BENGALURU: The Blockchain Technology Hackathon that took place on Friday had five use cases that teams had to work on. These were namely - cross domain multi-stakeholder decision making; tracing the chain of custody of agricultural/ horticultural/ forest produce; identity ownership management; incidence based payment systems and real-time record maintenance
Ganesh Prasad Kumble who works in a city-based tech firm is an ardent believer in the digital economy. One of the many participants at the hackathon, he was working on the identity ownership use case. He says, “Look at an identity management system such as the Aadhar. Although it is your data, other agencies are handling it. The administration and governance of data is an issue especially with numerous reports of data breaches.
The ownership of your data should reside with you. Although there are concepts such as digital lockers, ultimately the authority that manages such lockers are also third parties,” he says. With blockchain technology however, Ganesh says that a “mathematically unique id” is created that can be used only by that person who has created the id and the person who has has been given permission to access the data. “When you give your identity to a telecom company, chances are that it is also being shared to other entities such as insurance companies or banks who then bombard you with ads. With blockchain identity however one can access share only a subset of data and only once. One cannot duplicate the data without one’s permission,” adds Ganesh.
A mentor at the hackathon also highlighted how blockchain technology can also be used in fields such as agriculture, horticulture, “For example in case of distributing seeds, an entire supply chain can be set up that will factor in things like the quantity of seeds to be distributed to different farmers, geographic factors that needs to be thought about while engaging in such exercise, etc. At the lowest level it is possible to establish such mechanisms,” says the mentor.
A number of students, working professionals, tech enthusiasts participated in the hackathon. While the IPs (intellectual) will be the property of the participants, it is to be seen how the Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science and Technology, will further use concepts developed at the hackathon.