A note to readers: as a technical professional, discussing technology in non-technical terms is, as you will appreciate, complex; moreover, precision is sometimes necessary to avoid being overly approximate. I will therefore try to simplify the work I carried out for my thesis, so that it is accessible to a broad audience. I hope you will forgive me, however, if – through professional habit or necessity – I occasionally use excessively technical language.
More than 83 million wallets are currently active worldwide, an increase of over 70 million since 2016: a significant figure that reflects the exponential growth in the popularity of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies over the past decade.
Bitcoin and Ethereum (among the best-known cryptocurrencies) have exceeded their all-time highs several times, reaching values of 69,044.77 and 4,878.26 dollars per unit respectively.
Anche la Blockchain has also gained a certain degree of recognition as a technology on which to base the development of new applications: according to Find- stack.com, there are currently more than 4,000 dApps (Decentralized Applications) in operation, with over 96,000 active users every day. This represents a significant level of interest.
What is Blockchain?
We recognise that it is neither simple nor immediate to understand how such complex technologies work and what their scope is, particularly for those with little familiarity with the subject. Let us therefore take a step back and use the next few lines to explain the subject of this article more clearly.
A Blockchain is a shared, immutable data structure. It is, in effect, a digital ledger, whose entries are grouped into blocks linked in chronological order and whose integrity is guaranteed through the use of cryptography.
Its size is dynamic, and is expected to grow over time; its content, once written through a regulated process, can neither be modified nor deleted, unless the entire process is invalidated.
Blockchain for children
It is said that, to explain something clearly to those who are not yet familiar with it, we should imagine explaining it to a child.
So, in the simplest and inevitably very reductive terms, if we had to explain Blockchain to a ten-year-old, we would probably describe it like this:
imagine you are in a classroom of pupils, where each child has a pencil case of felt-tip pens to trade. All trades are recorded by the class representatives (known to those in the field as “miners”) on a large blackboard that the other pupils can also see. In return for their work, the miners are paid by the pupil giving away their felt-tip pens, who gives them some of those pens.
However, only a permanent marker can be used on the blackboard, so the text can be neither erased nor altered. We will therefore always know exactly how many felt-tip pens each child has.
This, in essence, is how the Blockchain works.
Blockchain: practical applications
Although work on Blockchain technology is currently generating considerable interest, most of its use by users is purely speculative. When my company supervisor and I assessed my thesis project, we instead set ourselves the objective of addressing real-world problems.
I was nearing the end of my formal education, at least, and, in addition to technical skills, over the previous three years I had developed a good ability to navigate the jungle of university life. Where else could I start, then, if not from my own direct experience?
Using the Ethereum Blockchain – the first to support what are known as smart contracts (actual processes that run) – we set ourselves the goal of reimagining that ecosystem through a dApp that would enable students and universities to carry out standard routine operations more efficiently: registering for exams, recording grades, lending books and much more.
The University Blockchain System project
For those readers with a particular interest in the subject, a brief clarification is required. The application in question simulates a system based on a permissioned Blockchain (a closed-network structure with limited decentralisation, an additional access control layer and designated entities), but for simplicity it was developed on a permissionless Blockchain: Ethereum, specifically.
For the project to avoid failure, it needed to be easy to access and ready for immediate use. We therefore had to consider providing quick access from a smartphone.
The University Blockchain System project was developed with two web portals, one for universities and one for students, and a mobile application for students only.
A brief example of what the interface looked like:
The architecture of the project differs considerably from the Web 2.0 standard (the internet before Blockchain, to put it simply), where what is stored in the database is treated as the absolute truth. Here, however, the Blockchain is the main actor, serving as the primary data repository for data stored within smart contracts.
The new source, therefore, is no longer static, but evolves and changes autonomously.
The database instead plays a significantly less important role: storing only the data that simplifies interaction with the Blockchain.
app screenUniversity Blockchain System: accessing the System
Now that you have a broad overview of the project, it is time to take a closer look at how it works. We will start at the beginning of the user journey: accessing the portal.
Although usernames and passwords are currently the standard for access, University Blockchain System completely does away with them in favour of an approach that, in our view, is more secure.
The key to accessing the site is a wallet. To clarify straight away, this is essentially a key pair, one public and one private, which distinguishes each user from all the others and stores their data. Remember the story about the children? The wallet is the pencil case containing the felt-tip pens that each of them has.
University Blockchain System Crypto
When we talk about Blockchain, it is difficult to avoid the concept of Crypto; it will therefore come as no surprise that this was also the case here: an essential asset in the development of University Blockchain System.
Returning to the metaphor from a few paragraphs earlier, crypto would be precisely what is exchanged and what actually sets the process we have described in motion: the marker pens themselves.
Dedicated cryptocurrencies have been created for both students and universities, with entirely different purposes.
For universities, this mainly involved coding a governance cryptocurrency that allowed users to carry out transactions through smart contracts only if they held Unitoken.
For students, however, the process was somewhat more complex: the cryptocurrency StudentToken was based on a fully developed tokenomics system (a purpose-built economic ecosystem), allowing both access to services and the exchange of coins.
NFTs and library loans
The final element we will discuss here, and another essential asset for the application to function, was the use of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). In this case, we are not referring to virtual currencies, but to non-fungible digital assets, which may be unique or exist in multiple copies.
A distinctive feature of NFTs is that they can have data associated with them in the form of images, PDFs and audio files; this has made them a rapidly expanding product – or rather, one that is now firmly established – in the art and music markets, as well as a major source of revenue for the fashion industry. If you have not already done so, we recommend taking a brief look around the Web to discover the best-selling NFTs and the corresponding figures: this will give you at least some idea of the possibilities associated with Tokens.
In the University Blockchain System project, NFTs were used as substitutes for everything in a student's life that would usually have a tangible format, such as library books or a student record book.
So, how does a library loan work in an IT ecosystem? In a fairly intuitive way: digital books can be borrowed by registered users through their account and the temporary deposit of StudentToken (which are returned when the book is returned).
Some conclusions in retrospect
Now that we have outlined the main elements of the project and, above all, how Blockchain was applied, we can make a brief assessment of the pros and cons that need to be considered when working with this type of technology (or at least those that I personally encountered and sometimes struggled with).
Advantages:
- Transparency and non-repudiation of data (resulting in greater control);
- Very difficult to compromise and, consequently, greater security;
- High accessibility.
Cons:
- Volatility in the price of coins and transaction costs;
- Waiting times for block validation and writing are, for now, still too long for this technology to be used in real time.
In conclusion, there is still a considerable amount of work to be done to address what are currently shortcomings. However, with some imagination and a great deal of expertise, Blockchain can provide a practical solution (and a very effective one) to common problems. After all, is this not precisely the purpose of technology: to make our lives easier?
