Blockchain & Companies: “Layer 2”

The world of blockchain is transformative and aims to trigger a process of “creative destruction” necessary for the evolution of business.

As such, there is a revolutionary approach of blockchain startups that rely on the characteristics of the new technology in terms of decentralization, resistance to censorship, and transparency. There is also the evolutionary approach of incumbents who aim to incorporate the new technology to update current business models in a more disintermediated and automated sense.

In this second scenario, a primary theme is the “connection” between the organization’s internal processes and the external ecosystem, composed of suppliers, competitors, auditors, and of course, customers, where blockchain plays the role of a virtual trusted third party.

This “level” of connection between the blockchain and the organization’s internal processes, which run on on-premise and/or cloud systems such as Service Management platforms, CRM, and ERP used in the company, is referred to as “Layer 2” because it represents the connection between the ledger (referred to as Layer-1) and the systems within the organizational “bubble.”

In this new area, which represents an extension of the blockchain stack, important functionalities are located for privacy and non-disclosure of data, peer-to-peer information exchange, and interaction with different types of blockchains and business systems in a vast API Economy that includes both centralized and decentralized services.