The American market research company Forrester recently released its 2021 blockchain forecast report. The report revealed an interesting finding, pointing out that 2020 is an important year for the growth of enterprise blockchain and distributed ledger technology.
Martha Bennet, Forrester’s principal analyst and co-author of the report, told Cointelegraph that the company’s predictions for the blockchain are based on inflection points that show clear changes, not a continuation of trends. For example, the report predicts that 30% of global projects will be put into production next year. This is partly due to the impact of the new coronary pneumonia pandemic.
According to Bennet, many blockchain-based systems today have one thing in common: it takes less time to resolve differences. In some cases, this may even be instantaneous. Bennet pointed out that this common factor applies to supply chain use cases and financial services:
“It’s not just that fewer people are required to complete certain tasks; it’s also related to shortening elapsed time and releasing liquidity. The key is that this is possible today in the context of existing processes and operating models. “
The development of enterprise blockchain projects “takes time”
Bennet said that despite this, long-term financial services strategic projects often revolve around potential changes in market structure and operating models. Many such cases also require regulatory adjustments. This requires time, resources and energy. This is the main reason why the volatility and uncertainty related to the new crown pneumonia have caused many banks to temporarily withdraw some long-term projects related to DLT.
The report also pointed out that almost all projects planned from trial implementation to production next year will run on enterprise blockchain platforms, which utilize cloud computing. These most likely include solutions from Alibaba, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, OneConnect and Oracle.
Allistair Rennie, general manager of IBM blockchain, told Cointelegraph that 30% of enterprise blockchain projects are expected to be put into production next year, which is consistent with IBM’s current predictions for customers:
“As the pandemic is putting more and more pressure on the supply chain, customers have found an urgent need to accelerate their digital transformation to become stronger than before. We see the expansion of existing blockchain projects and new projects. The most successful of these are projects that are based on solid business use cases and have clearly defined business value.”
The most critical technology prediction: zero-knowledge proof
From a technical perspective, Bennet mentioned that the most critical forecast listed in the report is the growing demand for zero-knowledge proofs. She said: “The project needs ZKP because the challenge of protecting confidentiality currently hinders the development of the project.” The report further outlines the problems that ZKP may solve.
“For companies that do not want to rely on existing encryption technology, the only option is to only keep hashes on the chain, or use structures such as selective replication or private data collection. In many cases, the existing technology cannot solve the problem. The exposure problem caused by data.”
However, ZKPs have made great progress recently. For example, the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young is developing a ZKP project. This privacy software called “Nightfall” will use ZKP to implement private transactions based on the blockchain. Paul Brody, head of Ernst & Young’s global blockchain, told Cointelegraph that the company’s top priority next year is to make Nightfall and ZKP more accessible to developers:
“The biggest challenge of using ZKP is that they are much more complicated than writing a smart contract without privacy. I will compare it with the early addition of SSL and encryption to the web-most people did not understand when learning Solidity development This, and now, it is not easy to achieve.”
Brody further stated that Nightfall’s work focuses on improving the privacy level of transactions by hiding metadata that may be inferred from analyzing network activities. Although the product currently supports private transfers and payments that comply with regulatory requirements, Brody explained that the company hopes to expand this functionality by creating new privacy tools. If our work is done well, people will shift from developing DApp (decentralized application) to developing ZApp (zero-knowledge application).
In addition, IBM’s blockchain platform uses ZKP to protect data privacy. Ramesh Gopinath, vice president of IBM blockchain solutions, told Cointelegraph that IBM is using ZKP and related encryption schemes (such as secure multi-party computing) to achieve trusted privacy protection analysis and AI data on the blockchain. The Forrester report pointed out that IBM will become one of the most widely used blockchain platforms in production-ready projects next year.
The Baseline protocol is another open source project that relies heavily on ZKP to coordinate confidential work processes between enterprises. John Wolpert, a developer of blockchain software company ConsenSys, explained that in this agreement, ZKP allows companies with different record keeping systems to perform synchronous verification on a record-by-record basis without sharing sensitive information.
DeFi and public blockchain prediction
The Forrester report also predicts that decentralized finance will have a negative impact on the adoption of public blockchains. According to this report, corporate technology leaders are now willing to discuss the role of public blockchains. Unfortunately, the rise of DeFi in 2020 has led to suspicious activity on public networks such as Ethereum. The report states: “This has re-established the connection between the public blockchain and the cryptocurrency “Wild West” and will continue to drive away decision makers who are proficient in compliance and risk.”
Kyle Thomas, the CEO of Provide, an enterprise-level blockchain supplier that works with SAP and Coke One North America, disagrees. He told Cointelegraph that companies will soon treat public blockchains like they treat the Internet: “As’enterprise DeFi’ becomes a reality, all this will cause people’s attention.”
Feng Yikai, a PwC cybersecurity expert and former COO of VeChain, a blockchain company, responded to Co Thomas that although the DeFi field may be similar to the 2017 ICO frenzy, the difference is that DeFi showcases smart financial services. The power of contracts.
Therefore, Feng Yikai mentioned that the DeFi field may make companies wary of public blockchains in the short term, but as this field matures, public blockchains will prove to be more suitable for financial use cases: “If we look at it from another angle DeFi, it shows how to use blockchain for financial use cases, which is the missing part of enterprise blockchain use cases.”
As a blockchain news information platform, Cointelegraph Chinese provides information only representing the author’s personal views, has nothing to do with the position of Cointelegraph Chinese platform, and does not constitute any investment and financial advice. If you need to reprint, please contact the relevant staff of Cointelegraph.
