The Blockchain is a disruptive technology which is proving to be an inevitable aspect of human development. Yet in the stage of adoption across various sectors of development, Blockchain technology within the last decade has grown in popularity and displayed great potential in so many aspects.
Cointelegraph spoke to Asse Sauga on the history, development and potentials of the Blockchain, especially as it disrupts existing industrial processes. Sauga was the first Blockchain professional in the banking sector with LHV Bank in Estonia, he is presently the CTO at ProofofYou.
The beginning of the Blockchain
According to Sauga, different Blockchain projects had been developed around the world since the nineties but as a centralized transactions system. Bitcoin, as a first major application of a trustful decentralised Blockchain happened at the beginning of 2009. Initially, nobody believed that the Bitcoin would succeed as described in a White Paper.
Sauga says that in 2013, knowledge about Bitcoin began to spread more significantly. People started to get more interested in the cryptocurrency and the underlying technology, the Blockchain. 2014 was the Blockchain startup year. He continues by saying that during 2015 regulators and big corporations started to get interested in the Blockchain technology and over 1 billion USD was invested into Blockchain startups by the end of 2015.
Today almost every major corporation and bank has a team who is researching the possibilities of Blockchain applications.
An unfinished but inevitable product
Sauga predicts mass usage of the Blockchain in the future, but not with basic improvements of the technology.
He says:
“The Blockchain as a technology will get more and more ready for mass usage. As it is mostly open source, developers around the world contribute into the technology and usability of the applications. Security, scalability and usability of the applications are main features which need to be improved, at which point it will definitely disrupt old business models. The Blockchain allows one to design businesses and services without "central point of failure" or minimise that role and create totally new business models. Additionally, it will make businesses and services much more transparent, secure and trustful. And many more services can be automated of-course.”
Sauga concludes by saying that the Blockchain is currently in its experimental phase. However, it is very functional already, but there is still a lot of improvement to be made, starting from scalability issues and ending with a energy waste.
“There are different solutions on the discussion but they need to be properly tested”, he notes.