Blockchain technology has taken the business world by storm, the interest has kept rising and has hit new heights, as more and more industries are looking at how they could benefit from this technology. The workings of blockchain and the solutions that it presents are very complex, but the base principles and the vision can be understood by anyone – blockchain is a network to securely store and exchange different kinds of information, it’s not controlled by anyone, but by users themselves.
Therese Johansson, one of the founders of Libonomy blockchain, highlights that the focal point is to first understand who we are communicating with and what is their background before jumping into the explanation: “The same way as 25 years ago we didn’t know what the internet was, many people right now have no understanding about blockchain. In this confusion we need to make sure that we communicate in the right way, which starts with understanding who we are communicating with – a college professor, an IT guru, or just a regular person with no former insight in networks or decentralized technology. All of them demand a unique explanation based on their experience.
If we’re explaining blockchain to someone who has never heard about it, it’s best to keep it simple – blockchain is a medium that facilitates a direct communication between people across the world without needing any middlemen. Then we can move forward – the network is formed by users themselves, each device connected to the network has a copy of all the information in the network’s database, and they all participate in ensuring that the information is correct. There is a unique architecture for this database, it is split in sections known as blocks, new sections are periodically added to the database with a timestamp and a tag to the previous section forming a chain. This feature makes it impossible to alter data once it’s saved on a blockchain. This is known as immutability.
These are the basic principles of blockchain technology, in case your conversation partner is well aware of them, dive deeper and discuss consensus algorithms, blockchain’s architecture, interoperability and other, more complex topics.”
From a finance experiment to a multi-billion dollar industry, decentralized technology is surely surging in the 3rd decade of the 21st century. According to statista.com data, in 2020 worldwide spendings on blockchain solutions exceeded 4 billion USD. This is more than double in two years, as the spendings in 2018 were 1.5 billion USD. And it is estimated to reach 15.9 billion USD by 2023.
Therese Johansson, a pioneer of modern blockchain technology, talks about the impact that blockchain development has had and the major issues that there are at the moment: “Even though the majority of blockchain industry right now is focused in the finance sector, we are talking to many companies that are looking to take advantage of the benefits that blockchain technology presents fast, transparent network with lower costs, increased security and accountability.
In last year’s survey, almost half of European business decision-makers predicted blockchain to add to their current business model, and another third of them expected blockchain to entirely replace their current model. There is no doubt blockchain will play a significant role both in the public and private sectors in the upcoming years. However, if we are looking at blockchain technology right now, we can quickly come to the conclusion that there are a lot of unsolved problems with the majority of blockchains.
Libonomy was created on the foundations of all former blockchains taking the best and eliminating the worst characteristics. If you have some knowledge of blockchains you’ll know that Bitcoin is the most popular one, but it’s very slow, costly and requires a lot of energy to be wasted. Ethereum, the second most popular blockchain, shares similar problems. And there are many other blockchains that differ from one to another, but all pose a set of drawbacks. We took a different approach to the problem, we didn’t rush into development, but first made sure to complete a lengthy research process where we learned from the mistakes of other projects. Libonomy is the first blockchain that is up to modern standards – it’s much faster than competitors, has more versatility and has no security issues. Libonomy is one universal solution that can be used by any private or public project.”
