The Blockchain360 Conference was held on October 23rd and covered blockchain security, IoT, supply chain, banking and finance, and adopting blockchain in mainstream enterprises.
Morgan Hill, Managing partner at AxionV and also an advisor at Blockchain Driven was a featured speaker along with a panel of blockchain experts, who discussed ways of exploring blockchain proof of concepts in deployments in banking and finance. The Panel featured Morgan Hill, Joe Raczynski from Thomson Reuters, and York Rhodes as a head of blockchain at Microsoft.
Together they explored the idea that blockchain companies are now beginning to move past the proof of technology itself and actually start creating real products for B2B, B2C and Peer to Peer.
"Many companies are now moving into a proof of concept, or into test pilots as their blockchain exploration projects emerge out of stealth", explained Igor Telyatnikov from Alphapoint.
"A proof of concept can be many things, but the bottom line is that it has to actually 'prove' the firm has a viable business model, not just a vague idea in someone's head and a white paper", Morgan Hill reiterated.
An example of a proof of concept was the Royal Mint, from England is actually launching a blockchain program to digitize their gold bullion into eGold where your blockchain tokens would represent a real world redeemable stake for gold. This would make the gold ownership of the Royal Mint very easy to trace and identify around the world, which right now it isn't, even though it's used in over 60 countries. The blockchain would link them all together and create a better distribution network as well as holding them accountable.
The discussion then focused on whether the ICO is a viable model for proof of concept, or just a mere funding vehicle. The group came to the consensus that, given the right circumstances, the ICO market will become both a funding vehicle and a model for proof of concept.
"The key fact is to identify a framework which is still being developed which will allow firms to prove their business has sustainability and a working proof of concept as part of the integrated funding that comes with an ICO" -Morgan Hill, BlockchainDriven Advisor & AxionV Managing Partner
We've reached the stage where companies are now looking beyond a white paper or idea, or even a quick test on the technology and looking for proof of concepts in model or demo form. The expectation is that in the next year, out of these proof of concepts we will see many official pilots across different industries, but with particular concentration in banking, finance and accounting.