Blockchain Technologies, Applications and Cryptocurrencies. Группа авторов
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Some examples of real-world blockchain applications in use are as follows:
• Land Ownership and Management: Dubai, USA, UK, Sweden, Ukraine, Georgia and Ghana.
• Development Aid: Aid Transfer Efficiency, South African Early Childhood Development.
• Supply Chain Management: Diamond Tracking (De Beers), Food Safety (Walmart), Oil Supply (ADNOC), Agricultural Products Supply (LDC).
• Renewable Energy: WePower (Estonia), Power Ledger (Australia), Acciona Energy (Spain), The Brooklyn Micro Grid (US), The Sun Exchange (South Africa).
• Remittances: Blockchain Wallet, TransferWise, Ripple’s XRP, BitSpark, MoneyFi, Chynge.
• Digital Identity: Civic, ValidatedID, THEKEY, Trusti, PeerMountain, Edge, BlockAuth, BlockVerify, CryptID, ExistenceID.
• Agriculture: Food Traceability, Fair Trade Farming, Organic Farming Certifications, Food Safety (Pesticides Use), New Markets, Logistics.
• Democracy and Governance: Voting, Decentralisation of Services, GovCoin, Democracy.Earth, FollowMyVote, Smart Participation, Liquid Democracy.
• Manufacturing and Industrial: Provenance, JioCoin, Hijro, SKUChain, BlockVerify, STORJ.io, RFID Integration, Anti Counterfeiting, Compliance.
• Health: Modum.io, Gem, SimplyVital Health, MedRec, Electronic Health Records (EHR), Ambr0Sys, Hashed Health, Medical Change, Change Health.
• Financial Inclusion: MojaLoop, ABRA, Bank Apoalim, Maersk, Augur, Regalii, Ripple, World Remit, Stellar, Oridian, Credits.Vision, OneName, ShoCard.
• Retail: OpenBazaar, Loyyal, Blockpoint.io, Customer Data Management, Transparency, Warranty, Goods Tracking, Customer Loyalty.
• Climate Change: Power Ledger, ClimateCoin.io, Carbon Emission Trading, Clean Energy, GHG.
• Environment: SOLshare, PlasticBank, Agora Tech Lab, EnergiToken, CarbonX, Veridium, IBM, United Nations, Waste Reduction, GiveTrack.
• Human Rights: Stop the Traffik, Dash Venezuela, Micro Trade, OpenGarden, RightMesh, Media Freedom, Social Media Awareness.
• Access to Water: Clean Water Coin, Decentralized Water Management, Water Quality Assurance Regulations, Water Trading.
• Cyber-security: GuardTime, REMME, IoT Security, Decentralized Storage Solutions, Safer DNS, Security in P2P Messaging systems.
Cryptocurrencies are “digital money” that do not physically exist but can be converted to any popular physical currency. Bitcoin, the first digital money, was hatched as an act of defiance. Unleashed in the wake of the Great Recession, the cryptocurrency was touted by its early champions as an antidote to the inequities and corruption of the traditional financial system. Bitcoin sought to replace the services provided by financial institutions with cryptography and code. When you pay your mortgage, a series of agreements occur in the background between your financial institution and others, enabling money to go from your account to someone else’s. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies replace those background agreements and transactions with software — specifically, a distributed and secure database called a Blockchain.
If you could piece together a running tabulation of who held every dollar, then suddenly the physical representations would become unnecessary. Bitcoin achieved the running tabulation by creating a single, universally accessible digital ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin’s blockchain, unlike the ledgers maintained by traditional financial institutions, is replicated on networked computers around the globe and is accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. A class of participants on this network, called miners, is responsible for detecting transaction requests from users, aggregating them, validating them and adding them to the blockchain as new blocks. It’s called a chain because changes can be made only by adding new information to the end. Each new addition, or block, contains a set of new transactions — a couple of thousand that reference previous transactions in the chain.
“CIO Insights Reflections: Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains — their Importance in the Future” by Notling & Muller (2017) reports the following: “With the help of cryptography and a collective booking system called Blockchain, cryptocurrencies build a distributed, safe and decentralized payment system, which does not need banks, intermediates, an organization or a central technical infrastructure to work. The main difference to the current types of money we know is that an intermediate, which is responsible for production (e.g. central bank) or exchange (banks) is not needed. Exchanges of digital values and goods are made directly between two individuals.” Known cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and IOTA. In a sense, they are scarce commodities as the amount of available currency units is in this case limited by mathematical algorithms. After every digital currency unit is issued, there is no way to generate additional currency units from it (e.g. Bitcoin is limited to 21 million units). Furthermore, every cryptocurrency has its own currency generating process. The main factors likely to affect the future development of cryptocurrencies are, in Notling & Muller’s (2017) opinions, interventions by the government and central banks and questions on how the sector will be regulated.
The chapters in this book are as follows:
Chapter 1: A Literature Review in Support of Blockchain Technologies
Blockchain technology has to be one of the biggest innovations of the 21st century given the ripple effect it is having on various sectors from financial to manufacturing as well as education. Unknown to many is the fact that Blockchain history dates back to the early 1990s. Since its popularity started growing a few years back, a number of applications have cropped up all but underlining the kind of impact it is destined to have as the race for digital economies heats up. This chapter examines the literature on Blockchain technologies and potential benefits of Blockchain technologies wherever it is used. This research is being carried out because there is no literature review on Blockchain Technology, and so, this chapter will ease the research of the scholars who want to know about Blockchain Technology. This research is important because this chapter will make people aware about Blockchain and all the places it is used and how people can benefit from this technology. Search terms identified more than 30 papers in support of blockchain technologies. The methodology used to carry out the research is also discussed in this chapter, such as various databases that were searched using different search terms. From the papers identified, specific criteria were then applied to identify appropriate articles. Data analysis verified the purpose of blockchain, categories of blockchain and alternatives to blockchain. The findings revealed that blockchain is one of the leading technologies in the world currently that possesses one of the more secure platforms for carrying out any task.
Chapter 2: A Taxonomy of Blockchain Applications
A taxonomy of blockchain application discusses cases — uses and apps. A major obstacle identified in several disciplines is the categorization of objects in a particular area of interest into a specific taxonomy. Blockchain is an innovation of decentralized and value-based information distributed over a vast network that contains untrustworthy users. Developing a taxonomy for blockchain application is a complex process, and thus, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss what internal factors contribute to the success of a blockchain application. This is followed by a discussion of which organizations use blockchain and which applications and apps they use. Finally, the chapter aims to classify blockchains according to what they are used for, e.g. blockchains are used in finance, agriculture, education, and research and development.
Chapter 3: Blockchain Means More Than a Software to Democracy: Access to Fundamental Rights of Sixth Dimension
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