The evolution of blockchain technology continues to generate both excitement and skepticism as technology companies and financial institutions explore new ways to secure and manage digital transactions. While distributed ledger technology has been promoted as a transformative innovation for everything from payments to data storage, real-world adoption has proven more complex than many early advocates anticipated. Recent developments involving cloud-based ledger solutions, enterprise blockchain platforms, and regulated financial networks highlight an ongoing debate about how blockchain technology should be implemented and governed. As organizations seek practical applications for distributed ledger technology, questions surrounding regulatory compliance, network ownership, and enterprise blockchain adoption remain central to the industry’s long-term success.
Google, according to Bloomberg, is preparing to release a ledger that will deliver a secure cloud-based storage utility. At the same time, according to the Financial Times, JP Morgan has been unable to get other banks interested in its blockchain, called Quorum, and so they’re kicking it out of the house (“operated independently of JPMorgan”).
These two articles continue to highlight the lack of a clear terminology to describe blockchain. It is highly unlikely Google will utilize a proof of work or proof of stake protocol for its distributed ledger. In fact, it is more likely that Google has just found an interesting way to lash together public/private keys with both a hashing and sharding algorithm to secure data in the cloud. This is only a blockchain for publicity and marketing purposes.
JP Morgan has discovered what Ripple discovered ages ago, that a generic blockchain managed and operated by an organization independent of the users of the application will be unable to address any specific regulated use case. To solve this problem Ripple created a foundation of its users. The foundation operates the Ripple network and defines and deploys upgrades. Only when the regulated entities control the infrastructure can regulatory oversight (such as FDIC 3rd Party Management regs) be properly addressed.
The blockchain experiment continues unabated, but Ripple aside, it appears it will take longer than it took the LASER before regulated applications are deployed that benefit from the secured transactional Blockchain technology.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
