Blockchain Advisors: The future of Blockchain Consulting
When one thinks of the word Blockchain, I’m sure a number of high-tech concepts come to mind in an overwhelming wave of technological terminology. Cryptocurrency, perhaps? Maybe even the Metaverse? The numerous applications of Blockchain are out there, but it is a little harder to visualize and implement them in existing workflows and eco-systems.
As part of the Santander Programme, I was given the opportunity to research exactly how this can be done during a 3-week internship with We Are The News (WATN), a news-based social media platform committed to Freedom of Speech, and eager to use Blockchain technology to facilitate this.
As a Blockchain advisor to WATN, my role was to construct a presentation and plan that explored how WATN could use Blockchain to further their cause towards telling the news from ‘all sides’. Fortunately, Blockchain lays the groundwork for many other types of technologies, including Non-Fungible tokens, Cryptocurrency, and digital assets. As Blockchain is effectively an immutable record of transactions, it seems to be the perfect tool to use for preserving digital content in its pure and original form regardless of local censorship regulations. It is also suitable for preventing plagiarism if used correctly. If following in the footsteps of other current notable Blockchain-based social media such as DTube, Blockchain has the power to create entire ecosystems that reward both content creators and consumers for interacting with a platform.
As part of my research, I created an NFT to illustrate what adding a level of gamification to such a user-centered platform could look like. If a user were to earn NFT badges as a result of hitting interaction milestones, both user engagement and uptake of the platform could be boosted as a result of interest in these next-gen assets. I used Mintable to gasless-ly mint a new token and push it to the Ethereum Mainnet using a smart contract. (Effectively, to publish a new digital asset (NFT) to the Ethereum Blockchain using a series of instructions and programs) and this entire process was extremely easy and straightforward. Mintable is one of few platforms that are attempting to make Blockchain more accessible to less tech-savvy audiences, and we are all here for it.
The most interesting part of the placement was developing my understanding of Blockchain, which by now we have seen to be a very powerful technology that is beginning to migrate the internet from the Web2 world of “Read and Write” to the Web3 world of “Read, Write and Own”. The technology is already very much in use within Healthcare, Real-Estate, and Automotion. It is only a matter of time before other industries begin to pick up on its versatile applications and induct them into their own workflows.
This experience has taught me that the era of Web3 isn’t as far off as we think, and I am already looking forward to roles in the future that allow more IT professionals to enter this world. Blockchain Engineers are already in very high demand, however Blockchain advisors and consultants are very necessary to bridge the gap between concept and execution. It is important to have an understanding of whether Blockchain is even a feasible technology to adopt at the current stage of any organization, given it can be a heavy financial investment with large technical overhead and little documentation.
Before I send everyone off to explore the world of Blockchain and Web3, I would like to thank Jade Taussig who led me through the program with energy and enthusiasm every time we remotely met. I hope to see some of the ideas that we explored, being used within WATN in the future. Additionally, I would like to thank Santander and Royal Holloway, University of London for the opportunity to develop my knowledge of and interest in such a promising technology at such an early stage of its worldwide adoption. Let’s see what the next few years have to offer for the world of Blockchain!
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