Implementing block chain

In a system like Block chains, where all the parties involved are know all the information for a transaction, is it even possible to have privacy?
 If so, what kind of data should be left out of the system?
But first, it is important to distinguish a distributed database and a decentralized ledger system.
A distributed database could very well be where there is a central authority which holds the data and multiple copies of that data is there for others to view it. A classic example of that could be a central government database – say with the taxman, the RBI and others in a governance framework. But that really is not Block chain. In a situation where different actors do not trust each other, what you do normally is that you would set up an intermediary that you all trust. The good example being currency - One wouldn't know if the currency they have has any value, therefore, the RBI authenticates or certifies that it has value.’ That is the centralized intermediary concept. In the Block chain situation, you are creating an architecture where you are decentralizing the intermediary’s role of certifying a particular transaction or certifying a certain asset class.
When experts list the areas where block chain has significant potential to shake up existing services and processes, they first mention finance (banking) domain and next in line would be governments and, in particular, how governments handles land registries, deeds and titles. That process is currently cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive — with property sales requiring title searches and, just in case those aren't enough, title insurance. But if you put the history of a property's sales and transactions on the block chain, there would be an indelible record of it all. Will see some real time case studies of Block chain implementation in banking world and some specific case studies of how block chain is being implemented by governments world over.
Block chain in Finance
Bitcoin introduced the first Block chain as a tool for making payments without going through the banks.
But what if you work for a bank?
Strangely, many of the features that made bitcoin distasteful to the banks are making the underlying Block chain technology attractive as a way to settle transactions among themselves in dollars or sterling. It's public, so banks can see whether their counter parties can afford to settle their debts, and distributed, so they can settle faster than some central banks will allow.
Ripple is one of the first such Block chain-based settlement mechanisms: Its banking partners include UBS, Santander, and Standard Chartered. But UBS and Santander are also working on another Block chain project called Utility Settlement Coin, which will allow them to settle payments in multiple currencies, with Deutsche Bank, BNY Mellon, and others. If these systems catch on, it's surely only a matter of time before such Block chain payments trickle down to compete with traditional inter-bank transfer mechanisms such as SWIFT.
Not so surprisingly, Indian Banks, who’ve always been front runners in adopting to newer technology have already decided to embrace Block chain in big time.
Finacle, a banking product by Infosys, that is widely used across various Government banks, has been tweaked in its latest release to accommodate Block chain functionality and seems like already 11 major banks have shown interest to implement the same. Finacle Trade Connect, will help digitize the trade finance business process, including validation of ownership, certifying documents and making payments. It is available for functions including bill collection, letters of credit and invoice financing among others.
Axis Bank, India’s third-largest private sector bank, has launched instant international payment services using Ripple’s enterprise Block chain technology solution. The bank has launched a service for its retail customers in India to receive payments from RakBank in UAE and for its corporate customers in India to receive payments from Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. Ripple makes international remittances faster and transparent for customers while ensuring security and improving efficiency. The transactions reach their destination account in minutes, with certainty of settlement, and with end-to-end visibility over the journey of the payment. So far, Ripple counts Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of America Merril Lynch, UBS Group, Mizuho etc as partner banks.
State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest bank, said that it will be deploying a smart contract for KYC solution over the Block chain. This will be deployed over BankChain, a community of Indian and foreign banks which are developing Block chain solutions, BankChain was started in February by SBI and other members include ICICI Bank, YES Bank, DCB Bank, Kotak Bank among others. It has 29 members at the moment.
YES Bank is using a smart contract developed by fintech startup Cateina Technologies on a Block chain which will allow Bajaj Electricals to process disbursement of funds and discounting to its vendors. It added that it has put in place a detailed road map on commercializing Block chain-based banking solutions in India and is exploring use cases for implementation towards ‘Letter of Credit’ and Documentary Collections, Foreign Remittances and Partnering with Correspondent Banks for Trade Finance among others.
ICICI Bank has created a Block chain application and piloted transactions on its Blockchain network in partnership with Emirates NBD, a banking group in the Middle East. In ICICI Bank, the first transaction on the Block chain was executed to showcase confirmation of import of shredded steel melting scrap by a Mumbai-based export-import firm from a Dubai-based supplier. The second transaction involved a transaction on the Block chain application that enabled an ICICI Bank branch in Mumbai to remit funds to an Emirates NBD branch in Dubai in real time. It could do so as the Block chain technology is equipped to send real time financial message to the recipient bank allowing the remittance transaction to take place instantly. The Block chain eliminated the need for financial messaging between banks and provides the convenience of instant cross-border remittances for retail customers. Currently, international remittances take a few hours to up to two days.
Block chain in real estate
Block chain could play a role in manufacturing and supply chain operations too, as the technology could be used to create audit trails that allow companies to track the provenance of both materials and finished products. It could also be used to create permanent, transparent logs of industrial and commercial records, such as maintenance and inspection reports. There is increasing interest in using block chains to keep land records and pay property tax.
Sweden’s land registry authority, Lantmäteriet, started a pilot in March this year where it will use smart contracts to purchase small houses on the blockchain and manage mortgages.
The Republic of Georgia signed a deal with bitcoin mining company BitFury to build a private block chain to keep track of its land registry, via a private block chain, which is a tamper-proof ledger, and then to make those transactions verifiable using bitcoin’s block chain, which is public. It is the first time a national government has used the bitcoin block chain to secure and validate official actions, signifying a vote of confidence for a technology still somewhat tainted by an early association with illicit activity. Having so far built the software and tested it with a couple dozen land title registrations, Bitfury and the Georgian National Agency of Public Registry have now signed a new memorandum of understanding to expand the service to purchases and sales of land titles, registration of new land titles, demolition of property, mortgages and rentals, as well as notary services.
In India, the Andhra Pradesh government has partnered with Swedish startup ChromaWay to run a pilot for land registry on a block chain to track the ownership of property, reports CoinDesk. The state will be introducing a digital identification for land registry parcels called Bhudhar, which will help citizens pay property taxes as well. Meanwhile, ChromaWay said that it will be using a distributed ledger on the back end and a web app on the front end.
In Honduras, the government has partnered with FatCom for securing land title records with distributed ledger technology.
As per a survey worldwide, the value of “dead capital” — in which people do not have legal title to their houses, cars and other assets — at $20 trillion. In a blockchain-based ledger, records are time-stamped, as are subsequent changes to those records. This would allow enable people interested in a specific property to see and verify the date of past transactions.
Additionally, data on blockchains can be made private or public. In this case, the details of the real estate transactions are placed on a private blockchain network run by known computers, and then, in order for citizens to verify the authenticity of certificates, that data can be turned into a cryptographic “hash” that’s made public on the bitcoin blockchain which is run by thousands of computers worldwide. The hash is a type of digital fingerprint that enables anyone to verify that the data matches what’s on the blockchain without seeing the data itself.
Finally, blockchain technology brings security to real estate transactions because there’s no central point of failure. The ledger is distributed among many computers, so a would-be hacker would need to simultaneously attack at least 51% of the network in order to fraudulently alter records.
Block chain & Identity
On the internet, famously, no one knows who you are and on the internet of things, identity can be similarly difficult to pin down. That's not great if you're trying to securely identify the devices that connect to your network, and it's what prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to fund a project by Factom to create a time stamped log of such devices in a block chain, recording their identification number, manufacturer, available device updates, known security issues, and granted permissions. That could all go in a regular device-management database, but the DHS hopes that the immutability of the block chain will make it harder for hackers to spoof known devices by preventing them from altering the records.
It's not just devices that can be spoofed, but also qualifications.
If you were looking to hire someone with block chain expertise, and the applicant told you they had a professional certification, what would you do to check the certificate's validity?
Software developer Learning Machine hopes candidates will present their certificates in its mobile app, and that you will check their validity using Blockcerts. This is a way of storing details of a certificate in the block chain, so that anyone can verify its content and the identity of the person to whom it was issued without the need to contact a central issuing authority.
The certificates can be about educational qualifications, professional training, membership of a group, pretty much anything, so if your organization issues certificates, you could issue them on the blockchain, too. Learning Machine and co-developer MIT Media Lab have published details of Blockcerts as an open standard and posted the code to Github.
Supplychain & Block chain
Everledger is counting on blockchain technology to prove the provenance and ownership of diamonds recorded in its ledger. In fact, it's using two block chains: A private one to record information that diamond sellers need to share with buyers, but may not want widely known, and the public bitcoin block chain to provide an indisputable time stamp for the private records.  Diamonds are eminently traceable as the uncut ones have unique physical characteristics and the cut ones are, these days, typically laser-etched with a tiny serial number. Recording each movement of such valuable items allows insurers to identify fraud and international bodies to ensure that trade in diamonds is not funding conflicts. Everledger CEO Leanne Kemp believes the system could transform trade in other valuable commodities, too. The company has identified luxury goods and works of art as possibilities.
Pork is one of many products for which fine-grained tracking and tracing of inventory can be helpful, and happens to be the one Walmart is testing block chain technology with. It's using IBM's block chain to record where each piece of pork it sells in China comes from, where and how it is processed, its storage temperature and expected expiration date. The pilot project is designed to trace pork as it moves from suppliers to Walmart's shelves. By the time food is sold to a consumer at a Walmart store, each individual item will have been authenticated using block chain technology to create a transparent, security-rich and traceable record. The record created by the block chain can also help retailers like Walmart better manage the shelf-life of products in individual stores, and further strengthen safeguards related to food authenticity.
Block chain will enable digitally tracking food products from an ecosystem of suppliers to store shelves and finally on to consumers. It will digitally connect food items to digital product information including farm origination details, batch numbers, factory and processing data, expiration dates, storage temperatures and shipping details. The relevant information will be entered into the block chain at every step of the process of moving food from suppliers to consumers. The information in each transaction is agreed upon by all members of the business network; once there is a consensus, it becomes a permanent record that can't be altered. This helps assure that all information about the item is accurate. If a product recall becomes necessary, it will be able to narrow down the batches affected and identify exactly where they are or, if they have already been sold, who bought them. The project may extend to other products: The company has just opened the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center (WFSCC) in China to work with IBM and industry partners to make food supplies safer and healthier using block chain technology.
Will try to collate information around security aspects of Block chain in upcoming posts.