Blockchain as a “magic tablet”?
About the blockchain today they say everything around. Against the background of a general HYIP around the blockchain, it is perceived as a “magic pill” with which you can solve all the problems. As is often the case, the reality is a little more complicated. Viktor Lysenko, Vice-President for Blockchain, talked about how blockchain technology ceased to be associated with Bitcoin, captured the “hearts and minds” of the banking sector and when it is worth applying solutions based on it and in which cases it is not.
The purpose of the blockchain technology is being rethought all the time, and people are looking at it in a new way. This technology began, in fact, as Bitcoin cryptocurrency. And for a very long time, the blockchain was associated with Bitcoin. Recently, we have seen a movement in the other direction, now the attitude to the blockchain technology has begun to change. A lot of people, including in large companies and in state structures, began to realize that this is not just some kind of marginal cryptocurrency, which is used, inter alia, for conducting questionable operations, but also a technology that will help bring Positive changes in our lives will allow us to solve a very large number of problems that were previously not solved so elegantly, not so beautifully or with great expense.
And how and who had the idea to use this technology in this way?
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As in most cases, all the components that make up the idea of Bitcoin, have existed for the past 20-30 years. For example, the structure of Merkl-Damgard, a method for constructing cryptographic hash functions, has been known for a long time. And a person or a group of people, Satoshi Nakamoto, had the idea that it was possible to combine and use all these components in this way. Here the following is important, if earlier the blockchain technology was mainly perceived as a cryptocurrency, now it is perceived as a distributed database that allows a large number of different people or companies to interact with each other without using trusted intermediaries.
How can this technology change the financial world, for example, banking technology or the stock market?
Now, if you want to conduct some kind of sale and purchase of shares, then you need a trusted intermediary - the stock exchange through which such transactions take place. In fact, the stock exchange and a number of other companies keep records of stocks, a kind of “journal”, in which information about stocks is reflected: to whom they belong, who can vote on them, to whom dividends are paid, etc. A trusted intermediary takes money for it, and we need to rely on his reputation, expect that he does not make mistakes, and the like. The blockchain technology allows you to share any assets without such an intermediary. For many people and companies, this is the reason for its attractiveness. As a matter of fact, the ability to exchange information without a trusted intermediary is a fundamental change and innovation, which has not existed until now. Previously, in order to solve the problems of information exchange, several people or a consortium of companies needed to choose some trustee who needed to pay money, somehow organize, etc. For example, the VISA payment system is such a trusted intermediary for all transactions that are carried out on its plastic cards. The exchange, in its essence, is a trusted intermediary in conducting operations on the stock market of public companies. The central bank is the database administrator for all payments in the country. If it is necessary to solve more local problems, then creating such a trusted intermediary is expensive and difficult from the point of view of the organization. Therefore, in most cases, such tasks simply do not solve, or are solved in some less reliable, roundabout way. This means that you have high transaction costs that have to be paid.
And what does this mean for brokerage business? Will brokers have to change their business towards providing analytical support services?
It is difficult to say what exactly will happen and which of the broker’s tasks customers really need. Some advice and advice, apparently, will remain, but people will be able to do the technical work independently. If a person has the opportunity in one swipe on the phone to carry out the operation of buying and selling shares, the need for a call to the broker disappears.
As a former Rocketbank CEO, what changes do you see in the banking sector?
What is quite funny, the banking sector became in fact the first industry that “caught” the blockchain wave. First of all, the banks tried to transfer operations on interbank payments to the blockchain technology, and, thus, to avoid using the SWIFT platform. From my point of view, there is no radical problem with interbank payments, and this is far from the first application for applying the blockchain technology. Yes, it is expensive and not always convenient, but the very fact that banks have the opportunity to switch to such a platform will force the same SWIFT to offer better conditions, work faster, etc.
At times, banks are faced with the problem of distrust on the part of customers, can the blockchain technology somehow influence the solution of this problem?
Affect, but somewhat in a different section. What you are saying will happen sooner or later — banks will begin to get more information about each other, and as a result the entire banking system will become more transparent. But, due to the fact that this is a conservative industry, it will take some time. From my point of view, the first implementations will be simpler. For example, Acronis has a pilot project with several banks, within the framework of which the task of exchanging information about its customers and various types of frauds is being solved. For example, the bank needs to understand whether the client is alive or has died. Knowing this, one bank can notify other banks about it. As an example of fraud, we can cite the recent incident that occurred in Singapore. A group of fraudsters presented the same customs invoices to different banks and tried to get money from them.
Despite the fact that banks are competitors, and between them there is not always full confidence, they need to share certain information with each other. They need mechanisms that will allow sharing information about fraudsters, but most likely they will not create interbank associations to solve such problems, because they need to choose a chairman, designate who will vote and how, organize a legal entity, issue shares, etc. . In reality, few people want to go through these procedures. Our solutions make it possible to make an information exchange system in which all the data passing through it is recorded in the blockchain, which makes them transparent for banks and simplifies the procedure for conducting its audit by third parties. That is, a system is created in which all its participants, not trusting each other completely, can trust those records that are stored in the system, because there is always the opportunity to trace who exactly made this record when it was made, and be sure that it can not be replaced.
Do I understand correctly that Acronis is implementing the introduction of products based on blockchain technology?
Yes, including.
In one of the materials on the site Bankir.ru, you say that despite the fact that many people perceive the blockchain technology as rather slow with some of the existing products, this is not quite so, and the speed of its work can be much higher.
The question here is what is considered slow. If we talk about the number of transactions that can be processed within the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain, then, of course, it’s still far from the throughput that Visa or Mastercard currently has. But, on the other hand, the speed of information exchange in the blockchain is constantly increasing, and the use of technology in those situations in which Visa is now used, from my point of view, is not entirely reasonable and necessary.
What are the main difficulties encountered when introducing blockchain technology?
There are several major difficulties. If we talk about Russia, then one of the main difficulties is the presence of very contradictory signals about the attitude to this technology on the part of government departments and structures. Despite the fact that there is no formal ban on the use of the blockchain, a number of people, including company executives, have the feeling that this is something illegal and will be punished for it. That is, people have such an idea in their heads, but there is no formal reason for this. And this greatly hinders the process of introducing blockchain-based products.
The second difficulty is the lack of a sufficient number of people who understand the blockchain technology, understand it and can substantively discuss the situation, for which situations it is applicable, and for which situations it is not. Now there are a lot of situations in which solutions based on blockchain technology are being tried to apply where there is no need for this, and it is quite possible to get by with solutions that already exist. These excessive expectations from technology are very often detrimental. We often encounter requests for the introduction of solutions based on blockchain technology, examining which, we understand that it is quite possible to manage with existing tools. On the other hand, there are a large number of tasks, for example, the Acronis case with the exchange of information between banks, which is described above, for which elegant blockchains are perfect for an elegant and simple solution.
German Gref compared the emergence of blockchain technology with the advent of the Internet, how do you think these two “inventions” are commensurate?
German Gref is not the first person who made such a comparison. Marc Andreessen, one of the most famous venture investors in the world, who invented the NetScape browser and who invested in a huge number of successful startups, also gives a similar comparison of the blockchain technology and the Internet. But even if the impact of the blockchain technology on our world is ten times less, it will still be very serious changes.
The purpose of the blockchain technology is being rethought all the time, and people are looking at it in a new way. This technology began, in fact, as Bitcoin cryptocurrency. And for a very long time, the blockchain was associated with Bitcoin. Recently, we have seen a movement in the other direction, now the attitude to the blockchain technology has begun to change. A lot of people, including in large companies and in state structures, began to realize that this is not just some kind of marginal cryptocurrency, which is used, inter alia, for conducting questionable operations, but also a technology that will help bring Positive changes in our lives will allow us to solve a very large number of problems that were previously not solved so elegantly, not so beautifully or with great expense.
And how and who had the idea to use this technology in this way?
')
As in most cases, all the components that make up the idea of Bitcoin, have existed for the past 20-30 years. For example, the structure of Merkl-Damgard, a method for constructing cryptographic hash functions, has been known for a long time. And a person or a group of people, Satoshi Nakamoto, had the idea that it was possible to combine and use all these components in this way. Here the following is important, if earlier the blockchain technology was mainly perceived as a cryptocurrency, now it is perceived as a distributed database that allows a large number of different people or companies to interact with each other without using trusted intermediaries.
How can this technology change the financial world, for example, banking technology or the stock market?
Now, if you want to conduct some kind of sale and purchase of shares, then you need a trusted intermediary - the stock exchange through which such transactions take place. In fact, the stock exchange and a number of other companies keep records of stocks, a kind of “journal”, in which information about stocks is reflected: to whom they belong, who can vote on them, to whom dividends are paid, etc. A trusted intermediary takes money for it, and we need to rely on his reputation, expect that he does not make mistakes, and the like. The blockchain technology allows you to share any assets without such an intermediary. For many people and companies, this is the reason for its attractiveness. As a matter of fact, the ability to exchange information without a trusted intermediary is a fundamental change and innovation, which has not existed until now. Previously, in order to solve the problems of information exchange, several people or a consortium of companies needed to choose some trustee who needed to pay money, somehow organize, etc. For example, the VISA payment system is such a trusted intermediary for all transactions that are carried out on its plastic cards. The exchange, in its essence, is a trusted intermediary in conducting operations on the stock market of public companies. The central bank is the database administrator for all payments in the country. If it is necessary to solve more local problems, then creating such a trusted intermediary is expensive and difficult from the point of view of the organization. Therefore, in most cases, such tasks simply do not solve, or are solved in some less reliable, roundabout way. This means that you have high transaction costs that have to be paid.
And what does this mean for brokerage business? Will brokers have to change their business towards providing analytical support services?
It is difficult to say what exactly will happen and which of the broker’s tasks customers really need. Some advice and advice, apparently, will remain, but people will be able to do the technical work independently. If a person has the opportunity in one swipe on the phone to carry out the operation of buying and selling shares, the need for a call to the broker disappears.
As a former Rocketbank CEO, what changes do you see in the banking sector?
What is quite funny, the banking sector became in fact the first industry that “caught” the blockchain wave. First of all, the banks tried to transfer operations on interbank payments to the blockchain technology, and, thus, to avoid using the SWIFT platform. From my point of view, there is no radical problem with interbank payments, and this is far from the first application for applying the blockchain technology. Yes, it is expensive and not always convenient, but the very fact that banks have the opportunity to switch to such a platform will force the same SWIFT to offer better conditions, work faster, etc.
At times, banks are faced with the problem of distrust on the part of customers, can the blockchain technology somehow influence the solution of this problem?
Affect, but somewhat in a different section. What you are saying will happen sooner or later — banks will begin to get more information about each other, and as a result the entire banking system will become more transparent. But, due to the fact that this is a conservative industry, it will take some time. From my point of view, the first implementations will be simpler. For example, Acronis has a pilot project with several banks, within the framework of which the task of exchanging information about its customers and various types of frauds is being solved. For example, the bank needs to understand whether the client is alive or has died. Knowing this, one bank can notify other banks about it. As an example of fraud, we can cite the recent incident that occurred in Singapore. A group of fraudsters presented the same customs invoices to different banks and tried to get money from them.
Despite the fact that banks are competitors, and between them there is not always full confidence, they need to share certain information with each other. They need mechanisms that will allow sharing information about fraudsters, but most likely they will not create interbank associations to solve such problems, because they need to choose a chairman, designate who will vote and how, organize a legal entity, issue shares, etc. . In reality, few people want to go through these procedures. Our solutions make it possible to make an information exchange system in which all the data passing through it is recorded in the blockchain, which makes them transparent for banks and simplifies the procedure for conducting its audit by third parties. That is, a system is created in which all its participants, not trusting each other completely, can trust those records that are stored in the system, because there is always the opportunity to trace who exactly made this record when it was made, and be sure that it can not be replaced.
Do I understand correctly that Acronis is implementing the introduction of products based on blockchain technology?
Yes, including.
In one of the materials on the site Bankir.ru, you say that despite the fact that many people perceive the blockchain technology as rather slow with some of the existing products, this is not quite so, and the speed of its work can be much higher.
The question here is what is considered slow. If we talk about the number of transactions that can be processed within the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain, then, of course, it’s still far from the throughput that Visa or Mastercard currently has. But, on the other hand, the speed of information exchange in the blockchain is constantly increasing, and the use of technology in those situations in which Visa is now used, from my point of view, is not entirely reasonable and necessary.
What are the main difficulties encountered when introducing blockchain technology?
There are several major difficulties. If we talk about Russia, then one of the main difficulties is the presence of very contradictory signals about the attitude to this technology on the part of government departments and structures. Despite the fact that there is no formal ban on the use of the blockchain, a number of people, including company executives, have the feeling that this is something illegal and will be punished for it. That is, people have such an idea in their heads, but there is no formal reason for this. And this greatly hinders the process of introducing blockchain-based products.
The second difficulty is the lack of a sufficient number of people who understand the blockchain technology, understand it and can substantively discuss the situation, for which situations it is applicable, and for which situations it is not. Now there are a lot of situations in which solutions based on blockchain technology are being tried to apply where there is no need for this, and it is quite possible to get by with solutions that already exist. These excessive expectations from technology are very often detrimental. We often encounter requests for the introduction of solutions based on blockchain technology, examining which, we understand that it is quite possible to manage with existing tools. On the other hand, there are a large number of tasks, for example, the Acronis case with the exchange of information between banks, which is described above, for which elegant blockchains are perfect for an elegant and simple solution.
German Gref compared the emergence of blockchain technology with the advent of the Internet, how do you think these two “inventions” are commensurate?
German Gref is not the first person who made such a comparison. Marc Andreessen, one of the most famous venture investors in the world, who invented the NetScape browser and who invested in a huge number of successful startups, also gives a similar comparison of the blockchain technology and the Internet. But even if the impact of the blockchain technology on our world is ten times less, it will still be very serious changes.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/309686/
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