By Pradeep KP, CEO & Founder, Dhiway
The global blockchain technology market is valued at USD 10.02 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.7% from 2023 to 2030. The government sector is expected to drive a large share of the projected growth through public-private partnerships and other vehicles. This presents a significant opportunity to consider distributed ledger technologies and blockchain from a fresh perspective – which builds around value.
The origin story of distributed ledger technology and blockchain is Bitcoin. This decentralized cryptocurrency implemented the ideas expressed in Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. Expanding on the notion that trust in a digital transaction can be designed around an immutable ledger using software algorithms for consensus, the availability of distributed ledgers soon enabled use cases other than cryptocurrency to come about. Blockchain is an implementation of distributed ledger technology. When used as the underlying transaction log infrastructure in complex multi-party systems, it provides a secure, immutable and transparent view for participants to verify the transactions.
In the simplest (and somewhat reductionist) explanation – the ledger is a timestamped journal that is immutable and thus provides an easily verifiable and accessible method to determine whether a transaction is legitimate. In the case of Bitcoin, the ledger could mitigate the risk of “double spend” – when a blockchain is expanded to other use cases, this capability lends itself to demonstrating provenance. The trajectory of blockchain adoption has followed the now-familiar path of early adopters investing in some lighthouse projects and then the smaller pilots at large enterprises leading to finally large public deployments spearheaded by governments. This path necessitates the “build with what is available” approach to reduce the time to go live and manage the investment outlay required to adopt a new technology stack. This also benefits the creation of audit and compliance competence as the practitioners need to become familiar with emerging technologies and determine the key points of risk management. This is how we have seen the growing number of blockchain-based applications and services that use Ethereum, Hyperledger and other public permissionless blockchain implementations.
At Dhiway, we spent a good deal of time examining the patterns of adoption, sectoral growth of applications and services and the economics of blockchain-based technology stacks which are part of the IT strategy. And we developed our product offerings using a simple, easy-to-explain hypothesis.
• One size only fits some – while the initial adoption curve was built around existing implementations, the over-generalist approach has its limitations when it comes to blockchain utility infrastructure, which is to be primarily public digital infrastructure. Understanding the patterns of such digital infrastructure is necessary to develop and provide a robust blockchain utility.
• Natively scaling is essential – when applications and services are built to be offered at scale, the underlying infrastructure should not create artificial constraints requiring awkward workarounds for handling high volumes of data or transactions.
• Total cost of ownership is critical for sustainable growth – the total cost of ownership of any infrastructure that includes a blockchain has built-in costs around transactions and operational costs for the blockchain infrastructure. If a deployment has to be economically viable, sustainable and also manage to grow – then a clear understanding of the total cost of ownership should be available through transparent pricing that is possible to be modeled by available standard methods.
The CORD Blockchain is aligned with the hypothesis that the emerging dynamic data exchange economy, which is Web 3.0 centric needs a fresh approach. This has allowed us to learn from the design patterns of existing implementations and build for the future. The modularity offered through pallets makes extending CORD for specific use cases and workloads possible without requiring a bloated core codebase. The data transaction management layer can handle a high value of transactions and is currently tuned to manage the highest projected workloads in the sectoral deployments. The network designed using CORD Blockchain is a tokenless system – conventional speculative tokenomics do not apply to the transaction pricing model. This reduces the total cost of ownership without any compromises on data governance, data security and data scalability.
The CORD Blockchain brings about an additional capability – developability, or the ability to quickly design and develop applications/services using the rick SDK and APIs available, enabling persistent digital identifiers, data registries and data delegation hierarchies. A more modern approach to the developer community allows CORD to present a set of compelling features when contrasted with existing blockchain implementations from a previous cycle.
The CORD Blockchain is agnostic to whether the requirements are from Enterprises, Consumers or the Government. Evaluating and selecting a blockchain infrastructure to power any of these used cases has long-term implications over the IT infrastructure lifecycle. Hence, the right blockchain should be selected considering the right reasons for creating value, alignment with business strategy, overall end-user benefit and regulatory requirements within the jurisdiction. While cryptocurrencies and token-based implementations have specific use cases, they are increasingly becoming the subject of various statutory and legal issues. In this context, the permissioned tokenless blockchain is the way forward for public digital infrastructure in India. There is no justifiable reason to increase the risks in deploying services by selecting a blockchain implementation that is not easily customized, compromises scalability and has high and often hidden transaction costs which are variable and unpredictable.
In conclusion, the adoption of blockchain technology is poised to redefine how we interact, transact, and trust in the digital age. Embracing this disruptive force with careful consideration and collaboration can pave the way for a more secure, transparent, and efficient future across various industries and sectors. As we move forward, it is essential to nurture innovation while responsibly managing the challenges that arise, ensuring that blockchain remains a powerful tool for positive change.
