The demystification Of Blockchain at Nanyang Blockchain Association

• “A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.” *

This quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes perfectly describes my recent experience at Blockchain and Businesses Event’ on 27 March 2018 organized by Nanyang Blockchain Association . Being a technical writer with an inquisition for innovation I had been researching on the emerging technology of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency for a while when I attended this seminar which really decluttered my understanding of this buzzword. I would be sharing some insights of the event and also what all I brought back with me.

The event was based on the theme of exploring industrial applications of blockchain and their future prospects. The speakers were Sankalp Sanghari, CEO- Lala World, a Blockchain based company that is creating a financial ecosystem for the Unbanked on Blockchain, Karan Bhardwaj- XinFin, leading the development of Hybrid blockchain platform and XDC protocol and Ruby Chen, CEO- Bitkan, the largest over the counter trading service in China. The panel of speakers were a mixed bag from different zones of blockchain industry who shared the current developments made by their company.

What did I learn?

The prevailing collective digital currency ‘Bitcoin’ allows anyone, anywhere in the world to buy, sell, exchange the figurative token or Bitcoins, as we call them, against fiat currencies while the system records the transaction in an immutable, secure and irreversible way on a public distributed ledger.These transactions are saved cryptographically as blocks using a distributed consensus mechanism across the nodes of the network so as to ensure the synchronisation of modifications made to the blockchain of records. This is done over the network with cryptographic encryption using digital keys. In order to make blockchain feasible and secure for financial use cases, improvised frameworks like XDC protocol were discussed by the expert panel.

The power of Hybrid Blockchain Technology

The concept of public-private network and hybrid blockchain technologies was presented in a very simplified manner by Mr. Bhardwaj as he explained that an open and symmetric network structure where all nodes are equal or symmetric represents a public network such as Bitcoin's blockchain network which is a peer-to-peer network architecture with no server, decentralized and non hierarchical services. Public blockchain is open-source and hence open to public participation with no one as incharge. There is no restrictions access and hence consensus becomes open to public access by anyone which makes the blockchain ecosystem trustless as anybody at any can modify/audit it. The private Blockchain is an absolute opposite of public blockchain where one can’t access the blockchain without permission ensuring transactional security from external parties. Although it is decentralised and based on p2p architecture, it is still trustless as it is controlled by a third party which governs the administration of private blockchain giving them undue advantage of modifications as per their personal benefits. Here comes the Hybrid blockchain which carries the features of both public and private networks. Truly Hybrid blockchain must necessarily be able to connect public blockchain with a private blockchain implementation running in a fully permissioned environment by leveraging the power of both. It has high auditability, high security, high throughput and interoperable transactional visibility subject to use case.

The XDC Protocol

XDC protocol is the enfant du cerveau of XinFin, a Singapore based technology company. Mr. Karan Bhardwaj, CTO, XinFin delineated the implementation of XDC and its role in blockchain applications in the seminar. XinFin has architected its network from a fork of Ethereum and Quorum using the best of both the networks. The hybrid architecture maintains both, a private state and a public state. Private state ensures that the sensitive financial data is secure yet at the same time its public state makes it transparent and verifiable making XDC protocol secure, scalable and lightning fast. Its Hybrid nature also makes it highly interoperable with legacy systems and other blockchain platforms. The network runs on a delegated proof of stake consensus between trusted master nodes and is powered by its next generation digital token called XDC token which ensures that XDC protocol can work as a messaging and confirmation layer for domestic or cross border approved payments or the XDC token can be used as a payment and settlement layer supported by approved financial institutions. XDC Hybrid architecture addresses the shortcomings of all private and public blockchains and makes XDC protocol suitable for real world applications. It combines the availability, transparency and decentralization benefits of public blockchain along with security, privacy and high transaction speed benefits of private blockchain. Moreover the XDC Dev Environment is open source and feasible for cross sector development as per enterprise use case.

You can find more about it on this youtube link where Karan explains the hybrid blockchain technology and its enterprise uses cases very efficiently.

After a bit of research I also found out a technical paper which elaborates this robust protocol by XinFin, a blockchain technology company working on the development and application of XDC tokens for blockchain based solutions for enterprise use cases for global usage.

I think i’ll be attending a lot of seminars related to this technology to understand them better and next on my list is Consensus 18 to be held in NewYork from May 14 to May 16, the largest annual blockchain technology gathering in the world which has become a must-attend event for all individuals who are active in the blockchain ecosystem. XinFin will also be presenting more on their protocol. So stay tuned for all the updates!!