Blockchain

Hyperledger, the open-source, cross-industry collaborative effort focusing on blockchain technology, has advanced the status of its Sawtooth and Iroha blockchain frameworks from “Incubation” to “Active” status.

The green light was given by Hyperledger’s 12-member Technical Steering Committee (TSC), chaired by Christopher Ferris, CTO of Open Technology at IBM. It followed an extensive review period during which each project was evaluated based on exit criteria that include legal compliance, community support, test coverage and continuous integration support, documentation, code reviews and more.

Ray George, senior director of PR at the Linux Foundation, told Bitcoin Magazine that “there is no difference [between Incubation and Active status] when it comes to how the projects are expected to run and how the TSC works with them to ensure a healthy community continues to be built.

“The most tangible difference is how this is presented to the public — not as projects whose communities are still finding their bearings, but as communities ready for new contributors and whose users can depend upon those communities persisting for the long term.”

Hyperledger Iroha, which was initially proposed by Soramitsu, Hitachi, NTT DATA and Colu, is a business blockchain framework inspired by Hyperledger Fabric. It was designed to be simple and easy to incorporate into infrastructural projects requiring distributed ledger technology, and aims to provide a development environment where C++, web and mobile application developers can contribute to the Hyperledger Project.

Hyperledger Sawtooth was initially contributed by Intel and designed to explore scalability, security and privacy questions prompted by the original distributed ledgers.

The modular platform allows organizations to build, deploy and run complex distributed ledgers, and includes a novel consensus algorithm, Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET), which targets large distributed validator populations with minimal resource consumption.

Sawtooth and Iroha follow Hyperledger Fabric, the first project to graduate in March 2017. These projects, alongside five others, all fall under the Hyperledger organization umbrella, which focuses on bringing together software developer communities to develop open-source blockchain and smart contract related technologies.

Projects currently in Incubation include Hyperledger Cello, a blockchain module toolkit; Hyperledger Composer, a set of collaboration tools for building blockchain business networks; and Hyperledger Explorer, a blockchain explorer for viewing, invoking, deploying or querying blocks, transactions and associated data.

Hyperledger’s Membership Expands

The news of Sawtooth and Iroha moving out of Incubation broke on Monday at Consensus 2017, a major blockchain-focused event taking place this week in New York, during which Hyperledger also announced the addition of eight new members, bringing its total membership to 142.

New members joining the Hyperledger Project include Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Schroder Investment Management, AlphaPoint and Change Healthcare, one of America’s largest healthcare IT companies and the first healthcare organization to join at the top membership level.

Change Healthcare’s CTO, Aaron Symanski, will be joining the Hyperledger Governing Board, chaired by Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, and consisting of representatives from 20 members of the Hyperledger membership.

“Blockchain [technology] is a promising and exciting new technology for secure online transactions,” said Symanski. “But it is crucial that healthcare leaders step up to champion innovation to help take blockchain [technology] from its early implementations to tomorrow’s healthcare IT solutions.”

In October 2016, Hyperledger kicked off a Healthcare Working Group to advance blockchain development in the healthcare industry. The group now has more than 425 technologists and executives representing the likes of Accenture, Gem, Hashed Health and IBM.

Another company that has joined the Hyperledger Project is FZG360 Network Co. Ltd., a leading real-estate portal and trading platform in China, which aims to “enhance the application of [blockchain technology] to a higher maturity level,” particularly in the area of real estate.

Hyperledger was founded in December 2015 by the Linux Foundation and counts among its members leading firms representing various industries including blockchain technology, finance, healthcare, the Internet of Things, aeronautics and real estate, among several others.

As moonshot projects in the distributed world abound, it’s not surprising to see the energy sector jumping into the fray. This comes as the heavily regulated power industry eyeballs new approaches for allowing consumers to generate and sell electricity in various locales worldwide.

It’s here that blockchain technology is increasingly being seen as a potential, low-cost means for delivering energy transactions across a distributed network without need for a centralized authority. In fact, some surmise that blockchains may one day eliminate the need for intermediaries altogether, thereby allowing a more free market approach to energy distribution.

Blockchain tech could also boost efficiency by serving as the backbone for “smart grid” systems, automatically identifying and addressing network hitches that may arise. Moreover, when tethered with the Internet of Things (IoT) movement, energy devices such as those used for heating, cooling, ventilation, electric vehicles, solar installations and even batteries will be able to interact with one another, resulting in greater cost savings.

Not to be overlooked is the enhanced cybersecurity element that blockchain technology offers for an industry that has become increasingly susceptible to cyberattacks.

Despite blockchain technology’s potential utility, industry adoption may pose a number of gritty challenges. For starters, the energy grid is fraught with complexity associated with managing the process continuum of materials management, energy generation and delivery. Moreover, prevailing recordkeeping and data management systems remain cumbersome, resulting in costly missteps when it come to energy trading and asset ownership tracking.

Global Experimentation Abounds

As the intersection between blockchain technology and the energy sector advances, experimental demonstration projects are taking shape throughout the world.

Last year, the blockchain-centric Brooklyn Microgrid project, a peer-to-peer energy market for local renewable energy generation, attracted quite a bit of media attention. The intent of the startup is to deliver solar panels to this New York borough’s rooftops, allowing local residents to purchase and offload electricity within their community. This initiative allows for a system that bypasses power companies, thereby creating a generation-and-storage ecosystem that works in a more independent and efficient manner.

In another example, Austria’s largest regional utility company, Wien Energie, in collaboration with the Canadian blockchain startup BTL Group has engaged in a blockchain trial run targeting energy trading with two other utilities. The objective? To gather a repository of knowledge about blockchain technology, assessing the viability of it and relevant business models for the industry. This pilot ran from March to May 2017 and is expected to generate a set of new commercial strategies to explore.

Additionally, the SP Group, Singapore’s energy provider, will be developing blockchain solutions in partnerships with other providers throughout the world, with the goal of lowering consumer utility costs in that nation. This initiative is also intended to create simpler mechanisms for integrating new renewable energy sources into the mix.

Andre De Castro, founder of the NY-based Blockchain of Things and Catenis Enterprise — which delivers blockchain solutions for simplifying and accelerating secure global peer-to-peer edge device messaging, digital asset control, and recording of immutable data — tells Bitcoin Magazine that blockchain technology is just the beginning foundation for advancing the energy sector. “Having a distributed database doesn’t necessarily get you a trading system or an application. So what’s really needed is an application layer on top of the blockchain, to get real-world solutions.”  

De Castro says that his company enables the creation of digital assets, more commonly known as tokens, that can be applied to energy units across endpoints to create new business models for energy markets. “Everything is moving toward more open exchanges when it comes to the energy industry. Therefore consumers will soon be able to choose their own energy providers and even resell energy to their neighbors in certain areas of the world.”

He notes one additional benefit to the advancements, namely that the global Bitcoin blockchain is incredibly secure due to the fact that transactions can be cryptographically verified, thereby protecting critical assets on the energy grid. “This addresses a major challenge that currently exists today involving utility systems where there is a reliance on centralized cloud servers. What we’ve developed at Catenis with the blockchain allows for decentralization and the elimination of central points of failure that could affect big swaths of the energy grid.”

Ultimately, De Castro sees a day where blockchain technology will foster the creation of more flexible business models for exchanging power in open markets and selling that power back to the main energy grid. He also believes that this will open up immense opportunities in the clean energy space, welcome news for the eco-friendly movement. “I believe that control mechanism allowing digital tokens to be mapped will become more common resulting in lower energy costs while making peer-to-peer exchanges more efficient.

Can identity trust be integrated with blockchain technology? The answer to that question appears to be yes, according to a recently completed proof-of-concept study conducted by Peer Ledger, a Canadian blockchain company; SAFE-BioPharma Association, the organization managing the global SAFE-BioPharma digital identity management standard; and Synchronoss, a leading provider of standards-based digital identities.

This development is believed to have significant implications for the use of distributed electronic ledgers (i.e., blockchains) for medical, pharmaceutical and other health system applications.

The purpose of the study was to demonstrate that cyber identities that comply with the SAFE-BioPharma standard may, via Peer Ledger APIs, enable blockchain identities to be de-anonymized, thereby fulfilling a requirement for double-blind clinical trials, audits and responsible supply chains. Prior to the study, identities associated with distributed electronic ledgers were entirely anonymous.

“Identity trust” means that there is trust in each cyber identity, using a process that proves the individual’s identity before linking it to the cyber credential. In general terms, it means that the credential can be trusted to represent the vetted identity of the individual one is doing business with but has never met face-to-face. This is critically important to the pharma/life sciences space because of several factors, including deterrence of hackers seeking valuable patient records and intellectual property, as well as compliance with regulations protecting patient data.

These discoveries underscore the power of blockchain technology to disrupt traditional practices for drug discovery, patient engagement and monitoring, payments and participatory healthcare delivery. Here, the technology leverages its quality as a shared, synchronized, distributed ledger of transactions, fostering security and decreasing fraud by providing a permanent record of who accessed ledgers and what activities they engaged in.  

The proof of concept demonstrated that SAFE-BioPharma-compliant digital identities can be tied back to the blockchain to assure trust in the identity of each person engaged in the transaction. Transactions can be anonymous until the end of a clinical study and “chained back” to the proven identity of the user, if needed, for regulatory or clinical purposes. Alternatively, the identities associated with each block can be known throughout the process, such as in track-and-trace applications for the medical supply chain.

Blockchain technology’s use of a group-consensus algorithm can be used to catch intentional or inadvertent double spending of an asset. For example, an accounts-receivable blockchain application can provide “multiple eyes” to prevent double invoicing. Similarly, a counterfeit-catching purchasing blockchain application can prevent harmful substances and devices from entering the medical system.

Ultimately, for blockchain technology to reach its full potential in any sector, myriad systems must be interoperable. Currently, healthcare technologies rarely work in a highly synchronized way with one another, which is why pharmaceutical and other medical companies that already have powerful identity management tools are trialing a number of different blockchain-based applications.

Thus far, these apps have been unable to bridge to the systems pharma companies use to establish identity credentials for their personnel. This is the problem addressed in the proof of concept. Peer Ledger has therefore developed software that now maps a trusted identity, from the Synchronoss-implemented Verizon Universal Identity Services system to blockchain credentials.

“Every SAFE-BioPharma-compliant identity credential accurately represents the proven identity of the person using it,” explains Mollie Shields-Uehling, president and CEO of SAFE-BioPharma Association. “Teaming these credentials with anonymous blockchain ledger postings enables use cases critical for overall cybersecurity across healthcare and the life sciences.”

When asked about future applications of all of this for healthcare, Shields-Uehling and Dawn Jutla, CEO and founder of Peer Ledger, highlighted three major areas of blockchain intersection.

Blockchain and clinical trials: In order to co-partner in the discovery of cures, patients may give pharmaceutical companies direct access to their digitized healthcare records, thus improving both data used for research and the speed of patient treatment. Britain’s Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Mark Walport, has argued that the National Health Service, which provides healthcare for 65 million people, should use blockchain technology to improve such tasks as the sharing of health records.

Blockchain and data collection: Earlier this year, IBM Watson Health announced it would work with the FDA to develop a secure, efficient and scalable exchange of health data using blockchain technology. Oncology data will be the initial focus.

Blockchain and personalized precision medicine: Blockchain technology’s cryptography will secure economical home healthcare sensor feeds. Trusted identity will be important to ensure that the right test results are associated with the right patient.

Irish lenders Allied Irish Banks, Ulster Bank and Permanent TSB have teamed up with global consultancy Deloitte to work on a pilot program that will leverage blockchain technology to increase the speed and security for the country’s domestic interbank payments.

The collaborative project carries the name Project GreenPay and will use technology developed by Ulster Bank’s parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

The payments platform being trialed is called Emerald. RBS’s Emerald platform, which was built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, has already been tested in the Dublin-based startup hub Dogpatch Labs, where participating banks have been conducting dummy payments among themselves to test the blockchain-based system for performance, stability and accuracy. The platform is able to acknowledge payments in less than 10 seconds while processing large transaction volumes.

The distributed ledger technology pioneered by Bitcoin allows transactions to be recorded and shared with permissioned members on a distributed ledger, enabling payments to be processed in a more secure and efficient manner.

“[The blockchain is] essentially a software that provides a way of recording transactions in a trustworthy way. It has the potential to disrupt multiple industries for the benefit of customers, and we’re determined to investigate how we can harness this for the financial sector,” said Ulster Bank’s chief administrative officer, Ciarán Coyle.  

“When we saw that RBS had that capability, we decided to use the platform in the Republic. We looked at how we could prove it at an industry level and looked at doing collaboration at an industry level,” he added.

For RBS’s Head of Innovation Engineering Richard Crook, it “made sense” for RBS’s Irish subsidiary, Ulster Bank, to adopt its Emerald payment system for the collaborative industry-wide payment network trial. “We’re delighted to support that and further prove that blockchain [technology] can be used to better serve customers,” Crook added.

David Dalton, consulting partner and financial services industry leader at Deloitte Ireland, stated that the pilot project would leverage the company’s blockchain lab in Dublin, and added: “We believe blockchain adoption will happen more quickly than anticipated and without a proactive and well-adopted strategy, banks and insurers risk being locked out of potential innovations enabled by this technology.”

No specific timeframe has been set for when the new payment system could be implemented in the Irish financial system, and there is no guarantee that it will. However, Project GreenPay is another clear signal that banks across the world are embracing blockchain technology to improve the efficiency and security of their services. It will not be long until the blockchain will become an integral part of the global financial system.

On May 12, 2017, Chinese blockchain technology leader Wanxiang Group, a conglomerate with automotive, real estate and financial services holdings, announced the launch of WanCloud, a new blockchain product under its Wanxiang Blockchain Corporation subsidiary in Shanghai.

WanCloud provides an ecosystem for open-source blockchain protocols to be localized and made easily accessible to the Chinese development community and enterprise users. Initial blockchain protocols included in the ecosystem and supported by WanCloud’s infrastructure of developers and consultants are  BlockApps, Factom and Stellar.

Part of Wanxiang’s stated goal is to drive the advancement of China’s blockchain ecosystem of developers, startups and enterprises. Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, WanCloud CTO Haifeng Xi described WanCloud as “not just a technical platform; it’s an open innovation platform. WanCloud is essentially a bridge between [the] global blockchain development community and China. We aim to connect the world to the Chinese developer community, Chinese startups and traditional Chinese businesses.”

WanCloud is unique as an ecosystem in that it allows users to work with open-source blockchains more easily and in one place. Unlike traditional Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) providers that have private networks or build on top of one public chain, WanCloud plans to continually introduce the most useful open-source platforms into the WanCloud ecosystem.

Tom Tao, vice president at Wanxiang Blockchain Corporation and head of WanCloud, told Bitcoin Magazine that he hoped to “bring as many fabrics as possible into the Chinese community and to drive interaction and even inter-chain collaboration, improving application level innovation for each participating protocol.”

David Johnston, chairman of Factom, and Jed McCaleb, CEO of Stellar, spoke with Bitcoin Magazine about why they chose to be a part of WanCloud and how it aligns with their respective companies’ goals.

“WanCloud platform is acting as a bridge between the advanced tech provided by U.S. entities and the huge market of potential users in China,” said Johnston, “providing them a more transparent and secure use case set in important areas like data management and auditing where Factom has core competencies as a platform.”

Zeen Zhang, CEO of Factom China, added, “This partnership is important for Factom China because it will make it easier for our product to reach and serve the needs of the end users in China. WanCloud is really adding value, helping us localize the platform for enterprise users and the large community of developers in China.”

Fresh off the launch of its global payments platform Lightyear, McCaleb spoke with Bitcoin Magazine about WanCloud’s benefits for Stellar’s development.

“Its an exciting development that makes it much easier for people to integrate with Stellar and will enable more experimentation … China is obviously a huge market and almost every partner that we talk to in the world asks us how they can get money either in or out of China.”

Chainbase Accelerator’s New Cohort

In addition to the launch of WanCloud, Wanxiang announced the opening of the second cohort of its Chainbase Accelerator to startups, in coordination with ICOAGE, an Initial Crypto-Token Offering platform based in Shanghai and headed by James Gong, a leading blockchain intellectual and consultant in China and CEO of ChainB. Projects accepted into Chainbase Accelerator will have the opportunity to receive technical support and consulting from WanCloud architects.

Yu Cheng, a partner at Chainbase Accelerator as well as the chief product officer at WanCloud, spoke with Bitcoin Magazine about Chainbase Accelerator and said that the first cohort was “made up of experts from traditional industries and they saw blockchain [technology] as a way to solve for problems in their industries. We are looking to bring in businesses whose applications are suited for the distributed nature of blockchain tech.” Cheng has coined the term “distributed commercial value” in China to refer to new capabilities that blockchain tech enables.

WanCloud joins a burgeoning group of blockchain subsidiaries for Wanxiang Group under Wanxiang Blockchain Corporation, including consulting and research interests Wanxiang Blockchain Business Innovation Consulting and Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, as well as Chainbase Accelerator and VC arm Fenbushi Capital.

India, the second-most populous country in the world with over 1.2 billion people, boasts one of the fastest-growing economies bolstered by the youngest workforce in the world. Despite this, India ranks 97th out of 118 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). While millions of dollars are spent every year on tackling malnutrition, 3,000 children die every day due to hunger.

In a bid to combat this problem, Accenture Labs has teamed up with Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run mid-day meal program, to use disruptive technologies such as the blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to boost the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government.

Since 2000, Akshaya Patra has been working toward reaching more children to provide them with wholesome food every single school day. When it first started it was serving 1,500 schoolchildren in five schools. Now, it reaches more than 1.6 million children from over 13,500 schools across 11 states in India.

By teaming up with Accenture Labs, Akshaya Patra aims to feed even more children by expanding its reach through Accenture’s Tech for Good initiative. As the two organizations worked on their “Million Meals” project over a six-month period in Akshaya Patra’s Bengaluru kitchen, they illustrated how technologies such as the blockchain, IoT and artificial intelligence can be utilized to help address significant challenges in mass meal production and delivery.

Akshaya Patra employs unskilled workers in its operations and the data is recorded manually; however, as the data needs to be collated on a routine basis, it can have a direct impact on the planning and kitting process.

“We realized that having real-time data on the cloud would be beneficial as it will enable traceability and decision making in limited time frames during emergencies,” said Shridhar Venkat, CEO of the Akshaya Patra Foundation, speaking to Bitcoin Magazine.

By analyzing the daily demand for meals on an Android phone, the location-aware artificial intelligence system can predict the demand requirement for each school each day by reviewing all the historical transactions, thus enabling quick decision-making on the spot and enhancing efficiency.

In Akshaya Patra’s Bengaluru kitchen, cooking is improved by working from more than 15 recipes while IoT-based sensors, which are installed in the cookers, facilitate real-time monitoring of the cooking process. Whenever there is a deviation, workers are prompted to take immediate action.

On systematic review of the collected information, it is possible to identify gaps in the system and put in control measures, thereby optimizing the resources, Venkat explained.

“When the production starts, the supervisor updates the sequence of activities for which the time and temperature gets captured from the cloud,” he added. “In case the requisite temperature is not met, one has to wait to attain the right temperature, which ensures real-time monitoring of time and temperature.”

A further key component of Akshaya Patra’s operations is its invoicing and audits. To achieve transparency in both fields, the blockchain is used to create data trust networks to ensure accurate reporting and invoicing.

“Authentic feedback is crucial for any organization to improve its services,” said Venkat. “The use of [the blockchain] facilitates real-time feedback from the stakeholders directly on the application without being influenced and helps in initiating appropriate corrective actions.”

Through the use of disruptive technologies such as IoT, the blockchain and artificial intelligence, Accenture Labs’ Tech for Good initiative leads to 4,500 more meals produced by Akshaya Patra for every paisa saved (a monetary unit in India).

“We are running a unique partnership with Akshaya Patra, which will allow us to give a million more meals per year with the combinatory power of all the latest technologies: AI, IoT, blockchain and industry 4.0,” said Sanjay Podder, managing director of Accenture Labs in Bengaluru. “This is an Akshaya Patra ‘Tech for Good’ story.”

In the Guangdong Province of China, Shantou was once a flourishing port city where European traders had their businesses and homes. In the early 1900s, they built a brand new central district near the river in Shantou with consulate buildings, apartments, bars and restaurants. It was a spectacular mix of Victorian English and classical Chinese styles and soon became a mainstay and provincial destination.

The Old Central District in Shantou

Over the years, however, Shantou lost its status as a top commercial hub, as bigger ports emerged in nearby Shenzhen and Guangzhou. As foreign traders left the city, the central district fell into a state of disrepair. Without the once thriving businesses, the local Chinese owners couldn’t maintain their own buildings and, as generations passed, descendants of the owners moved to newer parts of town.

Today, Shantou’s old central district is a dismal, rundown slum. You can still see the charm in the vintage architecture, but facades are falling to the ground and walls are crumbling. As random tourists stroll the lanes taking photographs, they wonder why the owners haven’t paid for renovations or sold the buildings to new owners who could fix them up.

Now Just an Empty Street of Crumbling Buildings 

With No Ownership Rights, Nothing Can Be Restored

Once a Popular Hotel in Old Shantou

Meanwhile, just north of Shantou, Chaozhou has a newly restored and booming old city, with shops, guesthouses, restaurants and people spending money. In other parts of China, old villages and districts like this one have been restored, drawing business owners, locals and domestic tourists.

Gates To The Restored Old City of Chaozhou, Shantou’s Neighbor to the North

Because Chaozhou is a prefecture-level city, the government intervened to restore the streets and buildings. But in Shantou, there have been no renovations because no one in the city knows who owns the hopeless buildings: the deeds to the properties are nowhere to be found. If the deeds still existed, the buildings would be fixed, business owners would move in, and again it would become a busy district of the city. Eventually, just like in Chaozhou, the government will have to intervene with public funds.

But today, with the advent of the blockchain, technology can solve this age-old problem in Shantou. With the digitization (or tokenization) of assets, there will never be a need to keep a deed or piece of paper as records can be safely kept forever on the blockchain.

A Homegrown Solution

Based in Shanghai, Antshares is a Chinese blockchain led by developer Erik Zhang, who has studied Bitcoin and Ethereum, and believes China needs its own, homegrown blockchain solution. Having built Antshares as an open-source protocol, Zhang hopes that people in his country will soon be building apps and digitizing their assets with his technology. And by tokenizing real-world assets such as stock certificates, cars, homes and even people, Zhang believes he can help prevent what happened in old Shantou from happening again in the future.

Bitcoin Magazine interviewed Mr. Zhang about his plans for the tokenization of assets on the Antshares blockchain to find out how it works and what major changes it will bring to the world around us.

Bitcoin Magazine: How will the digitization or tokenization of assets work?

Erik Zhang: We usually divide digital assets into two categories, one for voucher assets and the other for credit assets. Digitizing a voucher asset means that we digitize contracts or licenses, such as the transfer agreement of a company’s equity, stock certificates, a real estate license and so on.

A credit asset refers to the creation of a new digital asset and guaranteeing it as redeemable for a real physical asset in real terms. This can be done with an ounce of gold (or any quantity), a car, a Picasso painting, or as you mentioned, a home. It means creating a digital token that represents ownership of a physical asset, which can be bought, sold, transferred or stored in a secure manner.

BM: How is a digital token created?

EZ: Well, the answer is rather technical and perhaps boring for the average reader. But to do so on Antshares, for example, we would:

1. Create a numeric identity on the blockchain which can be implemented through a digital certificate. The digital certificate exists on the blockchain with a public key or address;

2. Use a private key of the digital certificate to register the commitment of the asset;

3. Safeguard the digital certificate and digital signature on the blockchain;

4. Allow other people to verify a digital identity through the digital certificate, and confirm the issuer/owner of the asset.

Once an asset is digitized, it can be transferred and traded on the blockchain, and there will be advanced operations that can be performed using smart contracts.

BM: So, in essence, what does this do?

EZ: Basically it records and protects data in a way that can’t be altered or transferred without the owner’s explicit consent. Consent, in these cases, will require a digital signature that can be verified on the blockchain. So if you have tokenized your home, for example, then your legal ownership of the home will be recorded by a digital “token,” and the fact of your ownership can only be changed or transferred when you have provided your private key (password).

In the case of Shantou, or anywhere else for that matter, this will also make it so that lost deeds will never result in such a public dilemma. Records of property ownership will never be lost, destroyed, falsely altered or transferred without consent.

BM: And what will we do with the tokens?

EZ: As far as securing our digital assets, advancements are being made in digital wallet technology so that we can safely store our digital assets. When you want to sell your property, then to complete the sale, you can transfer your token to the new owner digitally on the blockchain.

BM: So, in theory, anything can be tokenized. Do you think that someday we will tokenize ourselves?

EZ: (Laughs) Sure. I believe we will see birth certificates, marriage certificates, diplomas… and entire digital identities on the blockchain. In fact, digital identities are necessary for this whole ecosystem to work. Today, we use so many different types of personal identification: passports, ID cards, driver’s licenses, credit scores. With digital ID’s, people can build a single, comprehensive reputation on the blockchain which can be securely protected and used in any digital transaction. Tokenizing ourselves is a very important part of the future of blockchain technology.

BM: What kind of changes will this bring to the world?

EZ: Well, that is a big question with many implications. But in the case we see here, it will preserve the integrity of data and prevent the loss of ownership rights, such as we see in the case of Shantou. It will also have an impact on the environment as it will almost entirely eliminate the need for paperwork. But again, the implications of blockchain technology are so far-reaching that no one really knows of all the changes it will bring. We have many exciting ideas about it, but for the answer, we will have to wait and see.

BM: When will Antshares begin doing this?

EZ: Over the last year, we have made great progress with our core technology. This can be seen with the recent upgrades to our Antshares core wallet and our code updates on Github. We are a small, dedicated and talented team, and we will be working hard to build a community around our open-source platform. You will be seeing a lot of exciting news from Antshares in the near future.

Read more about other blockchain solutions for land and title registry around the world:

• BitFury Announces Blockchain Land Titling Project With the Republic of Georgia and Economist Hernando De Soto

• Title Deed Solution Leverages Ethereum Blockchain to Secure Top Finish in Dubai Hackathon

• Sweden Conducts Trials of a Blockchain Smart Contracts Technology for Land Registry

In the Guangdong Province of China, Shantou was once a flourishing port city where European traders had their businesses and homes. In the early 1900s, they built a brand new central district near the river in Shantou with consulate buildings, apartments, bars and restaurants. It was a spectacular mix of Victorian English and classical Chinese styles and soon became a mainstay and provincial destination.

The Old Central District in Shantou

Over the years, however, Shantou lost its status as a top commercial hub, as bigger ports emerged in nearby Shenzhen and Guangzhou. As foreign traders left the city, the central district fell into a state of disrepair. Without the once thriving businesses, the local Chinese owners couldn’t maintain their own buildings and, as generations passed, descendants of the owners moved to newer parts of town.

Today, Shantou’s old central district is a dismal, rundown slum. You can still see the charm in the vintage architecture, but facades are falling to the ground and walls are crumbling. As random tourists stroll the lanes taking photographs, they wonder why the owners haven’t paid for renovations or sold the buildings to new owners who could fix them up.

Now Just an Empty Street of Crumbling Buildings 

With No Ownership Rights, Nothing Can Be Restored

Once a Popular Hotel in Old Shantou

Meanwhile, just north of Shantou, Chaozhou has a newly restored and booming old city, with shops, guesthouses, restaurants and people spending money. In other parts of China, old villages and districts like this one have been restored, drawing business owners, locals and domestic tourists.

Gates To The Restored Old City of Chaozhou, Shantou’s Neighbor to the North

Because Chaozhou is a prefecture-level city, the government intervened to restore the streets and buildings. But in Shantou, there have been no renovations because no one in the city knows who owns the hopeless buildings: the deeds to the properties are nowhere to be found. If the deeds still existed, the buildings would be fixed, business owners would move in, and again it would become a busy district of the city. Eventually, just like in Chaozhou, the government will have to intervene with public funds.

But today, with the advent of the blockchain, technology can solve this age-old problem in Shantou. With the digitization (or tokenization) of assets, there will never be a need to keep a deed or piece of paper as records can be safely kept forever on the blockchain.

A Homegrown Solution

Based in Shanghai, Antshares is a Chinese blockchain led by developer Erik Zhang, who has studied Bitcoin and Ethereum, and believes China needs its own, homegrown blockchain solution. Having built Antshares as an open-source protocol, Zhang hopes that people in his country will soon be building apps and digitizing their assets with his technology. And by tokenizing real-world assets such as stock certificates, cars, homes and even people, Zhang believes he can help prevent what happened in old Shantou from happening again in the future.

Bitcoin Magazine interviewed Mr. Zhang about his plans for the tokenization of assets on the Antshares blockchain to find out how it works and what major changes it will bring to the world around us.

Bitcoin Magazine: How will the digitization or tokenization of assets work?

Erik Zhang: We usually divide digital assets into two categories, one for voucher assets and the other for credit assets. Digitizing a voucher asset means that we digitize contracts or licenses, such as the transfer agreement of a company’s equity, stock certificates, a real estate license and so on.

A credit asset refers to the creation of a new digital asset and guaranteeing it as redeemable for a real physical asset in real terms. This can be done with an ounce of gold (or any quantity), a car, a Picasso painting, or as you mentioned, a home. It means creating a digital token that represents ownership of a physical asset, which can be bought, sold, transferred or stored in a secure manner.

BM: How is a digital token created?

EZ: Well, the answer is rather technical and perhaps boring for the average reader. But to do so on Antshares, for example, we would:

1. Create a numeric identity on the blockchain which can be implemented through a digital certificate. The digital certificate exists on the blockchain with a public key or address;

2. Use a private key of the digital certificate to register the commitment of the asset;

3. Safeguard the digital certificate and digital signature on the blockchain;

4. Allow other people to verify a digital identity through the digital certificate, and confirm the issuer/owner of the asset.

Once an asset is digitized, it can be transferred and traded on the blockchain, and there will be advanced operations that can be performed using smart contracts.

BM: So, in essence, what does this do?

EZ: Basically it records and protects data in a way that can’t be altered or transferred without the owner’s explicit consent. Consent, in these cases, will require a digital signature that can be verified on the blockchain. So if you have tokenized your home, for example, then your legal ownership of the home will be recorded by a digital “token,” and the fact of your ownership can only be changed or transferred when you have provided your private key (password).

In the case of Shantou, or anywhere else for that matter, this will also make it so that lost deeds will never result in such a public dilemma. Records of property ownership will never be lost, destroyed, falsely altered or transferred without consent.

BM: And what will we do with the tokens?

EZ: As far as securing our digital assets, advancements are being made in digital wallet technology so that we can safely store our digital assets. When you want to sell your property, then to complete the sale, you can transfer your token to the new owner digitally on the blockchain.

BM: So, in theory, anything can be tokenized. Do you think that someday we will tokenize ourselves?

EZ: (Laughs) Sure. I believe we will see birth certificates, marriage certificates, diplomas… and entire digital identities on the blockchain. In fact, digital identities are necessary for this whole ecosystem to work. Today, we use so many different types of personal identification: passports, ID cards, driver’s licenses, credit scores. With digital ID’s, people can build a single, comprehensive reputation on the blockchain which can be securely protected and used in any digital transaction. Tokenizing ourselves is a very important part of the future of blockchain technology.

BM: What kind of changes will this bring to the world?

EZ: Well, that is a big question with many implications. But in the case we see here, it will preserve the integrity of data and prevent the loss of ownership rights, such as we see in the case of Shantou. It will also have an impact on the environment as it will almost entirely eliminate the need for paperwork. But again, the implications of blockchain technology are so far-reaching that no one really knows of all the changes it will bring. We have many exciting ideas about it, but for the answer, we will have to wait and see.

BM: When will Antshares begin doing this?

EZ: Over the last year, we have made great progress with our core technology. This can be seen with the recent upgrades to our Antshares core wallet and our code updates on Github. We are a small, dedicated and talented team, and we will be working hard to build a community around our open-source platform. You will be seeing a lot of exciting news from Antshares in the near future.

Read more about other blockchain solutions for land and title registry around the world:

• BitFury Announces Blockchain Land Titling Project With the Republic of Georgia and Economist Hernando De Soto

• Title Deed Solution Leverages Ethereum Blockchain to Secure Top Finish in Dubai Hackathon

• Sweden Conducts Trials of a Blockchain Smart Contracts Technology for Land Registry