR

    Pete Harris is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Austin Blockchain Collective. He is also Principal of Lighthouse Partners, which provides business strategy services to developers of transformational technologies. He has 40+ years of business and technology experience, focusing in recent years on business applications of blockchain and Web 3.0 technologies.

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    The Collective recognizes that there is a wealth of information available from publications, newsletters, blogs, and more. So we are curating 'must read' content in specific areas to help our community to cut through the noise and focus only on what’s important.
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The Austin Blockchain Collective is an open community with a common focus on accelerating the understanding, development and adoption of decentralization, blockchain and Web 3.0 to address fundamental business challenges and opportunities.
Copyright © Austin Blockchain Collective 2018 - 2021
  • Home
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    • Public Blockchain & Web 3.0