Private Blockchains as a Tool for Social Empowerment

A few years ago, if you were to draw a picture of a person interested in blockchain, many envisioned the anti-establishment anarchist who wanted worldwide Bitcoin adoption to break the foundations of the government and the banks. The vision was giving power back to the people. In the footsteps of Bitcoin, new public blockchains were built to rival Bitcoin or to service a different purpose; be that a more privacy focused currency such as Monero or extending the protocol for more advanced transactions through smart contracts, as Ethereum enabled.

However, often when explaining the benefits of a public blockchain, like Bitcoin, the message of disrupting the status quo made the mainstream audience nervous, not least because these explanations were shrouded in tech jargon — nodes, mining and merkle trees. Hence, the explanation came down to it being a faster and cheaper solution compared to the current options. A true advantage which everyone could get on board with, but not something revolutionary.

The Era of Private Blockchains

As blockchains were understood more, the corporate world caught onto the idea that this new form of managing data could be beneficial for them, making their processes more efficient and cost effective. The idea of disrupting the incumbents turned to how can this benefit the incumbents.

But many of the core features of public blockchain solutions were in fundamental disagreement with the needs of corporations. Transparency could not be aligned with their responsibility to protect and be the guardians of their customer’s data. Open-sourcing their trade secrets could make them vulnerable to competition. Distributed responsibility led to a confusion as to who was liable should a problem occur.

Many of the core features of public blockchain solutions were in fundamental disagreement with the needs of corporations — transparency, open-sourcing, distributed responsibility…

Additionally, the solutions which they wanted to build did not require the ‘trust-less’ nature of a public blockchain, parties were known and trusted hence the need for energy draining or stake committing consensus methods were redundant, in contrast corporates could utilize much faster and cheaper consensus methods.

And so, dawned the era of private blockchains.

Into the hands of the enemy?

For the initial “Bitcoin ideologists”, still nobly holding their ground, they watched on wondering whether their revolutionary technology to defeat the enemy had instead been harnessed by them, as Peter Jensen’s invention of the loudspeaker was used by Hilter to spread his propaganda. While others saw the entry of private blockchains as a stepping stone to the true vision of public blockchains - as the intranet was the stepping stone to the internet,a gentler way to introduce society to the revolution of peer-to-peer online information exchange.

Either way, the feeling instilled was that public blockchains were a revolution to benefit people while private blockchains were for companies to increase their profits. The mere description of public v. private blockchains conjured this feeling of ‘us and them’.

People Empowerment through Private Blockchains

But is this really the case? Are private blockchains and people empowerment mutually exclusive concepts?

When we look back at that initial blockchain ideology, we must consider what it was really trying to achieve — breaking the foundations of the current establishment or empowering people. The latter needs to be the priority and there is no reason private blockchains, and dare I say it, private companies, can’t achieve that. After-all the establishment is made up of people.

Let’s take some examples:

Healthcare is an industry which is widely regarded as an area which can benefit from blockchain, be it from an improved pharmaceutical supply chain, sharing of research data from clinical trials or better access to electronic healthcare records.

In the area of health records, imagine a patient having a mobile or desktop application where they can view all their medical records. Rather than these records having to be transferred to a central data repository, doctors or providers can keep the records on their server (removing single points-of-failure inherent with central repositories) and give permissions to the patient to see their records. The patient would then assume control and be able to decide who they share their records with and any access to their data would be recorded on the blockchain.

The control of the data would be solely in the patient’s hands and at the click of a button they can allow or revoke access. In an emergency, for example, I could immediately share vital information about my health such as allergies, medications being taken or a chronic condition. This information is trusted as it has come directly from the doctor and as soon as the emergency is over I can revoke access. At all times I have access to my data, know where my data is and who is accessing it.

But as private information which is needed in real-time, a public blockchain would not be appropriate. At least initially, a central company (or consortium) would be preferred to maintain the blockchain and take the responsibility for ensure a smooth-running system. Patients currently expect doctors to have a duty of care over their records, so while giving data ownership is undoubtedly a life-changing benefit, patients may not want the obligation of total responsibility.

Another example is the use of blockchain for tracking the production of food products. Consumers are demanding more information on their food — the use of hormones, antibiotics, chemicals or pesticides; carbon footprint; sustainable production methods; fair trade agreement; and much more. Pilot projects have already been completed which allow a consumer to scan a barcode and see all this information immediately and directly read from the blockchain. Consumers can trust this data as it is not from one, potentially malicious or self-interested, source (e.g. the supermarket) but instead verified by all parties in the supply chain. Additionally, no manipulation of the data could have occurred due to the data being immutable.

Private blockchains. Empowered people.

Many more examples exist, and it is exciting to see the opportunity blockchains give to put power back into the hands of individuals while also harness the power of collaborative efforts, but the realization of blockchain’s potential is yet to be seen. Private blockchains may be a parallel to the intranet, and once we experiment more with public blockchains they may become redundant, but let’s focus on the goal of making life better for each person, regardless of gender, race, location, wealth or any other human-imposed limitation, and take actions today, step by step, to achieve this vision.