Businesses want Proof-as-a-Service, not Blockchain
As I write, cryptocurrency is hitting all-time high prices. This is great for blockchain projects because it allows them to raise capital and improve services. However, this heavy focus on the price of cryptocurrency means the real reason that businesses should want blockchain is hidden; that reason is proof.
This post is going to make sense if you know the difference between blockchain and cryptocurrency. If not, my previous article is a great starting point to get you familiar with the terminology.
Blockchain isn’t Cryptocurrency
The words “blockchain” and “cryptocurrency” are usually the same thing in people’s minds, making leaders nervous about the changes required to implement blockchain. Most business leaders don’t know that blockchain is an auditing and tracking tool; they see it as a payment platform that requires cryptocurrency and that’s the problem.
Imagine you’re running a business and you think that blockchain is a payment platform. Using blockchain will require you to purchase a volatile new currency as an asset. You’ll have to track currency conversions, store this new asset securely, train multiple departments, come up with new processes, probably you’ll rewrite many internal policies…
You’re going to think that the benefits aren’t nearly big enough to cover the costs.
When I explain the word blockchain to business leaders, they realise that the process improvements and task automation come from the audit trail they get from blockchain-anchored records, NOT from the ecosystems that exist around blockchain. It seems that most businesses want to avoid cryptocurrency but really want the auditing and security that blockchain provides.
Blockchain-as-a-Service
Getting started with blockchain takes work for any company. Your technical team have to set up new software and learn how to run “follower nodes”. Meanwhile, your finance team will have to worry about managing “hardware wallets” and purchasing “gas”. These are new processes for your business, so is it possible to make it simpler? Can you get blockchain as a service?
The answer is yes, but it’s not what you think.
If you search for “blockchain as a service” you will find thousands of options available to you. Unfortunately, you’re still going to need to design, build, and maintain a bespoke solution built on top of these services. I propose something different. Something more simple. It’s called proof-as-a-service.
Proof-as-a-service
Proof-as-a-service (PaaS) is as simple as it sounds; any process you want to have an audit trail for sends an API request to the PaaS and gets a response with the details of the new blockchain entry. All the blockchain management, maintenance, and currency exchanges are handled by the PaaS, allowing businesses to get exactly what they want from blockchain; the proof.
Think of it like using cloud-computing services. With cloud computing, your technical team doesn’t need to think about hardware at all, they just choose the services they want and how they will work together. A PaaS removes the need for technical teams to think about blockchain, they just implement an API (something they do all the time).
This sounds great, right? and it isn’t all theoretical; there are lots of PaaS products on the market today that can have your team developing solutions in a few hours. The challenge for you is picking the right PaaS for your use case, which is a problem I will write about in the future.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand that businesses want the proof blockchain provides, but they don’t need to get involved with blockchain to do it, and PaaS products are the way to do that.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, comments or criticisms; I read every post. If you’d like to have a chat about a specific use case or project, then reach out to me on LinkedIn or my website.
Benjamin Jeater is a business, blockchain, and technology expert with over 10 years of experience. Benjamin runs his own blockchain consultancy and is the managing director of Foundations, a data-sharing platform for construction built on blockchain technology.
