On my fifth day playing in the cerebral playground that was SXSW, I attended three blockchain technology sessions and all three had interesting perspectives. The first, Revolutionizing Food Safety with Blockchain Technology discussed the status of food safety in the supply-side of the food chain. While blockchain technology might help, the consensus was that standardization of all the parts in the supply process was critical before large-scale adoption could take place. GS1 US, an information standards organization, has already achieved great strides in standardizations, like UPC codes on products, but there is more to be done.

Blockchain will not solve data issues or process issues, you have to solve for those first.

Lucelena Angarita, Independent Purchasing Cooperative, A SUBWAY® Franchisee Owned Organization

Blockchain’s promise of total transparency created a demand among stakeholders to have access to that transparency. Sean Leighton of Cargill explained that food safety is a non-competitive issue. If one company devises a new method that contributes to food safety, it is shared so all can use it. The panel ended on the note that there is not a clear problem to be solved for blockchain to fix. Once a problem is identified, then perhaps blockchain can be used to solve.

In his session, Healthcare and Blockchain: a Practical Introduction, John Bass of Hashed Health had a different take on blockchain technology, but he first clarified that blockchain is a spectrum of technologies that power a range of distributed networks, and what Hashed Health uses is noticeably different than what people have come to expect of blockchain. Hashed Health uses distributed ledger technology, a variant of blockchain that is not completely transparent nor decentralized.

Not everything needs to be decentralized. Not everything can be right now.

John Bass, Hashed Health

The technology must be optimized for other things like confidentiality, throughput or payload before getting into wholesale adoption of the platform. The first step is to focus on business-to-business services, refining those processes before a transition to business-to-consumer.

In the panel How to Build Something People Want, Naveen Jain and Dan Teree of Tari brought the discussion around the most fundamental key of any technological enterprise: building something people want. Innovation has been evolutionary, but there must be a reason to try to do something new as well as the time to make it.

Start with something that solves a problem for somebody.

Naveen Jain, Tari

Jain and Teree lead a team building with the Tari protocol. The first product is Big Neon, a new music ticket sales platform. The underlying structure of Big Neon can translate to other services at a later date. Teree laid down the necessary societal components to their work: build openly, build trust with every stakeholder, underpromise and overdeliver as much as possible. Even in blockchain, human-centered design is an important business ethic.

Naveen Jain gives us a quick lesson on blockchain and interoperability.