Trust is in decline everywhere you look. Multiple studies have shown an ongoing decline in trust between people and governments, NGOs, media and corporations for a number of years. In a recent global study, when consumers were asked about their expectations of a company CEO they overwhelmingly prioritised ‘ensuring trust’ over all other factors, including the quality of products and services.

Trust is the foundation of commerce and a critical factor in building strong brands, yet it’s at an all-time low. The internet is in some ways partially to blame for this implosion of trust but, as is often the case, technology is both the problem and the solution. The next generation of internet technologies is already gestating and is based on blockchain technologies – technologies that will hopefully start to rebuild trust in our institutions, precisely because they are more ‘trust-less’.

A blockchain is simply a digital ledger, a record of transactions and data. The clever part is when these digital ledgers are public, decentralised and permission-less, which means there’s no central authority that has the power to change transactions and data within the ledger. Bitcoin is a good example of a decentralised permission-less ledger. Nobody owns bitcoin and, due to the difficulty involved in the blockchain’s cryptography and the power required to mine a block, it’s currently impossible to change records on the bitcoin blockchain. The bitcoin ledger is immutable.

So what’s the connection with trust? Well, blockchain technologies and these immutable ledgers are now being applied to many industries where trust is a factor in value exchange and value creation. From supply chain integrity to social media, finance and artificial intelligence, there are hundreds of blockchain projects being worked on right now by the next wave of disruptive startups with trust at the core.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.hallandpartners.com