26th September 2018, London. BlockchainLive landed in London’s Olympia today. Three times as big as the previous year and a clear sign that the blockchain community and industry is growing in size and maturity. We are now witnessing established industry leaders like IBM and PWC promoting blockchain technology and its capabilities. Progress.

The day exhibited projects and perspectives from commercial entrepreneurs, technologists, industry leaders, consultants and academics alike, each giving a detailed account of what blockchain could become if we overcome the challenges together and prove value in the space.

Whilst blockchain began in 2008, in the last 12 months it has become faster, easier and cheaper with its application rapidly changing industries to become best practice in data handling generally.

That said, understanding blockchain’s full potential is difficult; theorising on how it could radically change our daily behaviours and progress society seems trite. What’s clear is that the blockchain revolution is unfolding and shows no signs of stalling.

This view was mirrored by Jamie Burke, CEO & Investor at OutlierVentures.io, who focused on the convergence thesis: where blockchain is foundational to Web 3.0 a more decentralised and automated future.

Jamie chatted through the potential of the convergence economy to fix the web from a centralised to a decentralised entity, also indicating that the blockchain space, so heavily funded by ICOs in the last years, is maturing. Professional investment from HNWIs, family offices, PE and VCs is now thawing the dystopian crypto-winter to finance new projects, a development that is welcomed by Burke, but undoubtedly queried by purists in the space.

This afternoon we joined a panel on Unlocking The True Potential Of AI And IoT discuseed solving the challenge of enabling people to share their data and gain value from that. Currently, non-consensual data sharing creates the feeling of lost control and missed opportunity. We need to create a product change and mind shift to enable people to unlock the power of their own information. An ongoing debate that will hopefully be cured by harnessing blockchain technology and tokenised reward based systems.

Block.One, as headline sponsor, notably influenced today’s event with their Block.One army of employees and advocates. During the C-suite chat between The FT’s Ben McLannahan and Block.One’s President Robert Jesudaso, they summised that “Blockchain is a profound change, and Block.One has the response time and scalability to realise it”. Further discussions centred on why C-suites (execs) are moving from traditional industries to blockchain companies and what we can expect in the future.

The FT’s Ben McLannahan and Block.One’s President Robert Jesudaso chat tech C-suite futures

Discussing blockchain and enterprise, Retail Sales Development Director for Oracle, Antony Welfare led an engaging presentation on the numerous blockchain use cases within the retail space.

Welfare chatted on how present day businesses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple can be replaced by either private or public ledgers, that can easily transform and disrupt these behemoths to create better efficiency and trust. For instance, a private ledger of our individual social media postings and friends could easily become an alternative to using Facebook.

With the potential of blockchain disrupting the retail sphere, investors are gearing and are seriously investing in blockchain technology. In 2017, $945 million was invested in blockchain technology and investments are planned to reach $9.7 billion by 2021. This is extremely exciting for the blockchain space, and shows high confidence in the tech. With more enterprises using blockchain, this will pave the way for mass adoption, whether they are even aware that they are using it.

Hartej Sawhney, Co-Founder and President of Hosho

Hartej Sawhney, Co-Founder and President of Hosho, which focuses on blockchain security, presented the key cybersecurity fundamentals that each company should undertake before launching an ICO.

It’s clear that some ICO funded companies have failed to prioritise security and have been hacked as a result, losing millions worth of tokens in the process; a prime example, CoinDash. In 2017 CoinDash’s website was hacked, a fake ETH address applied and more than $7,000,000 worth of ETH stolen. How? Simple. CoinDash’s ICO site was managed by WordPress, one of the most vulnerable and unsecured platforms to build on. So, if you’re planning an ICO, make sure to invest in your security journey, make the effort to do a smart contract audit, a penetration test, and ensure that you have developed in-house security policies that will provide your investors and token holders with confidence that their token is safe and secure.

In sum, it’s been a day of healthy debate; adoption, crypto being more than a store of value, the current market slump and speculation surrounding the future, all mooted. But more than that, BlockchainLive gave us a fab opportunity to catch up with our community from around the world, to come together and share insights.

The Coinweb Community “Groupie”

Because for us, collaboration will drive our industry, creating healthy and competitive sharing environments. We need to lift our own projects and the industry, together.

Thank you BlockchainLive. We’ve had a blast.

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About Coinweb:

Coinweb is a blockchain business headquartered in London, making the blockchain more connected and more personal. Our goal is to create solutions to make the blockchain more mainstream and easy to use. We believe that by coming together instead of working in silos we can solve many of the challenges that exist in the industry today.

Our focus is on interoperability, collaboration and mass adoption. Coinweb is a hyperlayer that seamlessly connect blockchains and a CNS that makes your wallet address as easy to use as an email address.

Contact details:

Website: www.coinweb.io

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial

Telegram: https://web.telegram.org/coinwebofficialnews

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Coinweb.io/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinweb/