Yesterday, Chief Architect of the IBM Food Trust and Columbia Alumnus Yi-Min Chee came to speak at Columbia about the business applications of blockchain technology in his lecture “Blockchain: A Solutions Perspective”. In collaboration with the Data Institute and the Foundations for Research Computing program, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation hosted this event as the next installation of the Distinguished Lecture in Computational Innovation series. Leena Chen attended the event.

Yi-Min Chee began by an informal poll of the room, asking how many of us in the audience were familiar with blockchain methods and technology. A brief pause, and then more than half the room raised their hands. Briefly scanning the audience, it seemed like most people were middle-aged men, though there also seemed to be a few other undergrad-aged audience members in the room. Almost everyone carried a laptop, and everyone looked eager for the lecture to begin.

Chee began the lecture with an introduction to blockchain technology. Understanding his technical audience, he flew through the slides in this section quickly, especially as he noticed heads drooping here and there in the packed, dimly-lit room. One person walked out. After twenty minutes and several slides of blockchain visualizations, he moved on to the focus of his lecture, which was the business applications of blockchain technology.

Next, Chee gave an overview of the reasons why many businesses are currently motivated to adopt blockchain technology. Businesses operate in constant communication with their partners, suppliers, banks, and perhaps most importantly, their customers. Yet, the existing status quo of business networks is highly inefficient, expensive, and vulnerable to malicious activity. Traditional methods require businesses to go to many different external resources to access their insurer records, regulator records, auditor records, and more. Blockchain technology offers an appealing alternative — direct communications between participants.

Sensing some confusion, Chee clarified that most businesses are not interested in blockchain technology in the realm of cryptocurrency. For example, Bitcoin is unappealing to businesses because of its public and anonymous nature, which makes it risky for businesses but perfect for individuals who wish to maintain their privacy. Instead, businesses are interested in “permissioned,” meaning non-public, applications of blockchain technology as solutions for their everyday problems.

He showed slides with several different examples of the ways in which blockchain has helped businesses solve difficult problems, but he dwelled upon one example in particular. As the Chief Architect of the IBM Food Trust, Chee was clearly passionate about the promised solutions that it can offer to businesses, especially grocery stores. IBM Food Trust can provide data on the supply chain of food products at an almost instantaneous speed, which can be applied to issues of food safety. To illustrate this, he brought up a story of a mango recall at Wal-Mart that took days, which was a delay that needlessly hurt many trusting consumers. However, with the help of blockchain technology, grocery stores can access data on its products and easily trace any given product all the way back to its source in a matter of seconds! Chuckles and gasps were heard around the room at the efficiency of this new technology, reducing a process from days to seconds.

IBM Food Trust is also working on a more general, non-emergency application of blockchain in grocery stores. As consumers become more interested in their own health, stores are providing more information on the products that they are purchasing. One problem in the US is that there are more labeled organic products being sold in stores than there are organic problems being produced, which means that somewhere along the supply line, non-organic foods are being falsified as organic so that they might be sold at a higher price. With blockchain technology, consumers could scan a grocery product with their phones to instantly access data on when, where, and how it was produced and shipped in order to verify for themselves the authenticity of their purchase.

Finally, Chee ended with some remarks on current challenges in applying blockchain technology to the business world and offered up some potential solutions. In particular, he highlighted the problem of privacy — problems of transaction privacy and unlink-ability for business, problems of privacy of personal or individual data, problems of upgrades and endorsements in a permissioned blockchain, and more.

While associated challenges and misconceptions remain, blockchain technology seems to be a promising solution to many of the problems that businesses face, as seen in all of the illustrative examples that Chee gave in his lecture. Here’s to hoping for a better, safer, and more efficient future!