Is it really blockchain winter?

In other words, the hype and nonsense is going back to wherever such things come from, and as it recedes, like a melting glacier spurred on by coal burning bitcoin mining rigs, we may, if we are fortunate, spot glimpses of green shoots, possibly even a few leaves...
Brrrrr. It’s colder than a blockchain’s node.

There’s a fair bit of tawk about ‘Blockchain Winter’ which is a spin off from ‘Crypto Winter’ which is simply the fact that the crypto bubble has now properly burst, including the precipitous decline of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) which were clearly an exciting idea and excellent way of converting other peoples real money into ‘digital tokens’ off the back of a pitch deck which really didn’t matter if it was even worth attempting.

In other words, the hype and nonsense is going back to wherever such things come from, and as it recedes, like a melting glacier spurred on by coal burning bitcoin mining rigs, we may, if we are fortunate, spot glimpses of green shoots, possibly even a few leaves, one day perhaps a flower, these signs of life that indicate actual viable meaningful and real living businesses. Using blockchain.

In other words, it’s not ‘Blockchain Winter’, it’s actually ‘Almost Blockchain Spring’. The ice of hype was deep and impenetrable, many mistook it for the promised land, thinking it fertile soil or bedrock, and thus did try to build upon it. They soon discovered Blockchain Hype Ice was slippery, uncertain, and already cracking with fractures of blatant obviousness of inherent flaws and short termery. What didn’t slide off froze solid.

Spring is coming!


But now the ice is melting, running away as liquid, in much the same was as declining crypto prices, returning to nothing, revealing itself as a mere figment of collective imagination, a folly, knowingly sold by a few, trustingly bought by many.

Given that one of the functions of blockchain is to create ‘trustless systems’, it seems almost ironic.

So what actual real life applications of blockchain are there, in the real world, operating as part of normal commercial businesses who sell a product or service that works and has a real and legitimate purpose?

Well, here’s a few.

Real life blockchain applications. Really!


Everledger:

They’re in the authentication business. They started with diamonds, then worked back from there, expanding the process and principle into coloured gemstones, then fine art, fine wine, luxury goods... All the expensive stuff that one needs to know the provenance of.

They launched out of a Barclays Techstars cohort, back in 2015 if memory serves, and raised $10M last year, if that matters.

Here’s another one to do with supply chains...

TradeLens, a joint venture between IBM Watson and shipping giant Maersk to run the global shipping logistics through a blockchain. Not sure if this qualifies, it’s still in beta, and regardless of the tech giant IBM being half the picture, the problem is they need ‘most’ or all of the shipping industry to be involved for it to become the global platform and standard. And that’s not happening, because the other shipping companies are full on competitors of Maersk. And they don’t want to have one of their competitors become the master of the sector in that way. Bit of an obvious stumbling block but perhaps the AI genius of IBM Watson isn’t quite smart enough to comprehend human commercial competitiveness.

Any more runners? Ok. The London-based startup Cygnetise.

A ‘boring’ but practical blockchain application for lists of approved signatories that fixes the current time consuming, insecure and paper-based process. The application was launched in 2016 as an MVP and was quickly adopted by customers worldwide. Steve Pomfret, Cygnetise CEO, says "Many are trying to boil the ocean with blockchain applications, or are building something really fancy that nobody needs. Being very focused on something specific will lead to faster adoption. Although the Cygnetise application is very unsexy, it helps solve a real problem for businesses.”

There’s got to be more applications. Can anyone help? Anyone? Anyone?