INDUSTRY 4.0 AND THE INTRODUCTION OF BLOCKCHAIN
Blockchain is one of the promising new technologies of the future. Blockchain is a term widely used to represent an entire new suite of technologies alongside Al, IoT, Big Data and others.
On the Internet, data can be copied, modified, remixed, edited, and screen captured without our control. It’s the beauty and sometimes infuriating nature of the Internet. Blockchain technology is the strongest defence to ensure our transactions pertaining to data, files, or money can be securely transacted.
BlockChain technology is probably the best invention since the Internet itself. It allows value exchange without the need for trust for a central authority.
You may hear that blockchain is “decentralised” or “distributed.” These terms highlight one of the most unique benefits of the technology: Blockchain removes the middleman in transactions. A centralised transaction system runs everything through an intermediary institution (like a bank, store, or company) to maintain the ledger. When blockchain is decentralized, the ledgers are publicly accessible. When it is “distributed,” access can be shared between many trusted parties within the chain.
On a Blockchain, transactions are recorded chronologically, forming an immutable chain, and can be more or less private or anonymous depending on how the technology is implemented. The ledger is distributed across many participants in the network — it doesn’t exist in one place. Instead, copies exist and are simultaneously updated with every fully participating node in the ecosystem. A block could represent transactions and data of many types — currency, digital rights, intellectual property, identity, or property titles, to name a few.
Every business and organisation engages in many types of transactions every day. Each of those transactions requires verification. In many cases, that verification is easy. You know your customers, your clients, your colleagues, and your business partners. Having worked with them and their products, data, or information, you have a pretty good idea of their value and trustworthiness.
The reason distributed ledgers become so useful in these cases is because if you recorded those attributes you now need to verify securely on a blockchain, you can always go back and refer back to them at no cost, It’s costless verification. So when you think about why bitcoin works, it’s because it can cheaply verify that the funds are actually there. You can transfer value from here to anywhere on the globe at almost zero transaction cost. Sending secure messages that carry value does not require a bank or PayPal in the middle anymore.
In short: Because the blockchain verifies trustworthiness, you don’t have to. And the friction of the transaction is reduced, resulting in cost and time savings.
Using the blockchain technology can also reduce the cost of running a secure network. This will happen over a longer timeline. The Internet has already allowed for a faster, less stilted exchange of goods and services. But it still needs intermediaries, however efficient they may be.
This history, or database of records, is called a block. Each block contains information about the history of each block before it, down to the second, and chains it to the block before it. Instead of a bank or company helping to make these records verifiable and possible (like making sure a check doesn’t bounce), software code becomes the middleman, and it takes nanoseconds to verify the transaction. Additionally, nothing can be altered, erased, remixed, or edited on the blockchain. The blockchain’s history is set in stone.
BLOCKCHAIN tECHNOLOGy COuLD MEAN GrEAtEr PrIvACy AND sECurIty FOr yOu AND yOur CustOMErs.
Experts call it data leakage. When you give a bartender your driver’s licence, all that person needs to know is your age. But you’re revealing so much more — your address, your height, whether you’re an organ donor, etc.
THE sAME tHING HAPPENs IN COMMErCIAL trANsACtIONs.
As your business partner, I need to know that you’re trustworthy and reliable, but for simple transactions I don’t really need to know many other things about you. Information disclosure is increasingly becoming a cost because of data breaches. We can’t keep our data private and it’s becoming increasingly complex to do so within large organisations. So imagine a model where you can verify certain attributes are true or false, potentially using a decentralised infrastructure, but you don’t have to reveal all these attributes all the time.
Asian Management Development Academy PLT a HRDF registered company is a partner with Australian VET Skills Academy Pty Ltd. Together we are here to provide training and development relating to BlockChain technologies in Malaysia and Africa.
We strive to be the pioneer Blockchain technology training provider in Malaysia and Africa to both government and private sectors by the year 2020.
READy tO GO DEEPErg
Australian VETS Skills Academy Pty Ltd is the Smart partner of BlockTech Academy, US who is one of the certification bodies for BlockChain Technologies. Asian
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Malaysian Partner. Dr Vizayer Raj held several positions in the corporate sector. He has also lectured in business administration in a number of universities in Malaysia and abroad, before moving on to manage his own business in education. Currently, he is the director of programmes in Asian Management Development Academy. He can be reached at vizayer@gmail.com or 016-2093156.