According to research, the global blockchain market is expected to grow over subsequent years. Aspects like transparency and immutability in transactions create opportunities for the blockchain technology in the new market. In addition, blockchain technology offers a chance to protect consumers through their services and products. Their ability to create a money laundering regulation platform also increase the blockchain technology opportunity in the business market. Consumers will support a business operator that affirms on the security of their transactions. This security is made viable through the existence of distributed database rather than fix database. Moreover, they will build trust in that which offers auditability reduced transactions as well as transaction settlement time. The transaction settlement time, in the case of blockchain technology is reduced due to the removal of middlemen. The success of blockchain technology has been reported in aerospace and defense, banking and financial services, insurance, consumer goods and retail, healthcare and life sciences, education, energy and utilities, information technology, in different features of the government, in entertainment and telecommunication, transportation and logistics and in fields of travel and hospitality. Its growing popularity has been geographically felt in America, Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific (Narayan, Bonneau, Felten, Miller & Godfeder, 2016).
Opportunities to drive at with the blockchain technology in the new market wholly depend on the understanding of the technology in depth. For example, the need to understand this evolving technology involves the analysis of its penetration with respect to industries and geographical influence. Both the qualitative and quantitative sides should be put into considerations. The key vendors in the blockchain technological market who offer satisfying products and promising business strategies should be evaluated as a way of enhancing consumer preference. This evaluation can help understand the position the evolving technology holds currently in the business market. There is need to understand the competitive landscapes of the technology in order to have the abilities to create opportunities for it in the new market. The revenue pockets and the market trends it possesses should be analyzed and evaluated. For the technology to fit in the new market, the restrains and challenges facing it advancement should be looked into (Nian & Chuen, 2015).
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The previous trends in blockchain technology such as ICOs have been successful. For example, the traditional VC crowdfunding models was overtaken by ICOs in 2017 which is the preferred crowdfunding method for blockchain. This led to the advancement in their research with beta version soon being developed. Future trends however to look for in 2018 include blockchain and the IoT (Internet of Things) and blockchain and AI (Artificial Intelligence). The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the extension of the internet communication code of behavior to comprise every imaginable physical thing on the planet while Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally an algorithm that allows machine to demonstrate efficacies that they weren’t programmed for. Many experts are of the opinion that blockchain technology has the ability to solve problems pertaining the successful implementation of IoT. It has become vivid that blockchain technology can be applied in fields such as finance and fintech. Under the IoT perspectives, by using arrays of sensors, actuators, RFID chips among other forms of network connectivity, there is a probability of connecting everything on the planet as one.
The security offered by blockchain technology creates a sphere of development to the IoT model. This is because the centralized form of security network will be unable to handle problems that may arise from IoT network. On the contrary, a scalable and secure security framework can be attained via blockchain technology. A secure blockchain will also aid in the cutting down of operational costs as well as help in the provision of faster transaction speed. With the ability of blockchains to prevent malicious attacks through its single point failure, it can as well play a leading role in the protecting of data integrity as a major concern of IoT. Just like in the case of IoT, the faith in blockchain to facilitate certain ability of the AI implementation is certain. The exchange of the type of data reserved for analytics to be used for mainstream can be made economically feasible by the application of blockchain technology. By the security that would be offered on the complex large amount of data generated by the AI, it would be easier to develop complex machine as well efficient with algorithm that would help smart devices to take advantage of the available data as a tactic of achieving artificial intelligence (Hsu & Lin, 2016).
The growth and success of blockchain technology has been met with various challenges and restrains that as a result have created gaps. For example, most consumers lack the knowledge of this technology. Moreover, they do not understand this technology in depth and therefore cannot explore it to its maximum capabilities. For example in the case of bitcoins as a form of blockchain technology. Low scalability remains another problem facing the penetration of this technology as well as the uncertain industry regulation and governance. The users’ privacy and security concern may create an obstacle in the penetration of blockchain technology in the market. For example, in the case of bitcoins, there has been many scammers as well as the development of malwares that need ransom to be eliminated. In the case of IoT, gaps are yet to be filled in the transparency that would result from the decentralization of ledger other than the understanding of the complex technicality involved. In addition to this, the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology remains a concern.
With cryptocurrencies not yet accepted fully into the business market, there is need to fill this gap. There is plans underway to fill this gap. Reftoken, a mode of a decentralized and trustless affiliate marketing will help in the cryptocurrencies and blockchain advertisements. It will focus on the building of Ethereum’s smart contract capacity as a way of suppressing fraud along with enable instant payment through affiliate links (Vigna, 2015). This will be achieved by the ability of the system to monitor activities as it relates to the terms spelt in the contract. There has been the rising need of stopping fraud. The development of the papyrus decentralized advertising ecosystem under the decentralized real-time bidding protocol (dRTB) will help in ad buying and the fighting of fraud by using incentivized auditors and decentralized consensus on the quality of traffic, ad and brand safety. This will be convenient since it does not contain suspension of account, yanking of earnings or banning of business ads. The transparency evident from its ease to track down questionable transaction or contract will prevent user abuse due to overpricing and such.
Targeting methods for advertising and marketing will be efficient due to the development of Lydian. Lydian is a marketing cloud for the blockchain. This will be able to eliminate fraud and improve accuracy of advertisement that stream to your area of work. It will also increase the efficiency of each advert through ad performance reporting. This will as a result reduce irrelevant advert annoyance. There will be replacement of legal systems that will see the protection of consumers’ rights. Finally, there will be the elimination of chronic malware problem that causes users to avoid clicking on an unfamiliar ad. These will be able to eliminate the middleman. More to it, it will help in the reduction of fraud and malware. There will be an increase in the efficiency of the marketing efforts. The advertising niche that had been neglected by cryptocurrencies and blockchain insiders will be expanded. They moreover could be a chance for new experimenting investors to expand their business by using new, decentralized advertising networks (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016).
References
Hsu, Chin-Lung. & Lin, Judy Chuan-Chuan. (2016). “An empirical examination of consumer adoption of Internet of Things services: Network externalities and concern for information privacy perspectives.” Computers in Human Behavior . 62: 516-527.
Narayan, Arvind., Bonneau, Joseph., Felten, Edward., Miller, Andrew. & Godfeder, Steven. (2016). Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Nian, Pak. & Chuen, Lee. (2015). “A Light Touch of Regulations for Virtual Currencies.” Handbook of Digital Currency: Bitcoin, Innovation, Financial Instruments, and Big Data. Academic Press. P. 319.
Tapscott, Don. & Tapscott, Alex. (2016). The Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology behind Bitcoin is changing Money, Business, and the World. Portfolio.
Vigna, Paul. (2015). “Bitbeat: Ethereum’s Opens Its ‘Frontier’ for Business.” The Wall Street Journal .
