Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S2W3 - Blockchain in our lives. by @anyiglobal

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Good day everyone! Welcome to the steemit engagement challenge season 2 week 3. I believe the previous season ended successfully, and so will this season end successfully too. I'm glad to participate again in this special contest organized by the SCA community. This contest will also give every participants the opportunity to express their view on the topic "Blockchain in our lives". I'm here to drop my own entry to the contest. However, before I proceed, I will like to list the topic we're to write on in this contest below:

• Blockchain is changing everyday life for everyone, what is your opinion on the matter?

• What are the main advantages and disadvantages, in adopting the use of blockchain in everyday life?

• Discuss the future of blockchain, and how this technology is impacting the world.

• What is your opinion about the implementation of blockchains in the health sector? Has the implementation been positive or negative? Explain a use case.

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1. Blockchain is changing everyday life for everyone, what is your opinion on the matter?

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It's not a new thing again that Blockchain has touched several lives of people. If not for any other thing, think of the Steem blockchain which has myriad of DApps. Steemit being one of the most popular DApps of the Steem blockchain, is a social media platform which rewards their users based on their contributions on the platform. They reward their users in their native currency called STEEM and their stable currency called SBD. These Steemit platform which is built on Steem blockchain has really helped people's lives.

Blockchain technology has made money transfers in our lives so easy and efficient. The introduction of blockchain technology in our everyday life has cancelled the operations of the intermediary like the traditional banks in controlling and validating transactions. Before the introduction of blockchain in our daily lives, money transfers goes through the financial institution which is a centralized authority that controls how money is being transferred from one person to another. They're trusted third party that processes transactions before sending it through their network to the receiver of the money. However, the introduction of blockchain technology solved the problem of sending money through third-parties like banks, hence, making the network fully decentralized.

Blockchain in our lives has lowered the transaction fees of transferring money across borders, however, solving the high transaction fees of sending money through intermediaries. Blockchain technology works on peer-to-peer network meaning that all nodes on the network are connected directly to each other. For this reason, there's no third-party in the middle of the network to charge for transaction fees of sending money across borders, for example, sending money from Nigeria to America will charge low transaction fees using blockchain technology than sending money through the banks. Today, with blockchain technology, I can seamlessly send money across borders with little or no transaction fees.

The introduction of blockchain technology has also facilitated fast transactions during money transfers. For example, transferring money from Nigeria to Canada through the banks might take as much as 3days to 4days for the transaction to process before reaching the receiver of the money. However, with the introduction of blockchain technology in our day to day lives, fast transactions is now an easy pizzy stuff. We can effectively and efficiently transfer money from Nigeria to Canada within minutes or seconds. Blockchain has greatly affect our transaction lives.

In terms of identity theft, the introduction of blockchain technology has reduced identity theft such as document forgery, stealing of or hacking into personal files such as social security number, birth certificates, birth dates, and many other sensitive information. Before the introduction of blockchain in our daily lives, identity theft is predominant around the globe using the traditional database to store their information. But, since many companies like Ligero, Civic, Evernym inc., and many others started adopting this blockchain into their companies processes in achieving their central objectives, the identity theft has significantly reduced. This was achievable because of the data transparency and immutability of blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology in our lives has also helped the logistic industries to run a cost-effective business, hence, providing them with data transparency that helps them mitigate the loss of millions of dollars per year that always occurs before the introduction of blockchain technology in their industry. Data transparency reveals every single source of truth in the business because every participant on the network has a copy of the public distributed ledger of all the transactions that occurs on the network.

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2. What are the main advantages and disadvantages, in adopting the use of blockchain in everyday life?

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Adopting the use of blockchain technology in our everyday life has many advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGES OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

• Decentralization: The main problem that blockchain technological concept solves is the eradication of central authorities in money transactions. Before the introduction of blockchain technology, money sent or transferred has to go through a central authority or intermediaries that processes and authorizes the transaction before it gets to the receiver. With blockchain technology, participants on the network can directly send and receive money through smart contracts.

• Low Transaction Fees: Blockchain technology ensure low transaction fees on the network. For example, if the transaction fee of sending money through the banks is 5,000 NGN fiat currency, then the transaction fee of sending money through blockchain will significantly take little or no fees of sending same amount of money in digital currency.

• Fast Transactions: The amount of time taken to send money on a blockchain network is very fast compared to traditional banks which might take days to arrive to it's destination. Blockchain technology has really curtailled the delay in making transactions through the financial institutions.

• Data Transparency: Data transparency means that every node on a blockchain network has a copy of the public distributed ledger of the transaction records that occurs on the network. This facilitates reliability on the network because no participant on the network can make an invalid transaction because every participants on the network has the power to validate transactions before it is added to the ledger. All the participants can see the current amount of coins that each participant has, and also the transaction records of each participant. So with this knowledge, no participant can issue a transaction amount of more than what he has in his wallet, otherwise, it will be flagged invalid by other participants.

• Security: Blockchain technology makes use of cryptography to secure transactions. They make use of complex encryption algorithms to secure transactions on the network. This makes it difficult for hackers to penetrate the network unless they have access to a node private key to decrypt encrypted transaction.

• No Transaction Limit: The introduction of blockchain technology in our day to day transactions has actually facilitates limitless transactions. However, sending money through the traditional banks has limited amount of transactions to make daily. For example, in Nigeria, some traditional banks does not allow a transfer of more than one million naira daily; some will even allow less than one million naira as their daily transaction limit.

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DISADVANTAGES

• Immutability of Data: This has proven to be the main disadvantage of adopting blockchain technology in some of our daily businesses. This is because, once data has been appended to the blockchain, it cannot be cancelled, reversed, or modified, hence, making unprecedented errors to be very costly and insecure.

• High Energy Consumption: For example, In bitcoin blockchain, miners uses high computing power to solving complex mathematical algorithms to validate transactions and also finding the right hash value that links the current block to the previous block before adding the current block to the blockchain. This has an adverse to the environment because the high computing power consumes energy alot which however leads the government of the country to high expenses.

• Prone to Fraudulent activities: Because blockchain technology protects the privacy of it's users, many people now use it to carryout their fraudulent activities like money laundering and scamming. Some politicians in many countries loot money from the government and use it to purchase cryptocurrencies which is a blockchain based currency, and their identity is hidden from others. Many internet spoofers uses cryptocurrencies to receive payment after deceiving their targeted clients because they know that with blockchain technology, their privacy is protected and untraceable.

• Scalability Issues: Due to the fixed size of blocks for storing information, it becomes a great challenge of scaling the blockchain.

• High rate of Unemployment: The global adoption of blockchain technology in money transfers might affect the employment security of intermediaries because, there won't be any need again for payment validation and processes of the third parties like banks.

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3. Discuss the future of blockchain, and how this technology is impacting the world.

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Technology is evolving everyday, and blockchain technology is also making the trend. The various application areas of blockchain technologies has paved way for it's future growth. Blockchain technology is really impacting the world. The features of blockchain technology gives it an edge-growth in the technological space. Blockchain technology has various applications in:

• Money Transfers
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Personal Identity Security
• Health care
• Cryptocurrency
• Logistics
• Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT)
• Government
• Media
• Voting mechanism
• Anti money laundering system
• Advertising insights e.t.c.

With this myriad of applications of blockchain technology, it is believed by many including me that the future of blockchain technology is bright.

According to a recent Trend Insight Report from analyst firm Gartner, he made the following forecast:

• Through 2022, only 10% of enterprises will achieve any radical transformation by using blockchain.
• By 2022, at least one innovative business built on blockchain technology will be worth $10 billion.
• By 2026, the business value added by blockchain will grow to just over $360 billion, then by 2030 grow to more than $3.1 trillion.

The emergence of blockchain technology has facilitated secure transactions and transparency of data. In finance today, blockchain is popular for the time and money it can save for financial companies of various sizes. Some companies uses blockchain to effectively and efficiently transfer money from one place to another. This greatly impact the world to enjoy borderless transactions and low transaction fees of transferring money from one country to another.

There's a great impact of blockchain technology in securing Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain enforces higher level of security on IoT by using transparency and virtual incorruptibility of the technology to prevent data breaches and keep things smart. Companies like Amazon uses this technology to prevent hackers from stealing their customers data on Amazon Alexa to a smart thermostat.

NFT companies uses blockchain technology to enforce sole ownership right to digital items. Digital items that can be sold on this blockchain include art, music, GIFs, videos, films, e.t.c. With these type of technology there is no room for plagiarism of digital assets because the digital assets, once added to the distributed ledger becomes unchangeable or irreplaceable. This has created a great impact in the world and in the future of blockchain technology.

This blockchain technology can impact the governmental sector positively by securing the government documents. The introduction of blockchain in the government has the capability of revolutionizing elections. The high level of security and incorruptibility nature of blockchain technology can help improve the civic engagement of voting to be done on mobile devices.

According to New York Times:

Blockchain has the potential to cut through millions of hours of red tape every year, hold public officials accountable through smart contracts and provide transparency by recording a public record of all activity.

Apparently, the future of blockchain technology reckoning on the advantages it provides for its users is very bright. Transparency and incorruptibility of data being the major features of adopting this technology in our daily lives.

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4. What is your opinion about the implementation of blockchains in the health sector? Has the implementation been positive or negative? Explain a use case.

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The implementation of blockchains in the health sector has been positive to the health sectors. It provides a secure record of patients data in the blockchain. It helps reduce the healthcare costs and apparently improve the information access across business processes and stakeholders. The introduction of this technology in the health sector helps ensure the confidentiality of patients information and inaccessibility of their information to everyone which is upheld in HIPAA privacy rule.

The blockchain establishes a faster communication link between the doctors and the patients allowing any medical professional to safely and quickly examine or diagnose patients from the medical history collected. Patients medical history, current providers, records and other relevant information to a doctor is securely stored in the blockchain and it's frequently accessible to the healthcare providers with the private key.

Additionally, adopting blockchain technology into the healthcare sector can also help them verify automatically whether a patient is covered with insurance or not. This is also a great impact in the healthcare sector.

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Conclusion

Blockchain technology has greatly impacted in our lives. We can easily use the blockchain in making a decentralize, free cost and fast transactions across borders. We have seen many use cases of blockchain technology ranging from money transfer, Internet of Things, personal identity security, health care, logistics, NFTs, government, media (Steem), to many others. The impact of blockchain technology in our lives cannot be overemphasized. Blockchain has advantages and disadvantages, but the advantages outweighs the disadvantages. Thank you very much for your time!

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Thanks for engaging in this post! Am glad having you as friend on this great platform. Remain blessed and Stay Safe anywhere you are!

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I am @anyiglobal, a Computer Scientist, Software Engineer and a Blogger!

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