Contrary to popular belief, blockchain isn’t a total gone case

Blockchain technology made its public debut more than a decade back in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto published a famous white paper named Bitcoin: A Peer To Peer Electronic Cash System.

The paper termed bitcoin as a “peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” that could potentially replace the traditional currency and lay the foundation of decentralised payments globally.

Things changed dramatically over the next ten years (from 2008 to 2018), including a rapid surge in bitcoin’s value that once touched US$20000 and evolution of many other cryptocurrencies that gained instant popularity among masses.

Today, blockchain may not be as accessible as many experts claimed a couple of years back, but that doesn’t mean it’s a gone case.

The year 2019 has just begun, and it’s expected to bring many reforms that will shape up the future of blockchain industry and take it newer heights.

In this post, I’ve shortlisted some of these blockchain trends that we can expect in 2019.

Introduction of smart contracts

The concept of smart contracts have been in existence for decades, but couldn’t be realised due to many technical hurdles. Now that blockchain technology has gained the necessary momentum, we can finally expect to see smart contracts replacing paper-based contracts soon.

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Smart contracts are blockchain-based computer protocols intended to help you exchange property, money, shares or anything else in a conflict-free and transparent way without requiring the services of a middleman. These contracts, similar to traditional paper-contracts, come with a set of rules that both the parties must accept to accomplish any transaction.

According to the blockchain expert Lisa Cheng, CEO of EtherParty, the error-free processing and fully secured decentralised nature of smart contracts make them a perfect fit for banking, real estate, healthcare, and government departments.

In 2019, we might witness these industries switching over to smart contracts to add an extra layer of transparency and efficacy to their routine tasks.

The increased number of timestamping-use

Blockchain, unlike the cloud and hardware-based storage system, has a tamper-resistant design that’s almost next to impossible to hack into. This feature makes it a perfect solution to store critical information related to government contracts, business financials, healthcare data, etc. at a particular time.

As the popularity of the blockchain technology grows in 2019, more and more businesses will use it to timestamp their records safely.

Secure enclave will become common

Along with securing digital records and payments, blockchain can also be used to secure hardware.

This year, we are likely to witness many useful blockchain solutions for secure computing, such as hardware-based acceleration of cryptographic techniques and trusted hardware that provides a fully secure execution environment popularly known as a secure enclave.

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It facilitates users by isolating critical data and code from other programs running on the same computer, ensuring that no security breach ever takes place on business and personal computers regardless of how many third-party programs you run simultaneously.

These are top blockchain trends that are expected to create a buzz this year. Do you think there is any other trend that should be on this list? Let me know your views in the comments section below.

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