Blockchain - A solution

In 2008, Chinese doctors were puzzled and afraid. They had no clue what was going on. Every day, the figures kept on increasing. The figures of infants having kidney stones. If you don’t know the amount of pain a kidney stone can inflict, then imagine you are walking down the road, leisurely humming a tune, and then all of a sudden a fast spinning cricket ball comes and hits you on your side. The pain was so unbearable that you let out a terrifying scream and fall to the ground, clutching the side of your abdomen. Ouch! Well, in order to give you more perspective, in a survey conducted in 2016, among 287 kidney stone patients, the patients rated the pain being very similar to childbirth. It is the closest a man will get to experiencing the pain of childbirth!

Alas, for the doctors in China to watch children as small as three-month-old falling victim to this painful disease was gut-wrenching. The worst part, they could not figure out what was wrong. Parents were going berserk. The doctors felt utterly helpless. It went on to become a national disaster making over 300,000 babies sick and even killing a few. The culprit was soon found and who was the culprit? The baby food formula. The formula which was supposed to nourish the baby was the one making the baby sick. You must be wondering, at this point, Lakshmy is just trying to spin a story out of this, however, I kid you not. The preparator of crime was the baby food formula which was contaminated with melamine – a chemical, which is used in the production of plastic. So, the children were in a way being fed plastic, in the name of nourishment and their poor kidneys couldn’t expel the melamine, forming kidney stones. How did it get in there, that is an another story altogether.

However, Imagine, if you had a baby and when you held your baby for the first time in your arms, cooed at it with the promises of the sun and the moon, the best of the worlds… and…you thought you did your best at providing the apple of your eyes the most basic requirement of nourishment, but you didn’t, you couldn’t and it wasn’t even your fault, but it felt like it was your fault. That is exactly how the Chinese parents felt. And till today its impact can be felt, as Chinese mothers are fearful and terrified when they buy baby formula. Not knowing whether they are feeding their children proteins and vitamins or poison.

This is not a one-off incident. The problem of food contamination exists worldwide. As I write this amidst the coronavirus pandemic which is gripping the world, I can give you figures that more people die of food contamination year on year than COVID-19. Even in USA, there have been cases of E.Coli and Salmonella contamination in food. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 420,000 people die annually from food contamination. And as of today, the death count of COVID-19 is 2,33,792 (I truly hope this count does not exceed. My respects to all the frontline workers and I hope we overcome this virus).

Off late, Chinese mothers have seemed to found solace in the blockchain. Yes, you read right. Blockchain. Blockchain solution offered by Techrock has assuaged the worries of Chinese Parents. After the scandal, trusting local companies was out of question, this moves the market towards foreign brands. But then again, the problem of fake products exists. Techrock is a Chinese company offering consumers to track the authenticity of the product purchased from their platform. The products shipped from overseas markets are packed with a Techrock radio-tag label which the consumers can scan to verify the authenticity of the product and trace the entire Journey of the product right from production to storage to shipping to the destined mother. As data is stored on blockchain it can be said to be immutable. 

And any guesses on the most ordered product on Techrock? 

Baby food formula.

Moving on, let us talk about blockchain. What is this technology which is providing such ground-breaking solutions? 

Blockchain was founded in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto. In simple terms, it is a technology in which data is stored on blocks and these blocks are linked to each other, thus forming the name blockchain. Blockchain works on following 4 forces:

1. Distributed ledger technology 

2. Peer to Peer network

3. Cryptographically secured Hash function.

4. Proof of Work Consensus mechanism

Blockchain is supposed to be the epitome of decentralization as it is based on distributed ledger technology and peer to peer networks. Peer to peer network means there is no central authority and distributed ledger means everyone on the network has a copy of the blockchain. Think of it as a shared Google spreadsheet document - it can be viewed by everyone.  Let’s take an example, assume you are sending money to your friend. Now, this transaction is broadcasted to the peers (other users/participants) in the network. In the traditional system, the bank which is a central authority checks your transactions. In a blockchain, the peers on the network will check your transaction and see if you have the money to send and then validate it. At this point, a new block is created with a unique Hash code. The new block also contains the hash code of the previous block and in this way, it is linked to the previous block. Therefore, each block contains the new data and the data of previous blocks. 

But what makes hash function unique from other cryptographic functions?

Hash functions are used to convert input data of any length into a compressed unique fixed-length string of characters. As we can see from the hash value below, just by changing the letter from upper case to lower case, the entire hash value has changed. 

And even if we add more data, the hash character value is fixed.

And now comes the most important concept of “proof of work” consensus mechanism. As you will remember, the peer node will validate your transaction, but why will someone do it for free? From here stems the origin of Bitcoin. On the network, the first person to validate your transaction will be rewarded with Bitcoins. Validating a block involves solving mathematical puzzles that require a lot of computational power, which in turn involves a lot of money. These peer nodes who validate blocks to earn Bitcoins are called Miners. For validation, miners have to submit the proof of work done. This is how an underlying value for Bitcoins is generated. 

All this gives the blockchain its driving force i.e. immutability. No data on the blockchain can be hacked or tampered with.   

Based on this, one of the most pivotal concepts in Blockchain was formed by Ethereum blockchain called smart contracts. In simple terms, a smart contract is a contract that executes automatically when a set of pre-determined conditions are fulfilled without any third-party intervention.  It is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. But as they are stored on a blockchain they are immutable and distributed. Both parties can trust the smart contract. 

In a way, blockchain solves the problem of trust. And this is why Chinese mothers now trust blockchain for their baby food formula. 

This ends our basics of blockchain. I hope you enjoyed reading it, I tried to make it as interesting as possible, do let me know your thoughts in the comments below!