Here’s How To Start A Blockchain Business In 7 Easy Steps

September 28, 2018 , admin 0

Blockchain technology has come a long way since its inception in 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto published the now famous Bitcoin paper. The peer-to-peer decentralized way to send and receive monetary funds via cryptocurrency, however, has taken on new forms.

The utility of blockchain is now too compelling for companies, financial institutions, and governments to ignore. Using the utility to streamline processes or enhancing security is trending.

In fact, there has been $2.1 billion spent globally on blockchain technology solutions in 2018 alone. And blockchain growth is not slowing down anytime soon either. Blockchain expansion is estimated to be over 40 percent year-over-year till 2022.

More people are turning to blockchain technology as a business, rather than a utility for an existing endeavor. Are you one of the innovators looking to start a blockchain business? The following seven steps to doing just that may serve useful.

1. Start A Blockchain Business That Solves A Realistic Problem

Blockchain technology has plenty of uses, but not all are realistic. For example, there are many governments and global organizations that believe blockchain can end world hunger. However, “end” may be slightly over exaggerated.

Can this innovative technology solve food distribution problems? Yes. But ending all world hunger could be far more challenging and presents a number of political and economical issues. Why is this important?

When you begin brainstorming and developing a blockchain business, you want your use case to make business sense and be achievable. To get a list of business ideas, draw from the utilities blockchain excels at, like smart contracts, enhanced security via digital signatures and encryption, as well as management of smart assets.

2. Have The Best Fitting Consensus Mechanism

Once you have identified the type of blockchain use case you will pursue, you will need to find the best fitting consensus mechanism to deliver your solution. There is a wide variety of consensus mechanisms to consider:

  • Proof of Work (PoW)
  • Proof of Stake (PoS)
  • Practical Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (PBFT)
  • Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS)
  • Proof of Identity (PoI)
  • Proof of Burn (PoB)
  • Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET)
  • Proof of Importance

The above are only a few of the most common. The variations of each consensus mechanism, but the main aim is to ensure processes are completed as intended based on the project, or in this case, business need. You will have to decide what is the best fit for your business.

3. Build Your Blockchain Business On The Right Platform

The blockchain platform you choose often depends on the type of consensus mechanism you want to use for your business. One constant when it comes to blockchain platforms is that nearly all are open source and without cost to you. Some blockchain platforms to research are:

  • EOS
  • Ethereum
  • Rchain
  • Stellar
  • Corda
  • HydraChain
  • Hyperledger Fabric
  • Multichain
  • Openchain
  • Quorum
  • BigChainDB
  • Chain Core

Ultimately, you do want to consider functionality and the range of capabilities of a platform. A few main blockchain platform assets include, ability to customize smart contracts, scale as needed, and optimized speed of transaction.

4. How Will You Develop Nodes?

There are little intricacies you need to understand and develop when starting a blockchain business. One such intricacy is node development. For example, will your business solutions be private, like those used in cases of medical and pharmaceutical? Or will you be public? There is even a hybrid form as well.

Other node development considerations for your business include permissioned based or non-permission based solutions. Cloud or physically kept nodes is another aspect you need to think about.

5. Carefully Develop Your Blockchain Instance

This is a very important step in starting your business, because the blockchain instance you configure can sometimes not be altered after launch. These configurations include:

  • Key Management
  • Permissions
  • Asset Issuance
  • Multi-Signatures
  • Parameters
  • Key and Address Formats
  • Block Signatures

The list can go on. Be sure to take a long and hard look at configurations to your blockchain platform to ensure a smooth transition into run-time.

6. Understand APIs

There are a number of APIs you need to have in place to start your blockchain business. When choosing the blockchain platform you want to use for your business, look for pre-made and implemented APIs. However, this is not always going to be easy, so you may need to add some APIs in your own.

There are blockchain APIs for System of . . .

  • Security
  • Connectivity
  • Ownership
  • Chain Management
  • Processing
  • Unification

7. Always Look To The Future

The innovations of the future are going to be developed with blockchain technology in mind. This makes staying up-to-date in the tech coming important for your business. This will allow you to grow further and not stay stagnant in your business’ industry. Tech like AI, machine learning, big data, robotics, and more are all on the horizon for blockchain.

Wrapping Up . . .

Starting a blockchain business can be rewarding. You may be using your business to solve a major world health issue, or strengthening the security of corporations, the utility of this technology is simply endless. Use the above steps as a quick guide to get moving in the right direction.