Guest Lecture: Blockchain with Deloitte and BigchainDB

Yesterday, we had a master program lecture about Blockchain. It was a guest lecture that was held by representatives of Deloitte and the Berlin-based start-up BigchainDB.

They mainly explained the functionality of a Blockchain and how they are trying to help big companies to understand the technology for their wheeling and dealing. However, since you guys are here already, I won’t summarize this part.

More interesting, and hence the reason for the article, was the panel discussion in the end. I asked some steemians before what questions I should ask them. However, before I get into them, I want to give some context.

Deloitte showed some of their Use-Case and what they have built on the blockchain. This were mainly some finance tools that are not worth to mention here. Most of these can be found on their webpage anyways. It was very much focused on Bitcoin.

BigchainDB might be more interesting, since not everyone will be familiar with what they are doing. They are using to develop application that feel like using normal databases but those are running on blockchain characteristics. What that really means can be read a in their whitepaper section. I was really impressed by them.

Enter the panel

Disclaimer: I need to explain here, that the answers are based on my notes. I do not have any transcript and hence the answers are not directly coming from the involved people. Since it was an active discussion with students, new ideas were also added by us. The summaries do not necessarily reflect the position of the company itself. However, I try to give the gist of the discussion.
If you fundamentally disagree with what is written here, I would invite you to leave your opinion to the questions below. Let’s have a great discussion.

What are the main challenges, when trying to integrate a Blockchain or blockchain characteristics into current business models?

For most of the companies, it seems, it is not about how they can use Blockchain technology, it is about understanding what it is, first. Many business leaders do not understand it, yet. Moreover, the main challenges is to actually derive use-cases that have a seamless user experience that people actually enjoy. I think that makes sense and reminded me of a passage in the Mougayar book I referenced in my last post: “if you are not designed to be decentralized, it is hard to become decentralized”.

https://twitter.com/nickszabo4/status/639600934578819072

Regulation is bound mostly to local factors. The Blockchain is public and worldwide. Doesn’t your job, of helping companies to regulate this technology somehow contradict the original idea of a Blockchain?

This was a very provocative question and I paired to with the tweet by Nick Szabo. You can see it above. They agreed that the more people integrate their ideas, this also could lead to transformation of the blockchain. They compared that to the internet boom and how the web was also just in its early stage and grew to what it is today just because people added their ideas. Ultimately, it is about creating value and drive innovation. Innovation means transformation.

@acidyo suggested to ask them about PoW and DPoS and how they see the development in the future.

While I sensed that it doesn’t make sense to go too much into technical questions. Some of the stuff they said can be put into that context. Many times the referral to Bitcoin as a gold standard was given. Since people tend more to collect and store them and not actually use them in any other form then just use them as financial asset. Other concepts like Dash are more obliged to actually become a medium of exchange and hence could function as a nice way to move towards the DPoS. However, we were not able to come to the energy consumption.

Lastly, we asked them:

Do you have bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency yourself?
The answers were mixed and it is okay I think. However, personally, I always wonder how you want to talk about a technology or about topics if you never practiced them yourself. I am not saying I understood what is going on here, but I try to learn it and document it. We should all do that I think.

Anyways, the panel was cool. I appreciate that they took the time from their busy schedules to actually talk with us about such topics. Also, I appreciate that you reading till here.

I am very curious on what your opinion to the questions. Please, feel free to answer a few in the comments below.