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Blockchain romanticism

20 August 2017 21:00, UTC

Margareth Nail

The appearance of blockchain technology has given rise to romantic mood among the masses. Distributed database has been considered as a panacea for almost all the problems of society, economics, politics, and so on. The best (and not only) minds were aimed at figuring out in what spheres blockchain could be implemented. However, the question arises – can blockchain be applied everywhere, or in some areas it is just a waste of money and time. Is it worth to follow the trend, Bitnewstoday.com. along with the experts sorts it out.

Experts believe that in the near future the hype around blockchain will die down. "After correction and "disappointment" this technology will find its niches and the right entry points to the market. Everything will be fine. The main thing is to know when to enter and exit in these circumstances," believes Kirill Nikolayev, author of the book "Intellectual stroke: how to remain a human being in the world of robots".

Those who are currently working on the creation of some serious blockchain-based projects may not survive until the widespread use of this technology.

"In my opinion, the markets reasonably consider blockchain as a technology that will change the landscape of the financial world for the coming decades. But at the same time, it is unlikely that companies and pioneer technologies will be the winners. Microsoft didn't invent the OS, Google was far from being the first search engine, Facebook was not the first social network. Amazon was not the first online book store, neither Apple came up with smartphones. But it is these companies that are now the absolute leaders in their niches and have grown far beyond them," argues Alexander Kuptsekevich, Financial Analyst at FxPro.

Specialists predict that in the near future the world will see the successful development of blockchain technology in various spheres. First, projects that will be supported by major players including states are likely to be successful. This is logical, since it is they (the state and major investors) who set the rules of the game on the market. Secondly, it goes for those projects which consider blockchain as part of already existing technologies that are of practical use.

"Realistically speaking, lack of state regulation and a critical shortage of specialists are a serious obstacle to the widespread implementation of blockchain technology. In addition, to implement most of the projects, more advanced blockchain-based technologies are needed, they are titled blockchain 2.0 (smart contracts) and blockchain 3.0 (applications)," says Dmitry Machikhin, Partner of the legal company GMT Legal, maintenance expert for ICO, blockchain and digital projects.

The first area where blockchain found its niche was the financial sphere. Banks were among the first to appreciate the value of this technology and wondered how the distributed database could help optimize labor costs and save money. As for this direction, the prospects for development are enormous.

Blockchain was also useful in cadastral systems. Some countries have already switched their cadastre to the distributed database technology.

According to experts, blockchain may be useful in all of the spheres, which prioritize the issue of trust to the storage and transmission of digital data. In those areas where processes completely depend on human labour, implementation of blockchain is meaningless.