#blockchaincuration

The IBM Research project is notable because it suggests that the deterministic requirements of blockchains can be combined with the black box of AI, allowing machine learning algorithms to alter the shape of blockchains to adapt to power or latency limitations, without compromising security.

As such, this would seem to open the door to a whole new design space.

"Why not augment the blockchain with analytics and AI algorithms that can actually shape the blockchain in a way that it helps it to overcome some of the limitations that are out there now?" said Ragnoli.

In the case of IoT, the way this works is the AI receives as an input the IoT devices that are on the system and the available resources of those devices. It also assesses the overall security requirements of the system and decides which and how many devices are mining, the PoW difficulty, the block generation rate, the block size and tries to balance between required security and scalability.

Voting

So how did blockchain voting work in this situation?

People voted via a mobile app which was essentially the equivalent of a ballot paper. The mobile ballots are “tokens” or potential votes which are cryptographically tied to a candidate. The voter makes their decision, it is verified by a number of different servers or computers known as “validating nodes.” Upon verification, the token or ballot paper is debited from the voter’s ledger and put on the candidate’s ledger. This is an automatic process and means that a single person cannot vote twice. And it’s now on a blockchain that cannot be tampered with.

Credit checks

China has been cracking down hard on cryptocurrencies and ICOs, but it has been focusing heavily on DLT. Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that blockchain has “breakthrough” applications.

Parts of the Chinese government have been working with blockchain firms in various areas such as credit scoring. One of those companies is Points which has partnered with a subsidiary of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology to create blockchain solution for know your customer (KYC) and credit scoring.

The KYC product removes the need for institutions to repetitively conduct the process manually.

“With its partnership with the Chinese government, Points has access to verify ID and criminal records on 1 billion people in China. Thanks to Points’ blockchain protocol, the normally time-consuming KYC process which would normally be done manually, increases the efficiency for institutional partners,” founder Sarah Zhang told CNBC by email.

“It does this by reducing the institution’s need to store data on their own servers as Points because they can simply verify identities or other relevant information through blockchain that has already been verified before.”

This process could be used all around the world but requires data to be opened up to allow verification of a person’s identity and their credit score.

Last August, IBM announced that 10 food producers and retailers had agreed to collaborate with the tech giant and identify new areas where the global supply chain can benefit from blockchain. The participating food companies are Dole, Driscoll’s, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Unilever, and Walmart.

Called IBM Food Trust, the collaborative network uses the IBM Blockchain Platform to connect participants through a permissioned, permanent, and shared record of food origin details, processing data, shipping, and other details.

“Unlike any technology before it, blockchain is transforming the way like-minded organizations come together and enabling a new level of trust based on a single view of the truth,” said Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM Blockchain.

“When it comes to food safety and traceability and resolving outbreaks, you have to be fast — and you have to be right,” Frank Yiannas, VP of food safety for Walmart, said at the time. In tests, IBM’s blockchain technology can track a product from the farm through every stage of the supply chain to the retail shelf in as fast as 2.2 seconds compared to days or weeks.