Oracle’s Vice President of blockchain product development, Frank Xiong, believes that the adoption of blockchain technology by companies and enterprises has been accelerating of late. Speaking at the Forbes CIO Summit in Half Moon Bay, California on May 08, 2019, he predicted that 50 to 60 percent of all companies around the world will likely embrace blockchain technology in the near future.
According to Xiong, Oracle is already working with over 100 clients to develop tailor-made products based on blockchain technology. Distributed ledgers are now being used in industries as varied as supply chain management, settlement of equity trading, and authentication of original artwork from the Renaissance era.
While cryptocurrency prices witnessed a sharp decline in December 2017, the development and adoption of blockchain-based products have been largely unaffected. Several companies have announced plans to conduct trials of the technology, presumably to assess the advantages and tradeoffs before making a final push.
- Technology giant IBM launched a set of open-source blockchain development tools in association with The Linux Foundation. The project, titled Hyperledger, boasts 250 participating companies and 3.6 million lines of code.
- American financial institution JP Morgan, on the other hand, announced the launch of JPM Coin, a stable digital token that has its value pegged to the US Dollar.
- World’s largest social media network Facebook is rumored to be developing its own version of a stablecoin. The company is expected to use the cryptocurrency as a means of cross-border payment settlement through its messaging platforms WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
The Rise of Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology came into prominence after the rise of Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies.
The technology has matured since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 and several use cases have been developed. At its core, blockchain technology is a shared and distributed database without a central authority. Certain network participants, called nodes, store a copy of the ledger to achieve decentralization. Miners process, verify and add valid transactions to the blockchain. In this way, blockchain technology is trustless, decentralized, and immutable.
Blockchain Technology Might Not Be For Everyone
Frank Xiong also said that companies need to analyze practical use cases of blockchain technology before commencing trials.
Other panelists at the event, meanwhile, expressed the need for companies to evaluate the financial advantages of blockchain integrations. Ted Kim, Vice President of Samsung SDS’s blockchain division, said that 20 percent of all companies will start using blockchain technology within the next three years. Notably, Samsung SDS is building a blockchain based product to track cargo between Korea and Europe.
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