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Blockchain 101 – An Executive Introduction to Distributed Ledger Technology

Abstract This report is a starting point for enterprise executives and IT leaders to better understand the basics as to what blockchain is, how it works, how it compares and integrates with existing technologies, why it is of value to the enterprise, and potential enterprise use cases. We also describe some of the significant roadblocks that must be overcome to achieve the lofty potential of this industry movement. Blockchain is a simple concept that can be game changing as adoption increases and a supporting ecosystem is built. That said, it has the potential of disrupting many long-standing processes. Blockchain tends to be either over-hyped or totally dismissed by analysts and vendors because of their a vested self-interest. In contrast, we seek to provide a balanced, independent perspective for our enterprise clients.

Throughout this report we address many aspects of blockchain technology. We start with some of the basics on the technology itself, provide five business reasons to at least evaluate blockchain, and we’ll share five roadblocks you may need to address. We’ll also share blockchain patterns that may help you discover opportunities in the context of your business needs and provide educational guidance. Finally, we’ll recommend an enterprise blockchain action plan for your consideration. Authors: Gary Zimmerman Gary Rowe CMO / Principal Consulting Analyst CEO / Principal Consulting Analyst [email protected] [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Blockchain 101 Zimmerman & Rowe

2 © 2017 TechVision Research, all rights reserved www.techvisionresearch.com

Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 4

The Basics .............................................................................................................................................................................. 5

We live in a world of transactions. It’s the basis for everything we do in IT. ................................. 5

Blockchains ...................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Blocks in a chain are like pages in a book .................................................................................................... 7

Block ordering in a blockchain ............................................................................................................................... 8

Managing Blockchain Files ....................................................................................................................................... 9

Bitcoin and Ethereum .............................................................................................................................................. 10

Five reasons business leaders should evaluate blockchain ....................................................................... 11

Increase business velocity ..................................................................................................................................... 11

Increase process efficiency ................................................................................................................................... 11

Ensure information availability and resiliency ........................................................................................... 12

Increase security and privacy .............................................................................................................................. 13

Reduce risk (truth, compliance, interoperability) ..................................................................................... 13

The five biggest blockchain roadblocks ............................................................................................................... 14

Interoperability .......................................................................................................................................................... 14

Scalability....................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Security ........................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Smart Contracts ..................................................................................................................................................... 15

Data Quality ............................................................................................................................................................. 16

Integrity .......................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Forks ........................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Collusion .................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Complexity .................................................................................................................................................................... 18

Possible Early Enterprise Use Cases ...................................................................................................................... 18

Where can I learn more? ............................................................................................................................................. 20

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance ............................................................................................................................. 20

Corda R3 ......................................................................................................................................................................... 21

Hyperledger .................................................................................................................................................................. 21

Microsoft Blockchain on Azure ........................................................................................................................... 21

Blockchain action plan ................................................................................................................................................. 21

http://www.techvisionresearch.com/



Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................................................ 23

Appendix - Key concepts necessary to understand the technology ....................................................... 25

Consensus ...................................................................................................................................................................... 25

Proof of work .......................................................................................................................................................... 25

Proof of stake .......................................................................................................................................................... 25

Byzantine fault tolerance .................................................................................................................................. 25

Gossip ......................................................................................................................................................................... 25

Concurrence ............................................................................................................................................................ 25

Multi Sig (Multi-signature concurrence) ................................................................................................... 26

Governance ................................................................................................................................................................... 26

Network members, operators ........................................................................................................................ 26

Developers, miners, users................................................................................................................................. 26

Regulators ................................................................................................................................................................ 26

Incentives....................................................................................................................................................................... 27

Intrinsic tokens and cryptocurrencies ....................................................................................................... 27

Tokenless .................................................................................................................................................................. 27

Network .......................................................................................................................................................................... 27

Permissioned .......................................................................................................................................................... 27

Permissionless ....................................................................................................................................................... 27

Private ........................................................................................................................................................................ 28

Database ......................................................................................................................................................................... 28

Blocks, chains .......................................................................................................................................................... 28

Graphs ........................................................................................................................................................................ 28

Encryption, hashing, digital signatures ........................................................................................................... 28

About TVR .......................................................................................................................................................................... 29

About the Authors .......................................................................................................................................................... 30

Other related TechVision Research works ......................................................................................................... 31




Introduction Most IT and business executives have or will shortly be exposed to blockchain. This executive level-set report is designed to provide a basic understanding of the technology; what it is, how it works and how it can impact your business. We start with this high-level blockchain explanation. Blockchain is simply a secure, shared database. In its purest form, everyone connected to a blockchain network has access to the same set of information. Think of blockchain as a permanent, replicated, distributed, yet secure ledger where all parties have access to the same information. Much like an accounting ledger, blockchain is a platform for recording transactions, but it intrinsically makes this shared data available. So why the fuss around blockchain since replicated databases have been here for a long time? It is because of specific elements associated with the security of the shared database; permanence, transparency and the network effect are major enhancements as blockchain gains momentum. So if you are a CIO, Business Architect, or Business Unit Head and are

• looking to cut transaction costs, • deliver new products or services, • or are worried that upstarts can disrupt your business because they have better

capabilities... This report is a great starting point in understanding and assessing the value of blockchain and other related distributed ledger technologies. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype of blockchain, the protocol that will change the world. As Don and Alex Tapscott expressed so eloquently, “Today thoughtful people everywhere are trying to understand the implications of a protocol that enables mere mortals to manufacture trust through clever code. This has never happened before—trusted transactions directly between two or more parties, authenticated by mass collaboration and powered by collective self-interests, rather than by large corporations motivated by profit.” It has been said that blockchain will do for assets what the Internet did for information. But to reach this future state, we all have to take practical, pragmatic steps along the journey. Consider this report a first step in a blockchain journey of a thousand miles. Throughout this report we’ll address many aspects of blockchain (distributed ledger) technology. We’ll share some background on the technology itself in the basics section of this report. We’ll give you five good reasons to evaluate blockchain to improve your competitive position, and we’ll share five areas of concern you’ll need to consider as you explore the technology. We’ll share the different ways you can identify opportunities in




terms of what you can do with blockchain and the best ways to learn more about it. We’ll give you key concepts of the technology so that you are grounded as you explore the subject further. Finally, we’ll recommend a blockchain action plan to help you get started. None of these sections will be at the level of detail you’ll need to complete the journey, but they can get you started down the path.

The Basics Over the last few years, a major IT innovation known as blockchain has emerged as a potentially disruptive technology. The core of this innovation is built around the concept of a distributed consensus ledger, where the ledger or record is kept and maintained on a distributed network of computers. This ledger makes it possible for the entire network to jointly create, evolve and keep track of one immutable history of transactions or other successive events. While this paper describes a broader distributed ledger technology, the ledger is today most commonly known as the blockchain. Up until recently, the most prominent blockchain technology application has been a cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin. It used a ledger called the Block chain, from where blockchain technology got its name. The Bitcoin blockchain, however, is just the first of many potential applications of distributed ledger technology. The blockchain is being heralded as the fifth disruptive computing paradigm, which would bring with it an ubiquitous experience of value exchange across the Internet.

While the potential is there for the next wave of digital value, it remains a potential and not a reality. As we describe later in this report, a few roadblocks need to be removed before blockchain becomes ubiquitous. Blockchain technology was first developed to provide an alternative approach to payments, by using cryptographic methods to provide an algorithmic trust mechanism between two transacting parties. Now it is being tested as a solution for a wider variety of transactions. We live in a world of transactions. It’s the basis for everything we do in IT. As early as the 1970’s, mainframes were used to capture online and batch transactions that served as the

1970’sMainframes

1980’sPCs

1990’sTheInternet

2000’sSocialMedia

2010’sBlockchain




backbone for the enterprise’s financial and operational activity. Blockchain, or distributed ledger technologies don't change our need for transactions, but they do radically change the way we execute and confirm those transactions. Let’s start by looking at what most enterprises are typically doing today. Whether it is between internal applications or across enterprise boundaries, the general architecture template is to capture and process transactions in internally controlled data stores. That creates a workflow similar to this.

1. Receive transaction, 2. Record transaction, 3. Verify transaction, 4. Accept transaction, 5. Reconcile transaction, 6. Audit transaction, 7. and all along the way, handle errors

and exceptions.

Of course, applications add value beyond these simple steps, but this is a good portion (as much as 40%) of the processing typical enterprise operational systems and organizations do every day.

In figure 1, the transaction is shared between six different entities, each must execute some form of the above transaction processing steps and if there is anything amiss in the processing of any of these entities, the entire work flow needs to be examined for integrity. This is inefficient, expensive, and vulnerable to weakness in any of the exchanges.

FIGURE 1

�

Receivetransaction

Recordtransaction

Verifytransaction

Accepttransaction

Reconciletransaction

Audittransaction




What if you could share a single data store among all participants that is secure, immutable,

auditable, trusted?

As shown in figure 2, a blockchain world, a verified transaction is recorded once, replicated to

everyone involved with no error processing or reconciliation required, and the audit trail is built

in. This is efficient, cheap, and secure. That’s the promise of blockchain technology.

FIGURE 2

Blockchains We’ll now add to the blockchain explanation we started with. A blockchain by itself is just a data structure that is broken up in to pieces called blocks. That is, it’s how data is logically put together and stored. Other data structures are databases (rows, columns, tables), text files, comma separated values (csv), images, lists, and so on. In the end, a blockchain is just another file.

Blocks in a chain are like pages in a book

You can think of a book as a chain of pages. Each page in a book contains:

• The text: for example, the story. • Information about itself: at the top of the page

there is usually the title of the book and sometimes the chapter number or title; at the bottom is usually the page number which tells you where you are in the book. This ‘data about data’ is called meta-data.




Similarly, in a blockchain, each block has: • The contents of the block, for

example in Bitcoin it is the Bitcoin transactions.

• A ‘header’ which contains the data about the block. In Bitcoin, the header includes some technical information about the block, a reference to the previous block, and a fingerprint (hash) of the data contained in this block, among other things. This hash is important for ordering.

Block ordering in a blockchain Books are organized page by page. With books, predictable page numbers make it easy to know the order of the pages. If you ripped out all the pages and dropped them on the floor, it would be easy to pick them up and put them back into the correct order so that the story makes sense. As shown in figure 3, Blocks in a chain refer to precedent and subsequent blocks. They help you know where you are, just like page numbers in a book. Within the blockchain, each block references the previous block, not by ‘block number’, but by the block’s hash value, a fingerprint which is more robust than a page number because the fingerprint itself is determined by the contents of the block.

FIGURE 3

A cryptographic hash function is software which takes an input, like a block, and returns a unique fixed-size alphanumeric string, a hash value. The hash value is generated based on the content of the input. Because of the way hashing works, changing just one character in the input generates a completely different hash value. By using a hash value instead of a timestamp or a numerical sequence, you get a way to order the blocks and a way to validate them. For any block within the chain, you can generate the block hash value yourself by using certain algorithms and compare it to the original hash value. If the hashes match, they are consistent with the data, and if the hash values are consistent along the chain, then you can be sure that the blockchain has integrity. If anyone wants to meddle with any of the data, they have to regenerate all the hash values from that point forwards and this particular copy of the blockchain will look different. That creates the property of




immutability; no one can alter the past without everyone knowing about it.

Managing Blockchain Files It’s not just the file structure that is unique, how the file is managed is also unique. A blockchain is a shared resource that is designed to operate in a trustless environment. That means you can always trust the data it contains, regardless of who put it there. You can trust the data because of the following properties inherent in a blockchain network.

Replication – in a blockchain network, each participant maintains an exact copy of the ledger, so you don't have to trust an outside authority to manage the data for you. But that creates an issue; how you keep all of the copies in sync? Through consensus.

Consensus – is the mechanism that the nodes use to keep their copies in sync. While there are many different consensus mechanisms, they all ensure the file remains consistent throughout the network. But what about the validity of the transactions themselves? That occurs through provenance. Provenance – transactions related to assets managed on the blockchain can be traced back to the recorded beginning of the asset’s existence. If you hear the term genesis block, it refers to the first block recorded on the chain. And since each block is chained to the previous block, it is possible to walk back from any point in time to the genesis block to prove the provenance of any asset and any transaction that affected it. But what happens if someone tries to change history? Immutability kicks in. Immutability – As mentioned earlier, the ability to verify the fingerprints (hashes) of each block as well as the order of appearance allows each node the ability to verify the work of any other node. Once the block is committed, it cannot be changed without creating noise in the system. Great, but in this network, can’t everyone see everyone else’s business? That’s where pseudonymity steps in. Pseudonymity – through a combination of cryptographic techniques including hashing, digital signatures, and data encryption, the right balance of public disclosure, transparency, and privacy is maintained even though the blockchain is a shared resource. But if identity is obscured, how do you know transactions are authentic? Finality steps in. Finality – Digital signatures at the transaction level provide the means of demonstrating authenticity and non-repudiation. When a signed transaction is validated and written to the ledger, it is final; it cannot be disputed.




So, it’s not just the file system, it’s also how it’s managed that makes it revolutionary. We’ll next look at a few of the early foundational blockchain offerings and provide some context.

Bitcoin and Ethereum If you have heard or read anything about blockchain, you have probably heard it in the context of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Bitcoin protocol was first described in a nine-page 2008 paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. “Satoshi Nakamoto” is assumed to be a pseudonym, so it’s not clear whether the protocol was developed by an individual or a group, and attempts to identify the developer or development team have been unsuccessful. In January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence with the release of the first open source Bitcoin client and the issuance of the first Bitcoins, with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the first block of Bitcoins ever (known as the genesis block).

At the core of the Bitcoin network is a blockchain, a ledger that records the rightful owner of every Bitcoin in existence. When you initiate a Bitcoin transaction, you announce to the network that you want to transfer an amount of Bitcoin on the ledger from one owner to another. As mentioned earlier, these transactions are grouped into a block and members of the network then compete to be the first one to confirm that the transactions in the block are legitimate. Once a block is confirmed, the ledger or blockchain, is updated to reflect the most recent transactions.

Bitcoin is the original version of the “blockchain client and network server software set” and it implements decentralized trading of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency among peers. If you try to use the Bitcoin blockchain architecture to implement something besides cryptocurrency exchange, you need to implement a discrete blockchain because the protocol is the scripting code and accordingly is the blockchain. In other words, a blockchain is purpose-built to support the particular problem it is trying to solve. Ethereum is an evolution of Bitcoin’s initial blockchain version and is focused on broader use cases including smart contracts. The inventor of Ethereum recognized the limitations of the Bitcoin scripting language and developed a new approach. Ethereum is a computing engine that allows application code to be imbedded in a blockchain allowing transaction processing that exceeds the fixed capabilities of the Bitcoin protocol. This allows for “smart contracts” or bits of code that no only record and validate a transaction, but can actually execute the transaction based on state changes either within the chain itself or external


https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf



sources. This approach eliminates the need for separate purpose-built chains required by the Bitcoin architecture and allows for more sophisticated processing through decentralized applications. With Ethereum, the network becomes a computing engine. Now that you have the basics as to what blockchain is, we’ll turn our attention to why enterprises are evaluating and, over time, moving towards blockchain-based services.

Five reasons business leaders should evaluate blockchain Before assessing some of challenges enterprises may face in leveraging blockchain as a foundational infrastructure, let’s consider how this technology can benefit business stakeholders. We’ll start with our top five ways blockchain technology can create positive impact on a future-state enterprise. They include increasing the speed of execution, achieving far greater efficiency by eliminating middlemen, providing more reliable and available information when needed, while providing greater privacy and security. This results in the mitigating risk and limiting enterprise liability. We’ll now describe each business benefit associated with blockchain.

Increase business velocity Companies need speed – speed in execution, speed in evolution – because the increasing flow of information is increasing decision demands and rate of change in business. Blockchain helps increase business velocity in several ways. For instance:

• Today’s business requires that decisions be made quickly and efficiently. Near real-time access to verified information dramatically increases decision velocity. It reduces false positives, creates confidence, and allows for quicker course correction.

• Handoffs and chokepoints create delays. The properties inherent in blockchain eliminate the delays and overhead caused by handoffs and middlemen. For example, recording land titles on the blockchain could speed title search activities and reduce the need for title insurance (risk mitigation) required in today’s real estate transactions. By eliminating these title-related activities, the process of buying property becomes cheaper and faster.

• Implement new data-centric business models. Data centric refers to an architecture where data is the primary and permanent asset, and applications come and go. In many enterprises, the opposite is true. The applications bring their own data structures optimized for proprietary use, not sharing. Using blockchain as a single source of truth and its underlying shared data model allows you to eventually migrate away from isolated data stores designed by the applications that use them.

Increase process efficiency One of the critical aspects of data is veracity. Veracity is a measure of the certainty of data, and its opposite is “data in doubt”. The US wastes about $3.1 trillion on poor data quality




each year1, and on average, 20%-40% of the effort expended in processing data is spent detecting errors and correcting data2. Taking advantage of the properties of blockchain allows you to:

• Reduce duplicate application processing by using smart contracts to automate transaction execution.

• Reduce inspection loops and correction efforts for transaction defects. • Reduce the need for duplicative record keeping. • Reduce the need for transaction reconciliation between entities.

In other words, you have the potential to gain a 20%-40% productivity increase through the improvement of data veracity afforded by blockchain.

Ensure information availability and resiliency The nature of blockchain is to share information at scale without requiring a central authority. That’s important. Just ask the millions of users impacted by a major Internet outage last year. The cyber-attack that brought down much of America’s internet in 2016 was an attack on a single point of failure. The victim was Dyn, a company that controls much of the internet’s centralized domain name system (DNS) infrastructure. It was hit on 21 October and remained under sustained assault for most of the day, bringing down several sites including Twitter, the Guardian, Netflix, Reddit, and CNN in Europe and the US. The decentralized nature of a blockchain architecture increases the availability of the data and the resiliency of the underlying database infrastructure. The Blockchain approach is fundamentally different in that:

• Everyone on the network has their own copy of the database so there is no dependency on central sources.

• There is no single point of failure within the architecture. A coordinated attack on many servers would be required to bring down a blockchain network.

• Blockchain networks are mesh networks so that nodes can exit and enter the network without impacting quality or performance. If a sever fails, it can be repaired or replaced and can “catch up” when it reenters the network.

While we recognize that any network can be attacked, the distributed, redundant peer-to-peer nature of Blockchain makes it much more difficult. But it isn’t just the distributed aspect of Blockchain, there are also some security and privacy capabilities innate to this approach.

1 Source IBM, 2014 2 Advancing Federal Sector Healthcare, 2013




Increase security and privacy Everyone knows security breaches are escalating both in numbers and in terms of the impact. The recent Equifax breach impacted hundreds of millions of people, and reportedly has cost Equifax itself $4 billion and counting. TechVision wrote a blog on the Equifax breach and how changing to a decentralized architecture for personally identifiable information (PII) can reduce these kinds of threats in the future. There are numerous ways a blockchain architecture can protect against catastrophic breaches and other threats. Outlined below are a few of the basic security and breach prevention highlights:

• Multiple nodes are verifying others’ work to ensure correctness and completeness. • Hashing is routinely performed on the data to identify and isolate tampering. • Distributed database copies complicate attack vectors by requiring a coordinated

attack against many servers to impact the network. • Encryption assures only the parties involved in the transaction can process it. • Selective disclosure based on the agreements between parties means privacy is

preserved. • Digital signatures to verify transaction authenticity. • Shared visibility into the ledger and the public nature of transaction capture assures

integrity. • Pseudonymity – a person is not directly identifiable, but behavior is transparent. i.e.

bad actors and behavior patterns can be identified for further action. Blockchain can provide a platform for better security, limit the exposure of personal information, and selectively disclose information based on owner consent. These capabilities are not only of value in mitigating the risk of catastrophic breaches, but are also consistent with GDPR and overall privacy best practices. This can result in low risk as highlighted next.

Reduce risk (truth, compliance, interoperability) We live in an increasingly complex world. And to survive, we need to continually examine these questions. “What is the information you are working with?” and “Where did it come from?” A properly deployed blockchain helps answer these questions.

• Peer node validation and consensus assures truth. This increases trust in the information you are working with.

• Transaction definition within the network assures interoperability among nodes. Being able to understand what you are looking at and knowing that the one that put the information there also understands boosts trust.

• Traceability from one transaction to the next demonstrates compliance. Being able to see up and down the chain allows you to confirm where the information came from.

• Provenance of assets can be memorialized from creation to disposal providing a digital history. This asset may be either a digital or hard asset and the blockchain


https://techvisionresearch.com/can-blockchain-verifiable-claims-eliminate-next-equifax-level-breach/

https://techvisionresearch.com/can-blockchain-verifiable-claims-eliminate-next-equifax-level-breach/



documents the “chain of custody” for that asset in ways that allow you to demonstrate compliance with any rules and regulations as required.

A key here is a “properly deployed” blockchain. Blockchain is just platform, the processes, governance models, and supporting applications all need to be integrated with and supportive of this emerging infrastructure.

The five biggest blockchain roadblocks The benefits of blockchain are compelling. But any adoption plans should be gated by progress in solving certain problems. We have outlined five areas that need to be considered as you develop your blockchain strategy. They can threaten any blockchain implementation if not configured and managed properly. They are interoperability, scalability, security, integrity and complexity; and we expand on each of these in this potential roadblocks in this section.

Interoperability Because the scripts, data schema, and database update protocols are tightly integrated into the database itself, solving unique problems require discrete blockchains. Add to this the fact that many startups are trying to solve the performance, security, and scalability problems using different technical approaches, expect that there will be numerous blockchains for the foreseeable future. This creates an interoperability problem for enterprises trying to architect across the different blockchain solutions. For example, if an enterprise wants to create a mortgage lending platform including personal identity verification, cryptocurrency, and land registration, it must interact with at least three different networks (one for each service) and communicate in the different “languages” or protocols these networks require. Distributed ledger efforts are coalescing into different groups like the Hyperledger which seeks to create a consistent blockchain platform for business, the W3C's Blockchain Community Group which is already working on standard messaging formats and the Blockchain Alliance which aims at keeping criminal activity off the blockchain. While these groups are addressing different aspects of behavior, no one solved the full standards and interoperability puzzle yet. The ITU is also attempting to tackle the problem. The ITU-T Focus Group on Application of Distributed Ledger Technology (FG DLT) was established in May 2017 to develop a standardization roadmap for interoperable DLT-based services. Taking into consideration the activities underway in ITU, other standards developing organizations, and various forums and groups, expect that it will take a while for standards to emerge.


https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/06/blockchain_goes_corporate_with_hyperledger/

https://www.w3.org/community/blockchain/

https://www.w3.org/community/blockchain/

http://blockchainalliance.org/



Scalability There is no proven solution to the performance problems inherent in the Bitcoin type of consensus model for updating blockchain data. Today’s high-performance systems update at tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions a second, not the "update every ten minutes” standard of Bitcoin blockchain. This inability to process at Internet-speed will be solved, but today it remains an open question. In a traditional database system, the solution to scalability is to add more servers (i.e. storage and compute power) to handle the added transactions. In the decentralized blockchain world where every node needs to process and validate every transaction, it would require us to add more storage and compute power to every node for the network to get faster. And that’s a problem. The network can only perform at the pace of its weakest node. Not only is this a performance problem, it causes two more undesirable effects, centralization and escalating usage costs.

1. The larger the blockchain grows, the larger the requirements become for storage, bandwidth, and computational power that must be spent by “full nodes” in the network, leading to a risk of much higher centralization if the blockchain becomes large enough that only a few powerful nodes are able to process a block.

2. At the same time, the processing fees paid for transactions will most likely increase to cover the escalating computing costs caused by network growth.

Finally, there is a space limitation defined within the distributed ledger technology structure itself. For instance, in blockchain it’s block size, in Ethereum, it’s a gas limit. These limits are meant to optimize performance by limiting the amount of processing power required to compute, store, and transmit the results. But these limits constrain the entire network as the number of transactions increases to the point where nodes fill beyond block capacity and create “queues” of blocks waiting to be written to the chain. If blocks are written every ten minutes, and your transaction is third in the queue, you could be waiting quite a while.

Security While security is touted as a strength of distributed ledger technology, it is not impervious. External influences can impact the trustworthiness of the ledger – independent of the safeguards built in. Two areas highlighted here are smart contracts and data quality. Smart Contracts

Smart contracts which are basically deterministic computer programs running on the ledger, have become a core feature of an expanding number of blockchains today. This type of program can be used to facilitate, verify, or enforce rules between parties, allowing for automated transaction processing and intelligent interactions with other smart contracts. The downside is that in a permissionless blockchain, this capability allows anyone to make a smart contract about anything and place it on the blockchain, just as any other




transaction would be. Verification of this smart contract (transaction) is not part of the blockchain protocol. Verification rests with the parties involved in the transactions the smart contract executes. Proliferation of these executable software “transactions” provide a large surface area for attack, either through flaws the code itself or how it is implemented. Once it’s on the chain, anyone can access and execute the contract, if they present the right conditions. Accordingly, an attack on one smart contract could have a domino effect on other parts of the platform. The attack on the DAO, a decentralized organization built on top of Ethereum, is an example a smart contracts attack. An attacker managed to exploit a weakness in a smart contract that led to the diversion (theft) of Ether (Ethereum’s token) worth about $60 million.

Data Quality

Blockchain technology does not guarantee or improve individual transaction data quality. Distributed ledger implementations can only take responsibility for the accuracy and quality of the information once it has been captured in the blockchain. Its strength lies in the fact that it is a closed system. However, the information that makes up the transactions posted on the ledger by and large come from external sources such as web applications and traditional transaction platforms. This means the transaction information, if pulled from external source systems, is only as good as the source. Care should be taken to prevent garbage-in-garbage-out scenarios. Blockchains cannot access data outside their network. To overcome this limitation, the blockchain community developed the concept of an oracle. An oracle is a data feed – provided by third party service – designed for use in smart contracts on the blockchain. Oracles provide external data and trigger smart contract executions when pre-defined conditions are met. Such triggering conditions could be something like crossing a weather temperature threshold, a price threshold, or the occurrence of a successful payment. But this means execution of transactions depends on sources outside the network. A corrupted oracle could potentially impact the integrity or performance of the entire network. To counteract this threat, organizations might need to consider using multiple oracles to increase the trust in the integrity of the data entering the blockchain from oracles. Finally, given that data will inevitably be transmitted from an organization’s source system or an oracle to a blockchain, the exchange channels (data in transit) need to be secured as this is no doubt a point of entry for attackers.


https://ethereum.org/dao



Integrity Confidence in the distributed ledger is critical to use. The certainty that a transaction is accurately recorded in the database is a foundational assumption in any data-processing environment and distributed ledgers are no different. As long as the majority of the network participants agree on the truth (consensus) the chain is immutable. When enough of them don’t, the chain forks, and there are different versions of the truth, some temporary, some permanent.

Forks

Disagreements or conflicts on sequencing and content are inevitable when independent nodes are operating against a shared database. These conflicts are called forks in the world of distributed ledgers. Timing or soft forks happen when different nodes are competing for the right to write a block to the ledger. Unique transactions captured by one node as it is constructing a block may not be accepted by the network because another node “beat it to the punch” in terms of meeting the network’s criteria for writing to the chain. In this situation, two versions of the chain exist, one that is accepted and one that is not, even though the unaccepted block contains valid transactions. When this happens, the chain self-corrects by rebroadcasting the orphaned transactions into the network for recording and the unaccepted blocks are eventually ignored. Network participants, anticipating these delays often wait a few cycles before considering a transaction permanently recorded.

Hard forks are more problematic. When the software that runs the chain is updated, there may be issues with backward compatibility where nodes running the older software cannot process the transactions or blocks created by nodes running the newer software. If a number of network node operators choose not to update, a hard fork occurs and the blockchain becomes two. The DAO problem mentioned earlier caused a hard fork in the Ethereum blockchain where some nodes operate the new Ethereum code and others remained on Ethereum Classic. Now the enterprise has to navigate which version of truth to follow.

Collusion

The final integrity issue is the threat of collusion. When a majority of the nodes agree a transaction is valid, it is. When enough of the nodes work together, a lie can become truth. For instance, in Bitcoin blockchain, a majority of nodes, 51%, is all it takes to declare truth. This is a concern as more and more of the computing power is concentrated in single entities and organized consortia. While some argue the incentives are built to reinforce good behavior, you cannot blindly assume the majority’s interests are aligned with yours.




Complexity While the cybersecurity aspects are a big draw to the solution, it does bring things previously operating in the background front and center. Key management, encryption, hashing, digital signatures, pseudonymity, selective disclosure, and access permissions are not topics widely discussed outside of the CISO office. Blockchain makes them part of the general architectural discussions as data flows freely and publicly amongst the network nodes, many of which are outside of enterprise control. The proper application of these cybersecurity disciplines are required to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the firm’s activity. It further impacts application development efforts as well. For example, smart contracts have the potential to quickly ripple the effects of erroneous or malicious code across the entire network. It will be necessary to apply cyber-methodologies such as the Secure Software Development Life Cycle (S-SDLC) in order to minimize the threat of introducing a critical bug during the life cycle of a smart contract.

Possible Early Enterprise Use Cases As enterprises move from education and early experimentation, the next step will be to consider some meaningful, early use cases. The following table highlights some early candidates by industry with a focus on “quick wins”; where companies and organizations can leverage blockchain as a means of improving their performance. As you can see, blockchain has applicability in several areas. Financial institutions Enterprises Governments Cross-industry

International payments Supply chain

management

Records management Financial management

and accounting

Capital markets Healthcare Identity management Shareholder’s voting

Trade finance Real estate Voting Records management

Regulatory compliance

and audit

Media Taxes Cybersecurity

Anti-money laundering

and know your customer

Energy (smart meters,

smart grids)

Government and non-

profit transparency

Big data

Insurance Legislation, compliance,

and regulatory oversight

Data storage

Peer-to-peer transactions Internet of Things

Increasing investment from companies such as Microsoft and IBM has helped to move the needle in terms of some of these meaningful early experiments. The introduction of “blockchain as a service” platforms sponsored by companies like Microsoft and IBM has facilitated hundreds of proofs of concept (POC) across a wide array of industry sectors. Investments in blockchain startups ($1.1 billion) and initial coin offerings ($1.7 billion) are pouring in. Market momentum is strengthening.

While it’s important to see all of the places where blockchain technology could lend a hand, we suggest enterprises explore situations in the following types of environments:




Common shared utilities: For the potential common utility use case, can you imagine and design a common reference database that would make sense? A good example might be a database of bank routing codes. Each bank has to manage their own routing codes, but they must be shared to facilitate interbank funds flow. Today sharing them with other institutions requires a central administration function and central data store. A distributed ledger, could provide a better answer – it avoids the problem of ownership and control of the data. Everyone participates in the sharing of certain types of data, and mutual validation of the data and multilateral processes, but the data itself doesn’t go through a single entity which has ultimate control over data passing through the network – the bottleneck has gone. B2B workflows: Start by looking to see if there are there bilateral, or even better, multilateral B2B workflows where each participant needs to independently validate the other participant’s data accuracy and/or processes. A distributed ledger can give parties assurance that the data being stored and used by their counterparts is the same as the data they are working with. The ledger won’t flag if a participant is being “truthful” or not (ledgers are only as good as ledger entries), but it will assure that the same data is being accessed by the participants and that the transaction initiator’s identity is valid. Similarly, a distributed ledger can give parties assurance that the workflows between parties are being adhered to, and that each entity is running the same business logic, or at least coming out with results that are compatible with the pre-agreed rules of engagement. In other words, proposed changes to ledger data follow pre-agreed rules. Even with a distributed ledger, is there a need to validate the results of someone else’s calculations? Yes, it’s part of the independent validation each node performs. The difference now is that the validation comes before data is committed, rather than after. Switching the order makes a huge difference in reducing operational overhead and risk. Centralization risk: As cybercrime and cyberwars become reality, there is an immediate and urgent need to de-risk critical infrastructure systems that have central points of failure. Just ask Equifax. Investigating if a distributed ledger could be used in place of a central point of failure is becoming a priority for many. Regardless, when you find a situation or use case where a blockchain can provide value, we recommend you use a step-by-step approach to reduce the risk of deploying a new technology like blockchain.




Figure 4

As shown in figure 4, the recommendation is to begin with less risky deployments in controlled conditions and then progress to use cases with higher exposure and liability as your experience with the technology and the operating model improves.

Where can I learn more? TechVision has produced six reports that cover various aspects of blockchain including blockchain identity systems, smart contracts, blockchain in banking, and leveraging blockchain as a new security perimeter. A listing of these reports is provided at the end of this paper. We can also provide on-site workshops and consulting covering areas from basic blockchain concepts to blockchain/self-sovereign identity systems, developing a blockchain reference architecture, building a roadmap, migrating to blockchain as well as banking-centric, energy industry-centric, retail-centric and other specific industry focused consulting and workshops. Additionally, there are countless blockchain startups offering fee services and trials, and there are a few that are geared towards the needs of large enterprises. The four consortia / services we describe below are great places to start because they have established platforms and robust support services.

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts. Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart




contract functionality. It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. Building upon Ethereum, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance defines enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly-demanding applications at the speed of business. https://entethalliance.org/

Corda R3 Corda is a distributed ledger platform designed from the ground up to record, manage and synchronize financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios. It focuses on private, permissioned blockchain use cases for banking and financial transactions. Corda may not meet your needs if your use cases are not financially focused. https://www.corda.net/

Hyperledger Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of things, supply chains, manufacturing and technology. The Linux Foundation manages Hyperledger as a set of projects within the foundation. Hyperledger is focused on creating a home for industrial blockchain applications. It hosts the contributions of such technology giants as Intel and IBM. To learn more, visit https://www.hyperledger.org/

Microsoft Blockchain on Azure Microsoft is bringing blockchain to the enterprise, working with customers, partners, and the blockchain community to continually advance its enterprise-readiness. As an open, flexible, and scalable platform, Azure supports a rapidly growing number of distributed ledger technologies that address specific business and technical requirements for security, performance, and operational processes. Azure also provides a rapid, low-cost, low-risk, and fail-fast platform for organizations to collaborate on by experimenting with new business processes—and it’s all backed by a cloud platform with the largest compliance portfolio in the industry. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/

Blockchain action plan Despite a tremendous flurry of activity and funding, distributed ledgers are generally at the proof of concept, pilot, or experimental stages in most organizations. While these efforts are necessary to move this technology forward and for enterprises to understand the potential utility of blockchain, it is important to recognize that there is a lot that needs to be assessed in areas such as scalability, integration with legacy systems, security threats, regulatory hurdles and many, yet-to-be-discovered speed bumps (challenges).


https://entethalliance.org/

https://www.corda.net/

https://www.hyperledger.org/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/



Just because the soup’s not ready, doesn’t mean you have to leave it off of the menu. But you do need to proceed deliberately. Don’t try to convert existing systems to blockchain initiatives right away. Rather, explore how others might try to disrupt your business with distributed ledger technology, and how your company could use it to leap ahead instead. Put one or two pilot projects into place. In all cases, link your investments to your value proposition, and give your business partners and your customers what they want most: speed, convenience, and control over their transactions. Develop a robust strategy, and begin one step at a time.

Step 1: Research and Education. Initiate a program and a charge a small team to educate IT and Business Unit leaders about distributed ledger technology and possible use-cases in your industry. This includes understanding the core technology, the market, vendor offerings, applications, blockchain-based infrastructure services, early use-cases and competitive opportunities. Join consortiums, meetups, and other activities to broaden your knowledge base. We recommend that the education is targeted to specific audiences such as executives with a focus on disruption, competitive advantage, cost savings, potential to solve business problems…and technologists with a deeply technical, architecture, migration, and deployment-readiness focus. Have your technical resources experiment with the blockchain platforms to learn the possibilities and limitations of the technology. Blockchain as a service offers and consortiums mentioned earlier provide for this type of experimentation. Step 2: Find specific opportunities. Form a blockchain core technology working group and charge them with designing an effective path to the future. Start by compiling a list of potential pilot projects for which a distributed ledger could make a difference. One good place to start is with pain points: back-office workarounds, delays, and areas of client dissatisfaction. The working group should include (or consult with) a wide range of stakeholders and specialists from both inside and outside the organization. As mentioned earlier, look for opportunities in B2B workflow improvement, common shared utilities, and areas of centralization risk as possible candidates. It’s best to pick starting points that could most improve your own distinctive capabilities. For example, select pilot projects that might help you handle key business processes much faster than your competitors can. As stated earlier, begin with use cases where the risks are contained and increase towards high-stakes use cases as your expertise grows and the technology matures. Step 3: Explore feasibility and readiness. For each of the starting points you’ve chosen, develop explicit hypotheses describing how distributed ledger technologies can make a




difference. Run short design sprints to test these ideas by teaming with key business stakeholders. In addition to your core team of internal business and functional experts, include other experts like people from risk management, regulatory compliance, operations, IT, finance, and others, so that your early proofs of concept don’t require a restart after these stakeholders weigh in with their requirements. At the end of this step, you should have narrowed your list down to a few possible starting points. They should be limited and tangible enough to provide a good test of the technology — while remaining relevant to your core business. And through your design sprints, you should have a clear idea of how to develop coded prototypes for each of them. Step 4: Test, learn, adjust. As you move into implementation, you will adjust your parameters to make the prototypes work. Inevitably, people will improve your practices during the testing and evaluation process. You’ll also discover new ways to apply the prototype’s blockchain innovations, putting you in a better position to make strategic decisions. But stay true to your original hypotheses. Make sure that no matter how the prototype is altered, it remains relevant to your firm’s strategy and the distinctive capabilities that propel you forward. Monitor results frequently enough to get a clear sense of your momentum. If you don’t reach the milestones you expect, ask why, and keep refining and testing. Step 5: Scale your efforts appropriately. With iteration, your prototype experiments should result in immediate, tangible improvements that justify your interest in blockchain. They may also expand your awareness of its potential and what it will cost to implement significant change. With this gained knowledge, focus on its impact on your core business. Develop a long-term plan based on the results of the first prototypes. Select a few long-range goals — increased revenue, better compliance, cost reductions, quality improvements — and agree upon them. Create a road map for scaling up in a measureable, achievable, and worthwhile way. It should be clearer at this point how much this technology will affect your core business practices. If it stays on the periphery, affecting relatively few customers, you will be glad you limited your investment to a few prototypes. However, if it moves into the mainstream of your business, then it could change everything. If that happens, by having invested in these prototypes, you’ll be prepared. You can scale up your prototypes to take advantage of everything blockchain offers.

Conclusions This report is intended to be an enterprise-focused starting point for thought leaders considering blockchain. Hopefully, you’ve been able to pick up some background on the technology itself in the basics section of this report. This basic understanding is the




starting point. We’ve given you five good reasons to pay attention to blockchain and improve your competitive position, and we shared five areas of concern you’ll need to consider as you explore the technology. It is all about achieving the right balance, the right investment and the best timing in achieving business goals. We’ve shared the different ways you can identify opportunities in terms of what you can do with blockchain and the best ways to learn more about it. We’ve given you key concepts of the technology so that you are grounded as you explore the subject further. Finally, we’ve recommended a blockchain action plan to help you get started. When faced with disruptive technologies, effective companies thrive by incorporating them into the business. Distributed ledger technologies could offer organizations a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform themselves. Who could have predicted the impact of the smartphone when Apple introduced the iPhone a decade ago; years from now, there may be similar innovations that take advantage of blockchain. Companies that adjust their business models accordingly may well enjoy enormous rewards, including increased transparency, lower costs, and greater time efficiencies. Your challenge is to understand the technology well enough, and rapidly enough, to bet a bit of your future on it — without putting your entire enterprise at risk.




Appendix - Key concepts necessary to understand the technology The following are some key concepts and definitions for those wanting to better understand the underlying distributed ledger / blockchain technology.

Consensus A blockchain network is distributed computing network. A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires processes to agree on some data value that is needed during computation. Examples of applications of consensus include whether to commit a transaction to a database, agreeing on the identity of a leader, state machine replication, and atomic broadcasts. There are several methods in use today to achieve consensus in a blockchain network. These are outlined below. Proof of work

The miner (network node) calculates a complex math problem in order to win the right to add the next block to the chain. Once chosen, the miner commits the block and communicates the result for replication at all network nodes.

Proof of stake

The miner demonstrates an ownership position in the network in order to add the next block to the chain. Once chosen, the miner commits the block and communicates the result for replication at all network nodes.

Byzantine fault tolerance

The network designates a lead recorder and backup recorders. The lead recorder generates the next block which is verified by the backups before it is written to the chain. The lead role shifts according to rules built into the protocol.

Gossip

Nodes record transactions and select random nodes to exchange knowledge of those transactions. Those random nodes incorporate the exchanged transactions into their block and communicate the block back to the originating node for synchronization. Over time, enough nodes know about the transactions that they concede the block and the transactions it contains are valid and ordered properly. No one remembers who first said Muhammad Ali was a great fighter, but a majority agree with this statement so it is considered a fact no matter who started it. This is gossip in action.

Concurrence

A simple agreement between two peers that the transaction is valid. This is the basis for




Corda, in which each of the peer pairs maintain a ledger covering the transactions exchanged between them.

Multi Sig (Multi-signature concurrence)

Standard transactions on the Bitcoin network could be called “single-signature transactions,” because transfers require only one signature — from the owner of the private key associated with the Bitcoin address. However, the Bitcoin network supports much more complicated transactions that require the signatures of multiple people before the funds can be transferred. These are often referred to as M-of-N transactions. The idea is that Bitcoins become “encumbered” by providing addresses of multiple parties, thus requiring cooperation of those parties in order to do anything with them. These parties can be people, institutions or programmed scripts. In the real world, having a third party countersign a check is an example of Multi Sig in action.

Governance While the platforms are designed to systemically enforce proper behavior, they are designed and used by humans. At the heart of the issue (as always) is who dictates and enforces the rules of the network if and when things go wrong. Just like in the physical world of legal contracts, what really matters in these networks is how they deal with exceptions rather than norms. Currently the governance of the different networks is varied, but falls into these general categories.

Network members, operators

Permissioned ledgers have the network members and operators defining the rules by which they interoperate. Often these rules are outlined in various documents including network trust frameworks, operator agreements, and user agreements.

Developers, miners, users

Permissionless ledgers like Bitcoin and Ethereum have the rules developed, proposed, adopted, and enforced by the community at large. The rules are instantiated in the code and accepted by the network nodes.

Regulators

Regulators are starting to pay attention as Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) heat up. In fact, ICOs have been defined as investments which require registration much like IPOs. Government agencies are also looking at the issuance of identity (State of Illinois in the US) and land registry records (Sweden, Georgia, and the Ukraine) using blockchain. Expect more regulatory governance as time goes on.




Incentives Incentives are used to counteract the “tragedy of the commons”, where individuals take advantage of the value of the common assets without bearing the costs or considering others. Proper incentives ensure that network health is in alignment with the best interests of the participants. The current incentive structures are as follows.

Intrinsic tokens and cryptocurrencies

Intrinsic tokens are created and used within the network to pay for maintenance and upkeep of nodes and databases. Network participants earn tokens for doing work within the network. Somewhere around 2010, exchanges (Mt. Gox was the first) came online that allowed these intrinsic tokens to be exchanged for fiat currency. Bitcoin is the most well known in this category, but there are 33 cryptocurrencies available today with more on the way.

Tokenless

Some networks, especially permissioned networks, rely on agreements between members to incent participants to behave appropriately. These agreements are based on the assumption that the participants are contributing support in order to realize the greater business value a healthy network can provide.

Network Blockchain architectures leverage decentralized peer-to-peer networks. By storing data across a decentralized network, the blockchain eliminates the risks that come with data being held centrally. Its network lacks centralized points of vulnerability that computer hackers can exploit, and it has no central point of censure or failure. Network nodes can come and go without impacting performance, and bad actors are recognized and dynamically isolated by peers in the network. This resiliency is a key differentiator in the design. However, there are different flavors of this architecture depending on the use cases and network participants. The differing types are outlined below.

Permissioned

Some DLT networks only allow nodes onto the network that are approved. These are permissioned networks. Although they are “public” networks, only approved members of the network can access the data.

Permissionless

Networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum are permissionless. Anyone can stand up a node and participate the network. Anyone connected can access the ledger.




Private

A private distributed ledger is exactly what is seems. It is only available inside an entity. The use case for this is typically within an enterprise where regions or departments use the ledger as a common source of truth.

Database The standards are not set yet as to how the data structures for distributed ledgers are formed but there are a couple of general structures that are being deployed as part of the current implementations.

Blocks, chains

This is the typical structure of one block containing transactions connected to another. Described in the basics section of this paper and used in Bitcoin Blockchain and Ethereum.

Graphs

Some newer deployments do not rely on blocks and chains. They rely on more of a “directory-like” structure based in Directed Acyclic Graphs or DAGs. These may also take the form of Merkle trees or distributed hash tables. The concept behind these structures is that every new transaction references one or more earlier ones (parents) by including and signing their hashes. The links among transactions form a DAG. This approach to consensus does not require the heavy lifting associated with blockchain mining. DAGS are used in Sovrin, Swirlds, Iota, and IPFS.

Encryption, hashing, digital signatures Keeping the information secure is critical to any form of shared database, and blockchain is no different. Hashing is part of the file structure itself in that the hash of the block is what maintains the integrity of the chain. Other techniques are used to guard the transactions and data exchanges between peers. They take the form of PKI encryption, digital signatures, and zero knowledge proofs. All together these form the basis for secure peer-to-peer communication that is the hallmark of distributed ledgers.




About TVR World-class research requires world-class consulting analysts and our team is just that. Gaining value from research also means having access to research. All TechVision Research licenses are enterprise licenses; this means everyone that needs access to content can have it. We know major technology initiatives involve many different skill-sets across an organization and limiting content to a few can compromise the effectiveness of the team and the success of the initiative. Our research leverages our team’s in-depth knowledge as well as their real-world consulting experience. We combine great analyst skills with real world client experiences to provide a deep and balanced perspective. TechVision Consulting builds off our research with specific projects to help organizations better understand, architect, select, build, and deploy infrastructure technologies. Our well-rounded experience and strong analytical skills help us separate the hype from the reality. This provides organizations with a deeper understanding of the full scope of vendor capabilities, product life cycles, and a basis for making more informed decisions. We also support vendors when they carry out a product and strategy review and assessment, a requirement analysis, a target market assessment, a technology trend analysis, a go-to-market plan assessment, or a gap analysis.




About the Authors

Gary Rowe is a seasoned technology analyst, consultant, advisor, executive and entrepreneur. Mr. Rowe helped architect, build and sell two companies and has been on the forefront the standardization and business application of core infrastructure technologies over the past 35 years. He was President of Burton

Group from 1999 to 2010, the leading technology infrastructure research and consulting firm through the sale of Burton to Gartner. Mr. Rowe has personally led over 100 consulting engagements, 50+ educational seminars, published over 50 research reports/articles and led three significant technology industry initiatives. His combination of business skills and his deep understanding of technology provide a balanced perspective for clients. Core areas of focus include identity and access management, directory integration, cloud computing, security/risk management, digital transformation, IT business model changes, privacy and blockchain/distributed ledger."

Gary Zimmerman is an experienced executive known for helping companies deliver new offers and expand markets. Accomplishments include launching four companies, 20+ products, building high-performance organizations, and generating millions in sales.

His experience at Neustar, Respect Network, and Sovrin allows him to provide a broad perspective on a variety of subjects including self-sovereign identity, blockchain, enterprise data management, and the data brokerage industry.




Other related TechVision Research works

Smart Contracts and Blockchain

Authors: Gary Rowe – CEO / Principal Consulting Analyst,

John Myracle – Principal Consulting Analyst

Identity is the New Perimeter

Authors: Doug Simmons – Managing Partner,Consulting / Principal Consulting Analyst,

Nick Nikols – Managing Partner, Research / Principal Consulting Analyst,

Gary Rowe – CEO/ Principal Consulting Analyst,

Gary Zimmerman – CMO / Principal Consulting Analyst

Blockchain Call-to-Action for Bankers

Author: Rhomaios Ram – Principal Consulting Analyst

Contributing

Authors: Bill Bonney – Principal Consulting Analyst

John Myracle – Principal Consulting Analyst

Gary Rowe – CEO / Principal Consulting Analyst

Blockchain-based Identity Management

Authors: Doug Simmons – Managing Director, Consulting / Principal Consulting Analyst;

Gary Rowe – CEO / Principal Consulting Analyst

Enterprise Blockchain Level Set

Author: Gary Rowe – CEO / Principal Consulting Analyst


https://techvisionresearch.com/project/smart-contracts-blockchain/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/smart-contracts-blockchain/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/identity-new-perimeter/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/identity-new-perimeter/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/blockchain-level-set-banking-executives/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/blockchain-identity/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/blockchain-identity/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/blockchain-level-set/

https://techvisionresearch.com/project/blockchain-level-set/

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