DC Blockchain Summit “One Block at a Time: Taking Steps Towards a DLT-Based Financial System”. Lanxi He, Research Analyst Intern, Creative Investment. Georgetown University
On
March 6th - 7th, the leading blockchain companies,
enterprise executives and policymakers were at Georgetown University to discuss key policy issues having
an impact on the industry at the Fourth Annual DC Blockchain Summit. Chamber of
Digital Commerce members from more than 20 countries participated in the event
and demonstrated how blockchain can potentially expand economic prosperity through trade
finance, digital identity solutions, food supply chain management, health care,
and many others sectors.
In the session “One Block at a Time: Taking Steps Towards a
DLT-Based Financial System”, panelists talked about how to use blockchain in
financial services like payments processing and using blockchain to improve business processes in financial services.
DLT (distributedledger technology) can record the transfer of assets. Transactions and their details are recorded in multiple places at the same
time. DTL is a digital system which is different from traditional databases,
since distributed ledgers have no central data store or administrative functionality. They can be used to record static data, such as registry information, and to store dynamic data.
Blockchain, the best-known type of distributed ledger technology, bundles transactions into blocks that are chained together, and then broadcast to the nodes on the network. As one of the speakers mentioned, blockchain can be used
in financial service to speed transactions, reduce costs of transactions
and provide a much more secure and transparent way for transactions to be recorded. This system may be more difficult to manipulate or
successfully attack and can be witnessed across a network. The panelists also
discussed the positive impact of blockchain technology and mentioned they thought that Blockchain technology would have an impact on every major area of
business.
By
the conclusion of the session, the panel gave me a better understanding of how
blockchain technology is used in financial systems. The DC Blockchain Summit gave me a
good opportunity to learn about policies that impact industries via the blockchain
application.