A recent article in Water Technology Online looked at using the capabilities of blockchain to standardise water purity. The article piqued our interest as it validates certain areas of our platform development within FALKOR.
As a first fundamental point, it describes how underlying blockchain technology is being used for the big noise areas of cryptocurrencies and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). For these, it ensures there are no inaccuracies, and all transactions are tracked and validated. Therefore, the argument is that these capabilities can definitely be applied to other use cases – such as water purity.
This thinking is very similar to the fledgling thoughts we had about our platform. For example, we didn’t want to be directly involved in cryptocurrencies or tokens, however given the capabilities being proven in these areas we wanted to see how the same capability could be applied to other areas.
The initial areas of application for us at ByzGen, was making data the object of the transactions, and then being able to have scalable and trusted data exchanges created for collaboration environments.
As an enhancement to this we’ve also started looking at private and controlled minting and exchanges of tokens to coexist with the data exchange layer. This is less about public cryptocurrencies right now, and more about using the capabilities of the underlying technology to control the minting of tokens and validate the exchange of them (for example we’ve been involved in the use of carbon credits as rewards). These private tokens could later be transferred for use on the public cryptocurrency exchanges if required.
In the area of trusted data exchanges the Water Technology Online article brings out some important points. We’ve seen many examples where our platform can be used to accelerate collaboration by providing controlled and secure exchanges of data between parties. Like the sharing of new scientific research to solve challenges, and manufacturing data from SMEs working in supply chains that can be used to enhance efficiency. When parties are confident in sharing their data or research, the benefit is that it can be used to accelerate or enhance outputs overall.
The article also mentions Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We’ve seen use cases where they enhance the collaboration environment if the models themselves can be tracked, worked on by different parties, and shared wider in a collaborative way. For example in healthcare there may be models used by one NHS trust that can identify certain properties on an X-ray image. Instead of needing to transfer the image itself, it would be the model that is transferred to another trust. This is why our platform is agnostic to the type of data being transacted, and any kind of data can be the object of transactions on the blockchain.
Having the data and models transacted like this, means there’s data to feed these models. They then become enhanced and can be used more widely. The article validates this by talking about the AI regulated water purification systems, which are enhanced by data being passed into them, and in turn they become more impactful.
Another area discussed in the article is the triggering of notifications when an event is seen by the blockchain. The example given, is when an impurity is detected in a water source. If this happens, all necessary parties are then flagged so they can help solve the issue.
This is relevant to the blockchain event listener and brokerage framework our platform FALKOR provides. We are listening to any number of events on the blockchain, and the framework can then pump those events into a broker service that can be used for parties to subscribe to – with notifications then sent when needed. Events can also be used to search within blockchain transacted data in a generic way.
Standardisation is a further topic discussed. Relative to this, our platform has been used to validate, against a set of rules, the data before it is transacted to the blockchain. So we can hold any number of rules as logic on the blockchain and automatically apply and validate against those rules when the data is added. This means that standards of data format or type, have to be met before the data is transacted. We’ve seen this required particularly in regulated sectors, where a standard way to submit data helps the efficiency and proving of regulatory reporting, like MIFID (a legislative framework instituted by the European Union) and ESG (disclosure of environmental, social, and corporate governance data).
Overall the article, and what we’re doing with FALKOR, points out a valid use for blockchain technology in yet another new area. And helps validate the areas we’ve already been pointing our platform in.
If the capabilities of FALKOR mentioned here have made you curious, let us know. We’re happy to discuss how it could work for you and your business.
