Page 71 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

THE STANDARDS REVOLUTION:
WHO WILL FIRST PUT THIS NEW KID ON THE BLOCKCHAIN?

Maria-Lluïsa Marsal-Llacuna
Miquel Oliver-Riera

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

ABSTRACT Partially because there is a lot of noise and confusion
around the technology itself. Let’s thus, before discovering
Blockchain is here to stay. Some affirm that it is the next how the technology would work for standards, shed some
big thing after the Internet. Blockchain is a network-based light to help us distinguish between pure manifestations of
technology that rewards participants to assemble the blockchain technology and its placebos.
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transactions which will next configure blocks and later be Most well-known blockchain application is Bitcoin
part of a chain. Blockchain guarantees immutability and cryptocurrency. Other renowned cryptocurrency examples
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integrity of data without the need of a third surveilling are Dash and Litecoin , amongst the six-hundred plus
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party. It is therefore a revolution in current systems of trust. cryptocurrencies existing nowadays . Ehtereum is the more
It also brings automation and self-execution of processes ‘complete’ example of a blockchain per se, which means it
thanks to its embedded smart contracts functionality. has the cryptocurrency function (and its corresponding
Current standards drafting and development processes can token to remunerate transaction mining, the so-called Ether)
definitively benefit from blockchain technology, and as well as additional blockchain functionalities such as
perhaps see the standardization domain revolutionize, like smart contracts. Another example of a blockchain that goes
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it already happened in the fintech and insurtech arenas [1]. beyond cryptocurrency is NEM , which has the XEM as
In this paper, we explain what these advantages are. And, token and a MultiSig contract functionality.
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before new standard drafting models emerge from the Hyperledger and Everledger are distributed ledger
disruptive blockchain community, challenging traditional technologies (DLT) but not blockchains. This is because
standard development models -with this paper-, we want to they do not have blocks, nor a token to remunerate
inspire and give tools to established standardization bodies transaction mining. All blockchains are DLT as well but
for them to take the lead and initiate a transformation with the addition of a rewards system to remunerate the
towards ‘Blockchained Standards’ so that they can keep mining efforts of nodes creating the blocks. Blockchains are
their authority and leadership in the field going forward. public, open to anyone, borderless, uncensored.
Blockchains are novel systems of trust not depending on
Keywords— Blockchain; Distributed Ledgers; central authorities to validate transactions but on their
Standards Development; adoption mechanisms; network of nodes. In DLTs (also incorrectly named as
accountability systems ‘private’ or ‘permissioned’ blockchains) all nodes are
known and therefore transaction mining is not required but
1. INTRODUCTION: GETTING TO KNOW THE their simple signature instead.
BASICS OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY The main characteristic of blockchains is their ability to
operate in a decentralized way without having to trust a
Blockchain is a novel technology enabling new forms of central authority. The distributed characteristic of
distributed software architectures, where components can blockchains comes from the network of peers (or nodes), in
find agreements on their shared states for decentralized and which one relies to verify transactions. Moreover, besides
transactional data sharing across a large network of decentralized and distributed, blockchains are disruptive
untrusted participants, without relying on a central since they allow participants to verify everything by
integration point that should be trusted by every component themselves without depending on a middleman or
within the system. The blockchain data structure is a time- intermediary party. Therefore, we can assert blockchains are
stamped list of blocks, which records and aggregates data changing the paradigm of current systems of trust.
about transactions that have ever occurred within the
blockchain network. Thus, the blockchain provides an 1
immutable data storage, which only allows inserting 2 https://bitcoin.org/
https://www.dash.org/
transactions without updating or deleting any existing 3 https://litecoin.org/
transaction on the blockchain to prevent tampering and 4 https://coinmarketcap.com/
revision [2]. 5 https://ethereum.org/
Blockchain technology is now where the Internet was in 6 7 https://nem.io/
https://www.hyperledger.org/
1992 but its hype is as of the Internet in 1998. Why this? 8 https://www.everledger.io/

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