Blockchain has emerged as a promising technology for digital economy, thanks to the seminal whitepaper from the inventor of Bitcoin protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi compiled the dreams of a decade long crypto anarchist movement and consolidated the creative concepts from cryptography, consensus algorithms, distributed computing, economic decentralisation, fault tolerance, peer to peer networks etc.

Blockchain technology has carved out a niche space for consensus algorithms and non — competitive game theory in the world of industrial consortiums, business networks and enterprise alliances. It is an interesting development. It is due to a stark realisation that further globalisation of finance capital and social capital cannot be achieved through centralised systems and networks.

Never before we have seen mainstream enterprises talking about consensus algorithms and decentralised trust with such fervour and furore. Competitive advantages and Differentiated Value Propositions were the mantra and metrics for digital business models. Blockchain has redefined all those notions. It has exposed the simple truth that distrust rules the roost throughout the circuits and networks of decades of information technology infrastructure across mainstream enterprises of all types.

Our contemporary political and market economies are demonstrating decentralisation in a lot of areas. It should not be a surprise as globalisation across the globe has resulted in the decentralized flow of finance capital and social capital in various manifestations.

We have to see the emergence and proliferation of concepts like circular economy, network economy, sharing economy, collaborative economy etc. in the same light. These notions and perspectives can be realised only on a scalable and sustainable fabric of economic and social decentralisation.

Digital business models of our times are connected to these notions of network economy, share economy etc. However they are all functioning within a centralised financial and social technology infrastructure. It is creating a lot of contradictions and conflicts with respect to the social functions such as data privacy, data ethics, transparency, accountability etc.

In these digital business models, there are layers of centralisation and decentralisation. While the accumulation of finance capital is centralised, they decentralise the deployment of industrial capital and social capital. When we look at any of the successful digital business models like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Alibaba etc. we can say that they have created a huge network of decentralised and distributed industrial and social capital along with the centralised finance and information capital ecosystem.

Hence contemporary and emerging digital business models cannot sustain without the support of socio — economic decentralisation. Like wise, decentralisation of information systems and information technology cannot become functional and valuable without the existence and emergence of related and relevant digital business models.

However, Blockchain technology pilots in mainstream enterprises are hitting an inevitable roadblock. The roadblock caused by decades of unimaginative enterprise architectures. We have build information systems based on distrust than transparency and trust for countless many years. Hence clumsy and outdated security architectures and schemes are hampering the genuine adoption of Blockchain solutions in many cases.

Over the years, blockchain technology has truly become the Pandora’s box in literal sense. It has emerged from the contours of cypher — punk movement and decentralisation dreams and promised to disrupt the financial technology in gargantuan proportions. Open source communities like #linuxfoundation #ethereumfoundation #hyperledgerfoundation and corporate alliances like #r3 #ripple #quorum #enterpriseethereumalliance embraced the Blockchain Technology and created platforms for building business networks and consortiums. Blockchain technology experiments have had diverse manifestations in scale and scope across startups, corporates and consortiums.

As proof of concepts and proof of technologies are getting created, Blockchain technology is unravelling the trust deficit in the digital business models across industries and verticals. In this context, Blockchain technology has become the litmus test for the sustainability of a lot of emergent business networks and corporate consortiums. The very effort for Blockchain implementation in various sectors such as retail, supplychain, energy trading, logistics, etc. are exposing the silos and disconnects in the way the transaction management systems and information systems are implemented for decades. When we try to implement decentralisation and smart contracts across various corporate and business ledgers, it is opening up numerous design and operational challenges. It is indeed a moment of truth !

I will be talking about the basic tenets of socio — economic decentralisation and their inherent synergy and sustainability in harmony with digital business models of our times in the upcoming Global FinTech and Blockchain Conference in Bangalore organized by Pyramid Learning Platforms. ! Looking forward to converse and collaborate with you all in this event !