Blockchain is becoming a household word, signaling a paradigm shift, whipping up interest and mistrust alike. The speculative bubble around this disruptive technology makes it tricky to predict its future. It has kindled organizations fear of change but the most advanced countries have given it the thumbs-up and we are still in time to make the due adaptations and tap into its advantages and opportunities. What can we expect from this technology? What is it being used for? Is it really going to change our future?

As we write, the internet of information with which we have lived to date is now shifting towards an internet of value, based on Blockchain technology. This technology can be seen as a decentralized, distributed platform on which we can share value with intermediaries and power is held by the community, engendering a sense of trustworthiness. A viable alternative from the operational and economic point of view, upon which automated processes and new business models can be built.

Blockchain technology offers promising changes in the way of carrying out secure, effective and reliable transactions. It has changed from being used for underwriting interchanges with digital media (cryptocurrency) to offering opportunities in a great number of sectors, ranging the public sector to the automotive industry, insurance and healthcare.

The Aragon Investigation, Development and Innovation Association (Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación en Aragón: IDiA) has organized a seminar to explore Blockchain’s potential in the worlds of finance, logistics, services and many other of today’s business challenges. One of the speakers was Ángel Gavín, GMV’s specialist in disruptive technologies, setting up a debate about many aspects to do with its degree of maturity, possible use cases, security, trustworthiness, legal framework, etc. During his speech Gavín stressed the importance of our standpoint and the key success factors for Blockchain to work as a technological solution.

A technological innovation for everything

We are talking here about Blockchain, as the ideal technology for taking a qualitative leap forwards in the cooperative coordination of our sectors, especially in those complex processes that involve the intervention of various organizations and call for a trustworthy system for coordinating them all. Blockchain would make it possible to automate processes, transactions and relations between different parties of the value chain; store all the data and archives to hand to encourage traceability and regularity; ensure data confidentiality and record frequency while also safeguarding users’ interests.

Most projects are still in an initial phase and past experiences are not really positive; only 8% of Blockchain projects of 2016 are still up and running today. If they manage to overcome the technical and scalability obstacles that are cropping up, they would still have to tackle regulatory aspects, organizational barriers and the search for talent, among other aspects. But despite the risks this involves, Gavín underlined the huge opportunities offered by Blockchain and the need of focusing on its application in data analytics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cryptography and the fight against fraud.

The event wound up with the launch of the “IDiA Blockchain Working Group”, to be reserved exclusively for IDiA members, GMV being one of them. This group of experts has set itself two short-term goals:

1. Draw up an exhaustive list of possible business use cases, studying the degree of maturity and potential of each one.
2. Establish a proposal for creating a common Blockchain infrastructure to serve not only as a training environment but also a test bed for trying out prototypes of various sorts.