I have forged a long part of my career in e-commerce, starting with co-founding fast-fashion label Dressabelle, co-founding major online lifestyle marketplace Megafash, culminating in retail enabler iFashion Group today.

I have successfully exited all 3 e-commerce ventures, with iFashion Group pursuing a public listing together with MC Payment as the most recent development.

E-commerce is experiencing parabolic growth

Since my foray into e-commerce in 2008, the addressable market has certainly grown. Of note, the South-East Asian e-commerce space has outperformed by experiencing exponential growth year-on-year.

Technologies are enabling the growth

With increased volume of purchases, e-commerce technologies specific to payments and website development has also advanced steadily. One can now easily ‘flip the switch’ and launch a store on Shopify without knowing code.

Data security has not grown as well

With an increase in E-commerce activity, crime has also grown exponentially in this sector. With so much aggregated data in silos on e-commerce sites, they form a tempting proposition for hackers to access. Of note, most e-commerce site have a need to store sensitive data such as credit card details and addresses.

A study indicated the cost of an average security breach is $3.62M. In the same report, a huge increase in data breaches are now expected across the board for e-commerce sites. The damage will be unprecedented if unchecked.

Blockchain is here to help

One of the key tenets of blockchain is the secure manner in which data can be encrypted and stored in a decentralised manner, significantly thwarting the abilities of hackers to access data or change information.

Elysian is a blockchain company which has a decentralised platform which will build e-commerce websites on the blockchain. It promises secure data storage and unprecedented user experience to create trust between businesses and customers.

This is a quantum leap in how e-commerce data is kept and presented. In order to ensure that data breaches do not inhibit the growth of e-commerce, it is important for companies like Elysian to expand and support stores and marketplaces with blockchain technology.