Why Blockchain Is the Fourth Industrial Revolution

John Monarch, CEO of Shipchain, said that the majority of people in the world are employed in the logistics industry. He believes that due to the constant expanding of this sector, it requires innovations. This is why what are now happening with blockchain technology may be called the fourth industrial revolution. 

Monarch told Cointelegraph:

"Connected devices revolving around the Internet of Everything (IoE) need a higher level of security. Blockchain technology is a matchless solution in this regard because it provides the best protection through distributed ledgers, advanced encryption, smart-contracts and reduced intermediaries. As a result, this will tackle corruption, ransomware, theft, premium-fees and tracking issues."

He believes that if blockchain-based networks will be implemented into the mass market, it may save the international trade industry $50 billion a year. And if the technology will be implemented even deeper, then hypothetical savings may be more than $500 billion a year.

Bitland CEO Christopher Bates explains that one of the main main issues of the supply chain is the exact information about when an owner of a piece of property was changed.

Bates exemplified his thought to Cointelegraph using car's history:

"It is pretty important to know if a car has been in a major accident and has frame/structural damage. If there was an immutable accessible record that kept track of the car history, there would be no way a car salesman could sell a car that had been extremely damaged."

He also explained that the sphere of ownership of land also has many problems, that can be fixed with blockchain technology. One of the biggest issues is that a piece of land may be sold to more than one person, when an owner makes deals with multiple buyers, however only one deal (if any) is legitimate. In some regions or countries, property records are written on paper or are tracked by a single person, which makes impossible to identify the true owner and creates opportunities for frauds to manipulate the records to deceive potential buyers. 

Blockchain technology might become a solution of this issue, since a constant control over who is the real owner of a piece of property at a particular time may be realized with the use of this technology.

There are also courier services that track parcels along their route, but these tracking methods are far from being perfect.

Bates told Cointelegraph:

"The issue therein is that since they are mutable, shipment records can be hidden or erased completely to the detriment of the people at large. Governments are able to hide their black budget spending by erasing shipping records or preventing records from being issued at all."

Blockchain technology has the potential to combine the control over supply chains with the transparency of unchangeable record-keeping. This may create an ecosystem, where all malicious participants would not be able to manipulate, because this system would be fully transparent.