In a world filled with emerging technologies, the blockchain technology is arguably one of the most exciting, being labeled as ‘disruptive’ and ‘innovative’ by many. Despite often being associated abundantly with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the underlying technology, this distributed ledger, the ‘blockchain’ has been receiving attention from a variety of industries. The concept of recording transactions in a secure, stable and chronological way, has led to possible applications in many areas.

Whilst we have to admit that blockchain is still in its infancy. Many issues like unwanted centralization, slow transaction verification times and low throughput aren’t easy to solve. We have to try and find the balance between security and speed.

To help you make sense of this complicated landscape we applied a simple SWOT analysis to the blockchain and integrated our iOlite’s solutions in this analysis.

Strengths

Save time and money — Blockchain is an amazing tool when it comes to operational efficiency. Assets can be transparently stored on the blockchain, and easily shared across organizations. Inefficient processes are timely and especially costly. Blockchain cuts these time-intensive bureaucratic processes.

Transparency — Blockchain provides us with tamper-proof data storage, not giving fraud any opportunity. No blockchain transaction can be tampered or deleted post-execution. All changes to public blockchains can be publicly viewable.

Advanced Durability — When there’s no central regulator, there’s no central point of failure as well. A central regulator. an admin, has the power to change all information as desired. Avoiding this is preferable, because it often leads to fraud. Aside from that, blockchain is more resistant to different types of malicious attacks trying to alter data or get in control.

User empowerment — Every usage party is directly in control of all their information and transaction history. Users can take back control over their data and decide who gets access to which part of your personal information. If LinkedIn decides to close your account, you lose all the data, connections, reputation, preferences, and interactions you’ve generated over the years. At the moment, big companies like Google and Facebook own your data. You’ve probably created a Google profile, put in all your information, and trusted them with all your personal data. If you request to remove your account, how can you be sure that they will wipe everything they know about you?

Opportunities

iOlite helps to create new opportunities by enabling blockchain for everyone. Mass adoption of blockchain technologies will take a couple of years because the concept of a blockchain isn’t easy to fully grasp. iOlite understands that smart contracts have the power to enable new business models. However, there is a shortage of smart contract developers, and in addition, developing smart contracts is very costly.

To give both businesses and users the power to easily create smart contracts and Decentralized Apps on blockchains, iOlite is developing an engine where developers can create smart contracts by just using their existing programming language. This will extend to natural language (e.g. English, Russian) inputs.

Together with its community, the iOlite system continually learns how to build and optimize smart contract modules and building blocks, for subsequent re-use.

The result is an environment where smart contracts are available to all, being efficiently created and deployed, and giving major cost savings for partners.

Threats

Scalability issues — Blockchains do have limitations in term of the number of transactions it can handle. This problem has again been exposed by the mass adoption of Crypto Kitties on the Ethereum blockchain.

Unwanted centralization — Large mining pools and mining farms unwillingly centralize the power of the blockchain. Aside of that, these pools of centralization trash the blockchain environment as conflicting visions appear between miners and platform users.

Quantum Computers — There is a possibility that quantum computers become powerful enough to decipher data, which is a real threat for a blockchain.

Hype — Blockchain is still in the phase of being a hype. Not many blockchain products that do solve real-world problems are actively in use.

Fast-changing environment — Blockchain is well-known as a fast-changing and very volatile environment. This fast-paced environment is not ideal for existing business models that mostly rely on stability.

Mass adoption — Mass adoption is the largest obstacle to overcome. Proper education is required to give new users a good understanding of the space and usage. Again, iOlite is playing a role in this mass adoption by offering a so-called ‘Bridge Product’.

The iOlite engine is capable of translating code and even natural language to smart contracts. In this way, iOlite helps to bridge this huge blockchain gap.

Weaknesses

Business rules change over time, but a blockchain is not fit to adapt to change. In addition, blockchains are mostly not modular. What if we want to replace an outdated encryption module? Or what if we want to export our data to a new blockchain? A blockchain does not provide an out-of-the-box exit strategy.

The environmental impact of blockchains is something to bear in mind. Algorithms like proof-of-work are resource-intensive. A lot of energy is used / wasted by this algorithm.

At last, most blockchains are potentially in conflict with existing approaches to regulatory compliance, for example, GDPR regulations.

Summary

iOlite has spotted some critical weaknesses like mass adoption of blockchain technologies and easy creation of smart contracts. We experience a huge shortage on blockchain developers. iOlite provides a tool which benefits both developers as non-tech persons. This tool — also referred as engine — enables you to create smart contracts in any preferred programming language or even with natural language (e.g. English or Russian).

Sources

(1) https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-blockchain-technology

(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sufian-farrukh/role-of-blockchain-in-the_b_17906916.html

(3) https://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/PATS2/@archive_file?c=&p=file&p=710&n=final&f=1-An_Analysis_of_Blockchain_Technology_and_its_Commercial_Exploitation.pdf

(4) https://medium.com/@frankschuil/bitcoin-blockchain-industry-swot-analysis-37e4317bfdaa

(5) Crypto Kitties Info: https://hackernoon.com/how-crypto-kitties-disrupted-the-ethereum-network-845c22aa1e6e