8 Things We Learned about Blockchain During our Hackathon
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Our team at ArcTouch started the same way we start every year — with an all-hands hackathon. Every year, we get three days of the ultimate freedom for geeks like us — to experiment, build and master the latest technology.
This year, we dug into the world of blockchain — exploring all things from cryptocurrencies, decentralized apps, Ethereum, ICOs and even building new blockchains from scratch. Well, in case you spent under a rock and somehow missed the Bitcoin bonanza, many are comparing the rise of blockchain technologies to the beginning of the Internet.
It has the potential to completely disrupt how transactions are processed, data is stored, software is architected and implemented, and digital histories are recorded and tracked. So, blockchain hackathon dcum of our teams decided to dive into blockchain during our hackathon, held Jan. And over those three days, we achieved some great results. Here are a few fun facts:. More importantly, here are eight things we learned about blockchain or were reminded of during our hackathon:.
Blockchain hackathon dcum some consumers have become fixated by the idea of a new kind of currency, there are much broader implications for blockchain technology — and boundless opportunities for businesses to explore it.
Blockchain could become the new record of history for the digital universe. Each transaction and action whether involving money or information flow is recorded and cannot be changed. One blockchain hackathon dcum our hackathon teams built a proof-of-concept blockchain solution targeted at aircraft maintenance.
As planes and their specific parts are serviced, a record of that work would be stored on the blockchain, date-stamped and digitally signed by those responsible for the work. This blockchain hackathon dcum record blockchain hackathon dcum be incredibly valuable as planes are sold — both in commercial and private aviation. And, it could even help prevent catastrophic accidents caused by maintenance process problems. But by using Microsoft Azure in combination with Ethereum, some of our blockchain hackathon dcum had their own blockchain up and running in less than 20 minutes.
The architecture is rather straightforward: Microsoft Azure provides the storage and compute power while Ethereum provides the blockchain and smart contract functionality. By simply deploying a pre-configured Azure blockchain virtual environment, you will have a main transaction node and three mining nodes ready to go. From there, you blockchain hackathon dcum simply launch your genesis block and seed it with some pre-mined ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.
You now have your very own private blockchain. A deployed Microsoft Azure blockchain network topology. A couple of our teams also successfully experimented with the Truffle framework within Azure, a nifty toolset that helps make deploying and testing smart contracts on Ethereum blockchains easier. The concept of decentralized computing via blockchain means that data is processed, verified, and recorded everywhere.
As you might imagine, this can create some lengthy transaction processing — you initiate a transaction that needs to be verified by the nodes on that network before the block blockchain hackathon dcum added to the blockchain. Miners serve an important role in this speed. With more miners computing systems that perform mathematical functions to verify these transactions or more high-performance miners, the speed of these transactions can be improved. Remember the old Windows hourglass that would take up your computer screen while you were saving a document or trying to shut down your computer?
Well, several of our teams struggled with similar lengthy pauses in their hackathon demos when submitting a transaction to be recorded on their blockchain. One of the primary strengths of the Ethereum blockchain is its focus on high performance smart contract execution. One such smart contract is a token or altcoin. In a matter of minutes, you can have your own token and begin sharing with friends — or maybe just hoard them all for yourself.
Like any new technology, industry leading companies need to explore blockchain in order to fully understand its capabilities — and limitations. In some use cases, a more traditional and centralized application and database architecture is appropriate. Transaction blockchain hackathon dcum will be far superior, privacy and access controls can be tightly managed, and complexity can blockchain hackathon dcum minimized. At the same time, there blockchain hackathon dcum absolutely use cases where blockchain should be thoroughly explored.
Take for example a supply chain management use case where multiple parties, who may not know, much less trust each other, must all blockchain hackathon dcum and collaborate to execute a single transaction for the movement of goods from a supplier to a buyer. A blockchain with smart contracts can remove blockchain hackathon dcum of the friction and streamline the entire process with automatic execution as the contract moves from one stage to the next.
Turns out, our sales and marketing staff might have been the most excited coming out of the hackathon because blockchain hackathon dcum some of the blockchain proof of concepts we built. In particular, several projects focused on user activation and engagement — terms that get marketers attention.
You can do anything with a smart contract. The blockchain hackathon dcum is in the automation of execution and the fact that nearly anything can be programmed into the smart contract. Subsequently, it can be recorded on the blockchain after execution. Smart contracts allow two or more parties blockchain hackathon dcum may not trust each other to operate in a trustless state.
In other words, they do not have to trust each other, they pass that responsibility to the smart contract and the blockchain to execute on their behalf. ArcTouch recently launched BlockFirst, a new blockchain strategy and development service designed to help companies transform their business processes through blockchain decentralized apps and ledger technology.
Chris Reichard Jan 31, Our team at ArcTouch started blockchain hackathon dcum same way we start every year — with an all-hands hackathon. Here are a few fun facts:
