MIT, BitFury and other blockchain advocates attend the Democratic National Convention

Rage Review : MIT, exchange company BitFury and technical advocates of the blockchain trust accelerator they co-founded formed a blockchain delegation to attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, USA, and discuss the future of blockchain with world leaders and political representatives. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign speech opened up the exploration of blockchain applications in the field of national public services, and attracted such a large number of government officials to participate in technical discussions with its forward-looking statements in line with the overall development trend. Participants said that the application of blockchain in this field has unlimited potential waiting to be explored.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Leaders in blockchain technology made the effort to attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, USA, to talk to world leaders and political representatives about the future of blockchain, a global peer-to-peer distributed ledger that is cryptographically protected by participants and used to record transaction history; it is also the technology that provides the infrastructure for Bitcoin.

Application areas of blockchain include securities trading (such as stocks), providing proof of publication of documents (such as notaries), tracking the supply chain cycle of product production and transportation (such as luxury goods and even diamonds). Governments can use blockchain to provide verification and proof of publication of ownership documents (such as land ownership) and even build infrastructure for secure electronic voting systems.

More than 400 world leaders attended the panel session, “Who Will Vote: The Emerging Electorate,” including Jamie Smith, Global Chief Evangelist at Bitfury Group and Co-Founder of the Blockchain Trust Accelerator, Tomicah Tillemann, Director of the Bretton Woods II Initiative at New America, and other co-founders of the Blockchain Trust Accelerator.

Jamie Smith

“If we embrace this new technology, we may have the ability to completely revolutionize voting, polling, data collection and analysis, and financing through blockchain,” Smith said. “I imagine an election scenario where citizens vote on their phones in factories and instantly know how campaign funds are being used, with ballot data that is verifiable, accurate, secure, and easy to share. This is the voting scenario that blockchain technology may bring, and these pilot projects are already underway.”

The next US president should be the first “blockchain president”

The day before, Alex Tapscott, co-author of Blockchain Revolution, delivered the opening keynote speech at the Rock the Vote “Truth to Power” conference, focusing on blockchain technology and how the next president should usher in a new era of the Internet and become the first “Blockchain President.”

The blockchain technology delegation attending the Democratic National Convention should not be surprised, because before that, U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mentioned blockchain in her campaign document "Initiative on Technology and Innovation." Although it was only a passing mention this time, blockchain was put together with self-driving cars and machine learning, calling on innovators to explore "blockchain applications in the public service field."

In summary, blockchain may be used in government regulatory applications, especially in the field of public services. Due to the distributed and trustless nature of well-designed blockchain technology, it can be used to prevent voting and sensitive document fraud, verify identity documents, and even provide document traceability, making fraud more difficult.

And because blockchain is digital by default, it makes it easier for mobile phones to access applications that interact with it, such as the above, where workers use their mobile phones to vote in factories. Although it may take a long time to achieve large-scale, secure, and effective applications, many governments are already using proof-of-concept mechanisms for blockchain voting (such as Denmark and the Utah Republican Party).

Brian Forde

Brian Forde, co-founder of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, also attended the meeting and said in a TechCrunch article about Clinton: “To remain competitive and realize the economic and security benefits of this technology, the U.S. government should invest at least $50 million per year in academic and operational research.”

“By supporting the development of government applications based on public blockchains and investing in important research projects related to this technology and gaining feedback from the cryptocurrency community, the next president will be able to significantly increase trust in government, reduce bureaucracy, and protect consumer data.”

Blockchain technology applications have penetrated through different industries, from financial technology to supply chain (such as IBM's supply chain products), but there is still a lot of potential for government applications to be explored. Instilling these ideas to future voters, current and future potential legislators, and senior officials on Capitol Hill will hopefully further promote technology testing and application in the public service sector.