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As the industry gains momentum governments and businesses are starting to recognize the potential of blockchain and how the emerging technology can streamline their operations.Australia is one of the more crypto and blockchain friendly countries as it strives to seek applications for the tech.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have formed a consortium with law firm Herbert Smith Freehills and IBM. The aim is to build the first national cross-industry, large-scale, digital platform which will enable Australian businesses to collaborate using smart legal contracts on the blockchain.

The platform will be known as the Australian National Blockchain (ANB) and will enable companies to exchange data and confirm the authenticity of legal contracts using smart contract technology in addition to digitally managing their lifecycles.

Smart legal contracts will be provided by the ANB containing clauses with ‘the ability to record external data sources such as Internet of Things (IoT) device data, enabling these clauses to self-execute if specified contract conditions are met’ according to the press release.Herbert Smith Freehills head of blockchain, Natasha Blycha, said;

“Technologies like blockchain are set to transform the legal industry and the wider business landscape as we know it. This presents a huge opportunity for agile and forward-thinking firms and has potential to deliver significant benefits to our clients and the business community as a whole. Our clients are enthusiastic about process automation, and how it can support a move away from paper-based systems, simplify supply chains and quickly and securely share information with customers and regulators.”

The platform will be tested in a pilot powered by IBM’s blockchain solutions. Regulators, banks, law firms and Australian businesses will be invited to participate in the pilot expected to commence before the end of 2018. Vice President and Partner of IBM Global Business Services, Paul Hutchison, added;

“IBM Blockchain and the IBM Cloud provide the highest level of security to support even highly regulated industries such as healthcare and government, and IBM has extensive experience building blockchain networks and convening large consortia focused around solving important business problems,”

CSIRO’s Data61, Australia’s leading digital research network, will be leading the development of the ANB platform. “Data61’s independence and world-leading expertise will help to catalyse the creation of digital infrastructure for Australian businesses to transition to a digitally-enabled future.

For complex enterprise contracts, there are huge opportunities to benefit from our research into blockchain architecture and into computational law,” senior research scientist Dr Mark Staples added.

A number of industry positive developments have emerged from Australia in recent months including a blockchain bond mandated by the Common Wealth Bank of Australia (CBA) via the World Bank.

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By JEFF JOHN ROBERTS 

Among the classes on offer at Cornell University this year are “The Anthropology of Money” and “Introduction to Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and Smart Contracts.

” Those are just two of the 28 courses at the Ivy League school related to blockchain, the popular new technology that creates a permanent ledger across multiple computers.

While Cornell has embraced the blockchain phenomenon more than other schools, it’s hardly alone. According to new research from Coinbase Reports, a growing number of universities are teaching the subject across multiple disciplines.

Here is a chart from the report, which show how other prominent schools, including Stanford and UC Berkeley, are offering multiple blockchain courses:



The popularity of blockchain on campus is remarkable in part because the technology is still new and because some still associate currencies like Bitcoin (which is run on a blockchain) as the province of geeks and cyber-criminals.


Back in 2014, when David Yermack, the finance department chair at New York University Stern School of Business, first offered his course on blockchain and financial services, he says only 35 people signed up.

Now, according to the report, the course is packed with 235 students and he is teaching it both semesters.

More broadly, while a lot of the teaching on blockchain has grown out of traditional courses on cryptography, the subject is also popping up in numerous other disciplines, and interest spans the traditional divisions between engineering and social sciences.

“Coinbase’s analysis found that of the 172 classes listed by the top 50 universities, 15 percent were offered by business, economics, finance, and law departments, and four percent were in social science departments such as anthropology, history, and political science,” the report notes.

The multi-disciplinary appeal likely reflects how blockchain projects typically revolve around decentralized communities that rely on incentives (such as cryptocurrency rewards) to maintain a common, indestructible ledger system. Building a successful blockchain thus requires expertise in fields as diverse as game theory, information systems and cybersecurity. And as legal scholars

Primavera de Filipi and Aaron Wright explained in their groundbreaking book Blockchain and the Law, the technology is also poised to remake certain social and economic rules of society.The report also included a survey that found a high level of interest in blockchain among students. This included nearly half of social science majors reporting that they would like to take a blockchain class.

Finally, the report found that interest in blockchain was particularly strong at American universities. Only five of the 18 international universities among the list surveyed by Coinbase—which was based on the 50 top universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report—offer at least one class on blockchain or cryptocurrency.

Coinbase itself is treating the findings as good news, in part because the company is actively recruiting students with blockchain experience. According to a source close to the company, Coinbase will be kicking off a national tour to provide “crypto 101” sessions on campuses that have demonstrated a strong interest in blockchain.

The company is also conducting a recruiting tour that includes a stop at Howard University on September 13, and at Princeton, Duke and numerous other schools.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In order for the world economy to continue to grow, we need to develop digital infrastructure to sustain the speed and volume in which we share information. Data infrastructure needs to be scalable and deployable as the needs of our digital era continue to evolve.

Even though blockchain is somewhat the “new kid on the block,” it has excited the world of business. According to a survey carried out by Gartner, 66 percent of the respondents said they believed that blockchain is a business disruption and 5 percent were willing to spend over $10 million on the technology.

Blockchain has many uses and implications; however, the first mainstream application we've seen is through cryptocurrency. But the initial design of cryptocurrencies was not built for widespread use and adoption.

Related: 15 Crazy and Surprising Ways People Are Using Blockchain

For Bitcoin and Ethereum to compete with mainstream systems such as Visa and PayPal, they need to step up their game with their transaction times.

As explained by crypto trading company Coindesk, "While PayPal manages 193 transactions per second and Visa manages 1,667 transactions per second, Ethereum does only 20 transactions per second while Bitcoin manages a whopping seven transactions per second. The only way that these numbers can be improved is if they work on their scalability."

Scalability obstacles created by mining 

When dealing with Bitcoin and Ethereum, a transaction is granted only when a miner (the person whose computer processed the code behind the currency) puts the transaction data in the blocks they've mined.

Let's say Stephen wants to send Andrew 10 BTC (bitcoin). He will send the transaction data to the miners, the miner will then put it in their block and then the transaction will be completed.

However, as Bitcoin rises in popularity, this process becomes more time-consuming. Plus, there is the issue of transactions fees. When miners mine a block, they become gatekeepers of that block. In order for transactions to go through, users will have to pay a toll to that gatekeeper.

This “toll” is referred to as a transaction fee. This fee creates issues when scaling because it creates an additional barrier. What about Ethereum? In theory, Ethereum is supposed to process 1,000 transactions per second.

However, in practice, Ethereum is limited by a cap of 6.7 million gas -- the amount of computational effort required on the receiver's side of the transaction -- on each block.

Here's how to understand what “gas” means. Stephen has issued a smart contract for Andrew. Andrew sees that the elements in the contract will cost X amount of gas. Accordingly, he will charge Stephen for the amount of gas that's used up. It's like letting your friend borrow your car and making them pay back the amount of gas that was used when they drove.

Related: 3 Industries Blockchain Entrepreneurs Will Change for the Better

These issues haven't surfaced much yet, because there hasn't been widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies until recently. Ethereum exploded in popularity around December 2017 through a game called CryptoKitties (where users buy digital cats and raise them). The popularity of the game brought to fore the issue of scalability, as documented in this Mashable article.

Here are some terms you should know regarding the scaling of blockchain.

Sharding

Sharding is the splitting of the block verification process and running of parallel subcommittees to collate the completed data. Zilliqa is a platform that utilizes sharding. It has been proven to handle 2,400 transactions per second with a goal to match Visa’s average of 8,000 transactions per second, according to The-Blockchain. 

Perhaps most importantly, Zilliqa reacts efficiently to scaling needs as its throughput increases with its network size, as opposed to Bitcoin becoming clogged with transactions. With a node size equivalent to Ethereum, Zilliqa predicts it could handle twice the transactions of Visa per second.

Hard fork

When a platform drastically branches away from its initial platform direction, it is referred to as a "hard fork." Preceding the hacking of the decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum network (where $53 million of crowdfunded cryptocurrency was “stolen,” as reported by Bitcoin.com). 

Ethereum took a hard fork in order to reclaim the money and continued as Ethereum Classic, while the existing course maintained the original blockchain as Ethereum. Bitcoin recently adopted a hard fork in its capped block size, which means that old and new software are incompatible with each other and renders the old outputs invalid.

Bitcoin has already forked previously, such as with Bitcoin Cash, and there are more planned for this year.

Related: Blockchain Is How We Can Protect Our Privacy in a World of Ubiquitous Surveillance

Segregated witness

The proposed Bitcoin hard forks will all incorporate SegWit (the Segregated Witness soft fork), which is software designed to solve transaction malleability but also improve the capped block size issue. Each block has a capped size that creates a finite amount of transactions to occur on each block. 

SegWit increases the block size limit to 4MB, meaning a single block can hold the records of more than 8,000 transactions. However, although the block increase provides short-term respite in scalability issues, it will still eventually present the same restrictions once transactions have exceeded the limit.

By Joe Liebkind |

Even as blockchain continues to dominate headlines and conversations across the tech sphere, some of the biggest names in the industry remain on the outside of the sector looking in.

However, following several high-profile announcements in recent months, it seems one of the top tech giants may finally be ready to dive into the field.

Amazon, which ranks among the largest corporations in the world, has spent months exploring the possibilities of blockchain. Starting earlier in 2018, however, those explorations turned into real actions after the company announced several partnerships and plans that would put it squarely in the conversation of the sector’s future.

With its new “Blockchain-as-a-Service” (BaaS) offering, the questions surrounding Amazon’s dalliance with blockchain go from the theoretical to the very practical.

A Multi-Faceted Motivation

There is little question that blockchain is quickly becoming a profitable sector. While it was long tied to cryptocurrencies’ ebb and flow, the technology has since shed its chains and become a key driver of innovation. Most of the change and disruption has been propelled by developers, entrepreneurs and smaller companies, but large corporations have started to see both its value and virtue.

This is evident from the many partnerships announced between blockchain startups and major corporations.For Amazon, however, the need to incorporate blockchain tools has two distinct faces: changing trends in the eCommerce and consumer sector along with seeking avenues to expand its increasingly vital AWS platform.

The Changing Retail Game

There is little doubt Amazon still reigns supreme in online retail—the company accounted for nearly 44% of eCommerce sales in 2017, and a whopping 4% of all retail sales in the US.However, this dominance comes at a price, as most companies that operate their sales through Amazon highlight a major issue.

According to Eran Eyal, CEO of blockchain-based customer intelligence firm Shopin, “Amazon presents a conundrum: While also providing a huge platform for wide product distribution, logistical support and marketing, all of this comes at the expense of a personalized relationship between the brand and their customers.

”For many retailers, the biggest issue is the loss of end users’ information, which is collected by Amazon. This greatly hampers retailers’ sales ability considering most modern consumers prefer a personalized experience, which retailers through Amazon simply cannot deliver. 

According to an Accenture study, 91% of consumers prefer shopping with businesses that recognize them and remember their preferences, something Amazon precludes. More surprising, 83% of shoppers are happy to share their data if it means a better experience.In lieu of gaining any concessions from Amazon’s data collection practices, many retailers are looking at alternatives, and blockchain is already providing them.

Projects like Shopin, which rewards users for loyalty while providing retailers with vital information, are becoming more widespread. Other like Sandblock leverage loyalty programs to gather user data and deliver better services.  For Amazon, working with these technologies would help them improve service both for consumers and the businesses that work through the platform.

Even so, the company’s efforts still seem largely focused on the B2B opportunities blockchain affords for now.

Expanding B2B Domination

On the business-to-business front, blockchain’s value to Amazon, and the company’s initial splash into the area, are much clearer. For one, the B2B realm has a much more developed ecosystem for blockchain, and Amazon’s existing platforms are already optimized to incorporate the technology.

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud server solution for businesses, has the pieces in place to easily adapt blockchain.The company has also been aggressive in finding ready-made partners to integrate its new BaaS platform.

For example, Amazon recently announced a partnership with the Qtum foundation to incorporate the project’s dApp development and smart contract tools into AWS.

Qtum, which provides a blockchain optimized for business users, will help companies quickly create blockchain applications and smart contracts without having to handle the heavy lifting associated with infrastructure.

More importantly, perhaps, are the many opportunities still available in the business intelligence realm for B2B solutions. These include blockchain-based supercomputers that leverage existing network resources to reduce costs while supporting greater computational power.

Platforms such as blockchain-based AI computing platform Tatau, for instance, which deploy unused resources on its blockchain for data processing and graphics rendering, could thrive on AWS’ massive network.

Moreover, AWS could supply these services as part of larger BaaS offerings, or even as standalone services that reduce its operational costs and dispense tremendous value.“Consider that Amazon offers a huge range of services from streaming video, to cloud computing, to bricks and mortar retail.

However, decentralized solutions will have a sustainable advantage over AWS in the foreseeable future as AWS runs a cost + model with slim margins and will not reduce prices significantly. This means that the decentralized players will always have a price advantage (which doesn't require returning hardware capital cost)," said Martin Levy, the cofounder and CEO of Tatau.

For Amazon, entering the blockchain arena is more than an opportunity at this point—it has become a necessity. Several of its largest competitors in the computing and business services sectors have a head start as first movers and have already proven successful. 

IBM’s Hyperledger, for instance, continues to roll along, adding partners and expanding its reach. Network solutions provider Cisco has also had a service online since late 2017, and even Microsoft has entered the fray with its own enterprise blockchain.

"AWS is all about providing infrastructure as a service. Even though they have a nice set of proprietary services, their claim to fame is to deploy and scale any infrastructure service faster and easier than anyone out there.

For example they are not shy to claim that “88% of TensorFlow projects run on AWS” being TensorFlow a proprietary technology of Google. So I think that AWS will (and probably is already) be very serious about being one of the best and easiest ways to deploy a blockchain based infrastructure.

Not only providing templates, like they already do for ethereum and hyperledger, but as a full stack blockchain service interconnected with all other available products like storage, databases, development, machine learning and IoT," said Daniel Trachtenberg, CEO and Founder of Zinc, a user centric blockchain based advertising protocol and app.

Can Amazon Catch Up?

By all accounts, Amazon is a late entrant to the blockchain environment. The company has made overtures as early as 2017, but 2018 has seen it grow more aggressive in its forays into blockchain. However, with the industry quickly taking a more solid shape, Amazon has its work cut out.

While its use case in the B2B space is obvious, ignoring blockchain in the retail sector could be harmful over the long run for the ecommerce behemoth as shoppers demand a more personalized experience.

While Amazon remains the de facto gatekeeper for most online retail, avoiding blockchain could derail this hegemony unless Amazon opts to join the race in a more serious fashion.
Read more: Is Amazon Getting Serious About Blockchain? | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/news/amazon-getting-serious-about-blockchain/#ixzz5PR74zLnz 

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