Blockchain: Awareness driving change

Introduction.

My name is Marco Piano, a 92′ class Blockchain Technology Advisor. In parallel, I am part of the QA department of a Biomedical multinational where I am responsible for Quality Control.

I became aware of this technology during a private dinner in the summer of 2019. I still remember being stunned by how easy one of the participants was explaining how to make money with cryptocurrencies. Being curious, I decided to delve deeper into the topic. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of a magnificent adventure called Blockchain.

Studying, comparing or simply observing this world, I had the pleasure of realizing that when we talk about Blockchain, the human brain always reproduces the same redundant model, creating an association linked exclusively to cryptocurrencies. Today, Blockchain is an integral part of these assets, fortunately I would add, and without this protocol, no type of digital currency could exist. At the same time, it is also true that associating Blockchain exclusively with cryptocurrencies indirectly forces us to maintain a purely financial, if not exclusively speculative, vision of this tool, obscuring what could be a completely different perspective both in structural and application contexts.

In a conventional way.

If we look around us, it is clear that many people, even from the most disparate sectors, are approaching the world of Blockchain Technology. One of the most interesting aspects of this phenomenon, but frightening at the same time, is that few people are really focusing on the potential of this technology.

In other words, most people adopt an extremely speculative approach based solely on the purchase of cryptocurrencies, often on the advice of some guru, a friend or relative, with the objective, or rather, “hope” of generating a gain and becoming rich quickly and easily. Those who adopt this type of approach, unfortunately for them, overlook a very important detail: Easy money doesn’t exist, except for small isolated cases, and Blockchain is not the entrance to a casino where you can enter, make your bet, cross your fingers and hope to strike it rich.

The key word to understand this world is: awareness. Knowing and understanding, but above all being “aware” of this technology, gives us the opportunity to really understand its potential so that we can fully exploit it.

Not just cryptocurrencies.

This protocol has particular characteristics. Without going too much into technicalities, the term Blockchain literally means “chain of blocks”. It takes this name precisely from the type of storage. Information is recorded inside blocks, with the peculiarity that all the information of each block is transcribed onto the next block and so on. All of this is made possible thanks to the application of a cryptographic function called: SHA256 or Hash Function.

This distributed ledger (called distributed precisely because data is distributed across multiple nodes located on the network and not on a single centralized system), combined with such cryptography, brings with it the main characteristic, namely, that of occupying very little space along with a series of multiple advantages. Let’s see what they are:

• Guaranteeing the historical coherence of data.
• Being traceable and accessible at any time from any device.
• Respecting users’ privacy while maintaining data transparency.
• Respecting immutability criteria so that the data recorded in it cannot be modified.
• Maintaining very high security standards.
  

Some examples could be:

• Real-time tracking of production lines and supply chains at much faster speeds.
• Managing ticketing and couponing systems for traceability and safety.
• Managing new, faster, and more secure messaging systems, given the possibility of introducing IoT systems.
• Certifying goods and services by disintermediating most of the actors in favor of much lower management costs.
• Introducing energy-saving IoT systems and new consensus algorithms.

These are just a few examples of applications that we could see in the future, and the most amazing thing is that there are many other applications yet to be discovered.

In light of this, it becomes easy to understand how Blockchain allows us to solve many problems and speed up many others. Being a distributed database, it brings with it all the aforementioned advantages and gives us the possibility of being applied at an industrial and social level, storing various types of information within it.

Journey towards change.

The term Blockchain is synonymous with opportunity, innovation, and change.

Since we manage our assets as in the case of Cryptocurrencies, or in the creation and coordination of activities based on distributed ledgers, we can understand how this protocol is not entirely without risks. In fact, even though this technology brings with it a complex and uncertain structure, it does not mean that it is a tool to be abolished, but rather it should be treated with the necessary precautions and expertise, exploiting its potential as much as possible.

As pioneers, we have a duty to spread a very precise message. We must argue and shed as much light as possible on the potential of this ecosystem. Providing tools to those who are curious about this technology allows us to generate constructive debates with the possibility of finding new intelligent solutions in order to improve the quality of our lives.

In cases like these, I like to quote a famous politician and journalist Winston Churchill, who said:

“Change is not always improvement, but improvement always requires change.”

Marco Piano Advisor in Blockchain Technology and Management.