It feels like if you are not talking about crypto, blockchain, AI or machine learning you are out of the loop…… or maybe you are missing out on something. There is certainly a lot going on in the space but the question for me is where do you spend your time learning? The reality is you have to learn a little to understand if you need or want to learn a lot, also its helpful if the learning relates to what you do during the day.
Of recent I’ve been playing with Crypto currencies like every other person, after all www.coinbase.com made has made it easy……. But in additional to this I’ve been trying to get more informed. I’ve been checking out http://blockchain.global/blockchain-innovation/ as a podcast plus reading a bunch of stuff, it feels like information overload currently.
With regards to Blockchain I’ve been trying focusing on what Microsoft is doing in the space as my day job relates to the Microsoft world. The following are some of the resources I’ve checked out.
The Microsoft Coco Framework
This is interesting as it will allow the standard Microsoft Development company to leverage the skills that they already have inhouse to some degree, also as a framework it looks like it starts to address some of the common requests a standard business customer asks for.
- Throughput and latency approaching database speeds. Moving from 20 transactions a second to 1000+ per second
- Richer, more flexible, business-specific confidentiality models.
- Network policy management through distributed governance.
- Support for non-deterministic transactions.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-microsoft-s-coco-framework-for-enterprise-blockchain-networks/ here is a summary video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s6JMmGJ-dY about Coco
Also check out this web interview if you want to understand a little more from one of the key guys at Microsoft on Coco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuipzXYyiU
This was an interesting post to provide some food for thought https://semiengineering.com/blockchain-hype-reality-and-opportunities/
Another interesting post that I ran into https://github.com/Azure/azure-blockchain-projects/blob/master/bletchley/bletchley-whitepaper.md
On top of all the reading I keep coming back to WHY? Why do a blockchain based project and will the ROI be realized? I guess with all “new” things you have to force a fit to validate the why, the forcing motion just needs to be balanced, measured and monitored. Over time we will see more and more examples come to life to help us understand the practical implementations. I spotted http://id2020.org/ today which feels like a great example and http://www.diamonds.net/news/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=59618 and UNICEF is putting some money on the table https://www2.fundsforngos.org/news/unicef-funding-opportunity-for-blockchain-start-ups/
Time will tell where this all lands but its looking interesting.