2018-06-29
有远见的企业正在研究这种分布式账本技术（区块链技术）的新用途。
许多专家预测，区块链将会很快对全球业务产生巨大的影响。
例如，Gartner曾表示，从长远来看，区块链“将导致所有行业的变革”。在另一份报告中，该公司表示，区块链技术“不应被忽视，它们为技术开发和交付以及经济、商业和社会的运作提供了巨大的变革潜力。”
Forrester公司写道，区块链的潜力是不容否认的：如果得到适当的实施，区块链技术将支撑新的业务和信任模式。现在区块链技术仍处于早期阶段，但不要忘记——互联网也年轻过。
世界经济论坛（World Economic Forum）指出，“区块链技术，或分布式账本技术，能够催生空前机会，促进社会价值的创造与交易，使信息互联网向价值互联网的新时代转变。”
区块链技术是加密货币比特币的基础，最近比特币价值的大幅上升进一步增加了人们对区块链技术的兴趣。
但是，尽管许多企业和IT领导人都听说他们需要参与区块链，但是很多人并不了解区块链可以为他们提供什么。
区块链通常被形容为“安全的分布式账本”。为什么说它是“安全的”，原因有两点：首先，它是加密的；其次，一旦交易被记录到区块链账本中，就无法被编辑或删除了。区块链是“分布式”的，因为数据分布在数百或数千个属于网络一部分的节点中。这种分布式也有助于提供额外的安全保护——黑客可能很容易侵入一个集中式系统，但同时侵入数千个系统就很困难了。说它是一个“账本”，是因为它记录带有时间戳的交易。当交易被保存后，就会被分组形成区块，然后这些区块链接在一起形成“区块链”。
虽然区块链最重要的应用是处理金融交易，但是企业和供应商正在探索这项技术的其他用途，下文详细介绍了十个可能的用例。
1. 追溯食物（和其他物品）
一家名为“Provenance”的英国软件公司率先推出了区块链技术的一个更有趣的新应用。随着消费者越来越关注食物的来源地，零售商和餐馆正在想方法确保得到期望的食材。
Provenance创建了一款基于区块链的软件，该软件与追踪技术相结合，可以安全地追溯食材从捕获或采摘点到最终消费者采购点。在供应链的每一个环节，不可改变的数据都会被添加到区块链中，让消费者能够对他们所吃的食物完全放心。一些公司已经开始使用该软件来确保金枪鱼的可持续收获、农民得到合理的椰子报价以及超市货架上的农产品是有机的等等。这项技术还可以用来追溯服装甚至是珍贵商品（如艺术品或钻石）的来源地。
2. 保护软件开发
对于国防承包商来说，网络安全是一个关键问题。为美国联邦政府提供软件的供应商面临着特别严峻的挑战，如果攻击者能够将恶意软件插入到武器的软件中，该国的军事能力可能会遭到破坏。国防承包公司洛克希德�马丁（Lockheed Martin）与GuardTime Federal公司合作开发基于区块链的追踪系统，以确保洛克希德马丁公司为政府提供的代码的安全性。 这些公司现在使用基于区块链的系统追踪开发过程的每一步，该系统能够安全地存储开发周期数据，并加快发现代码中的问题的速度。
3. 数字内容管理
互联网改变了电影、音乐、书籍和游戏等娱乐内容的传播，从内容创作者的角度来看，并非所有变化都是积极的。网络让消费者非常容易盗取内容，而无需向创作该内容的作者付费。包括Ascribe在内的多家创业公司正在研究基于区块链的工具，以帮助管理数字媒体资源的版权、归属和付费问题。这个安全的分布式账本系统可以更容易地证明作者身份，并可以跟踪谁访问了内容。
4. 医疗记录
通过像DokChain这样的项目，开发人员正在研究基于区块链的应用程序来追踪电子病历和其他类型的医疗数据。区块链技术使得存储患者在其一生中接受的所有医疗的完整和准确记录成为可能。数据被加密以进行保护，但患者可以根据需要授予医疗提供商访问数据的权限。
另外，可以向研究人员提供匿名数据。因此，患者可以确定他们的医生、医院和药房将能够获得他们病史中的所有相关数据，并且研究人员可以获得详细的病历，以帮助他们发现新的相关性并提供更好的治疗建议。
5. 贷款申请
任何贷款买房的人都知道，这个过程通常是漫长而曲折的。借款人必须提供大量的文件，如工资单、税单、银行对账单、收据等等，然后银行工作人员手动将这些信息输入系统。基于区块链的解决方案可以让消费者选择将其财务数据存储在安全的分布式账本中，然后他们可以与贷方共享。这可以大大加快贷款审批流程。而且，分析匿名数据可以帮助金融机构更好地确定应批准哪些贷款。
6. 保险索赔处理
对保险业来说，诈骗是一个严重的问题，许多保险公司希望基于区块链的解决方案能够帮助他们减少保险诈骗。通过追踪安全分布式账本中的客户交互，保险公司可以减少对同一索赔重复支付的可能性。当事件涉及多家公司时，它还可以帮助简化复杂的代位追偿问题。 IBM的一份白皮书更详细地解释了区块链技术如何帮助保险公司。
7. 审计追踪
某些类型的公司，特别是律师事务所和会计师事务所，需要对两方或多方之间的对话、数据和文件进行不可篡改的记录。几家创业公司提供了能够对这些数据进行审计追踪的软件。 加密、未加密或散列的PDF文档可以存储在区块链数据库中，元数据显示谁将文档添加到区块链以及何时添加的。在法律案件或其他需要不可篡改的记录的案件下，这种记录非常宝贵。
8. 投票
电子投票无疑比纸质投票更有效率，但很多人担心电子投票系统的安全性和投票篡改的可能性。但是，在安全的区块链中存储投票记录有助于保证电子投票过程的真实性和可靠性。 这项技术可以应用于政治选举和其他类型的投票，如选举董事会成员。
虽然司法界尚未开始采用基于区块链的投票，但创业公司Votem已经开发了一项通过移动设备进行安全投票的技术，投票记录存储在区块链账本中。
9. 智能合约
最常讨论的区块链应用之一是创建智能合约。开源项目以太坊可能是最著名的智能合约平台。在满足特定条件时，智能合约会自动转账，而无需通过银行、托管公司或信用卡发卡机构等中介机构。例如，企业可以与供应商签订以太坊智能合同，当供应商的货物到达仓库时，供应商会自动收到货款。
10. 加密货币
当然，区块链技术最重要的应用是数字加密货币。比特币是最有名的加密货币，但还有很多其他的加密货币，比如以太币和莱特币。对于企业而言，基于区块链的货币提供了一种无需通过银行的、新的安全方式来进行付款，交易是即时和安全的。而且由于加密货币价值快速上涨，一些交易公司投资比特币期货来创造收入。
《How to Use Blockchain 10 Use Cases》
12/18/2017
08:00 AM
Forward-thinking enterprises are investigating innovative uses for this distributed ledger technology.
Many experts predict that blockchain will soon have a huge impact on global business.
For example, Gartner has said that in the long term, blockchain "will lead to a reformation of whole industries." In a separate report, the firm said that blockchain technologies "should not be ignored. They offer the potential for substantial change in technology development and delivery as well as in how the economy, business and society operates."
Forrester wrote that blockchain's "potential is undeniable: Blockchain technology, if implemented appropriately, supports new business and trust models. It's still the early days, but let's not forget — the Internet was young once, too."
And the World Economic Forum stated, "Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, could soon give rise to a new era of the Internet even more disruptive and transformative than the current one. Blockchain's ability to generate unprecedented opportunities to create and trade value in society will lead to a generational shift in the Internet's evolution."
Blockchain is the technology that provides the foundation for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and the recent meteoric rise in Bitcoin value has only intensified interest in blockchain technology.
But while many business and IT leaders have heard that they need to be involved in blockchain, many aren't exactly sure what blockchain could offer them.
Blockchain is often described as a "secure distributed ledger." It's "secure" because it's encrypted and because once they are recorded to the blockchain ledger, transactions can't be edited or deleted. Blockchain is "distributed" because the data is spread across hundreds or thousands of nodes that are part of the network. That distributed nature also helps provide an extra level of security, because while it might be easy to hack into one centralized system, it's much harder to hack thousands at once. It's a "ledger" because it records time-stamped transactions. When they are saved, those transactions are grouped together into blocks, which are then linked together to create chains, hence the name "blockchain."
While the most obvious application for blockchain is to process financial transactions, enterprises and vendors are exploring lots of other uses for the technology. The slides that follow look at 10 of these possible blockchain use cases in greater detail.
1. Tracking Food (And Other Goods)
A UK-based software company called Provenance has pioneered one of the more interesting and innovative uses of blockchain technology. As consumers have become more interested in where their food originates, retailers and restaurants are looking for ways they can make sure that the ingredients they are getting are exactly what they expect.
Provenance has created blockchain-based software, which when combined with tracking technology, can securely trace the entire journey of ingredients from the point where they were harvested to the final consumer point of purchase. At every step along the supply chain, unalterable data is added to the blockchain, giving consumers complete confidence about what they are eating. Companies have used the software to ensure that tuna was sustainably harvested, that farmers received a fair price for their coconuts and that the produce on supermarket shelves really is organic. The technology can also be used to track the point of origin for clothing or even valuable goods like artwork or diamonds.
2. Secure Software Development
For defense contractors, cybersecurity is a critical concern. Vendors that supply software to the US federal government face particularly intense challenges, because if an attacker could insert malware into, for example, weapons targeting software, the country's military capabilities could be compromised. Lockheed Martin and Guardtime Federal worked together on a blockchain-based tracking system designed to ensure the security of the code Lockheed Martin provides to the government. The companies now track every step of the development process with a blockchain-based system that securely stores development lifecycle data and also speeds the process of finding any problems in the code.
3. Digital Content Management
The Internet has forever changed the distribution of entertainment content like movies, music, books, and games — and from the perspective of the content creators, not all of those changes have been positive. The Web makes it all-too-easy for consumers to pirate content without paying the artists who created that content. Several startups, including Ascribe, are working on blockchain-based tools to help manage copyrights, attribution and payment for digital media consumption. The secure distributed ledger system makes it easier to prove authorship of content and possible to track who has accessed content.
4. Healthcare Records
Through projects like DokChain, developers are working on blockchain-based applications for tracking electronic health records and other types of medical data. Blockchain makes it possible to store a complete and accurate record of all of the health care a patient has received in his or her lifetime. The data is encrypted for protection, but the patient would be able to grant providers access to the data as desired.
In addition, anonymized data could be made available to researchers. As a result, individual patients could be certain that their doctors, hospitals and pharmacies would have access to all the relevant data from their medical history, and researchers could gain access to detailed records that could help them spot new correlations and offer suggestions for better treatment of the population at large.
5. Mortgage Approvals
Anyone who has purchased a home with a mortgage knows that the process is usually long and torturous. Borrowers must assemble a host of documents, such as pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements, receipts and many others, which bank staff then manually input into their systems. Blockchain-based solutions could give consumers the option of storing their financial data in a secure distributed ledger, which they could then share with lenders. That could dramatically speed up the mortgage approval process. And, analyzing anonymized data could help financial institutions do a better job of determining which loans to approve.
6. Insurance Claims Processing
Fraud is huge problem for the insurance industry, and many organizations are hoping that blockchain-based solutions could help them cut down on fraudulent payments. By tracking customer interactions in a secure distributed ledger, insurers could reduce the likelihood of double payments for the same claim. It could also help streamline complicated subrogation issues when multiple firms are involved in an incident. IBM has a detailedwhite paper that explains in more detail how blockchain applications could benefit insurance companies.
7. Audit Trail
In some types of companies, particularly law firms and accounting firms, organizations need to have an immutable record of the conversations, data, and documents transferred between two or more parties. Several different startups offer software that can provide an audit trail for these data exchanges. PDF documents, either encrypted, unencrypted or hashed, can be stored in the blockchain database, along with metadata showing who added the documents to the blockchain and when. This kind of recordkeeping can be invaluable in legal cases or in other situations where an organization needs an unalterable record of actions it has taken.
8. Voting
While electronic voting is undeniably more efficient than paper ballots, many people worry about the security of the electronic voting systems and the possibility of vote tampering. But storing voting records in a secure blockchain could help guarantee the authenticity and reliability of the electronic voting process. The technology could be applied to both political elections and other types of voting, such as the election of corporate board members.
While jurisdictions haven't yet begun adopting blockchain-based voting, startup Votem has developed technology that would make it possible to vote securely via a mobile device, with voting records stored in a blockchain ledger.
9. Smart Contracts
One of the most frequently discussed applications of blockchain is the ability to create smart contracts. The open source project Ethereum (which is also the name of a digital cryptocurrency) is probably the best-known smart contract platform. Smart contracts automatically transfer money as appropriate when certain conditions are met, without going through an intermediary like a bank, escrow company, or credit card issuer. For example, a business could enter into an Ethereum-based smart contract with a supplier so that when goods from the supplier arrived at its warehouse (as noted by Internet of Things sensors), the supplier automatically received payment.
10. Cryptocurrency
Of course, the most obvious application for blockchain technology is digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is the most famous of these cryptocurrencies, but there are many others, like Ethereum and Litecoin. For businesses, blockchain-based currency offers a new, secure way to make and receive payments without going through a bank. Transactions are immediate and secure. And because cryptocurrency values have been escalating rapidly, some trading firms have been investing in Bitcoin futures as a way to generate revenue.
附件：
《How to Use Blockchain 10 Use Cases》--原文.pdf
《How to Use Blockchain 10 Use Cases》--译文.pdf
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