Kelvin Kinyua (Technical Consultant at Techno Brain) engages Whoopie Wanja (APT, Major) during the Blockchain Developers Workshop at the Science Center on Friday, July 19.PHOTO: Diana Meso

By Paula Musuva and Diana Meso.

On Friday, July 19, the ICT club hosted the Hyperledger Nairobi meetup at the Science Center to discuss blockchain technologies, where participants were introduced and assisted to develop and test blockchain applications on the open source Hyperledger environment.

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology.

Blockchain applications are revolutionizing how businesses operate by protecting them from fraudulent transactions and costly middlemen and protecting customers’ data and tracking the authenticity of products they consume.

A blockchain is a data structure that provides a ledger for recording transactions that involve the exchange of assets. The ledger works like the books of accounts which record financial transactions in a business and it is distributed (not stored on one server) on a peer peer-to-peer network making it difficult to compromise it at one location.

Blockchain is unique because it is immutable, in that, once a transaction is validated by the participants and recorded on the blockchain it cannot be modified thereafter. Immutability of records, authenticity of participants and data protection enforced using strong cryptographic algorithms gives blockchain a high degree of trust and people believe that it is a true reflection of the history of assets and all valid transactions performed on the assets.

Some of the industries that are being transformed by the use of blockchain-based applications include:

• Supply Chain Management: Businesses can trace produce from source, through the value-add chain, to the end product and even track how they are transported to the end consumer.
• Retail: Consumers can validate the authenticity of the products they consume to ensure they are truly manufactured by the vendor and are not counterfeit. A simple application running on their phone can scan the product and they can get a notification that truly verifies if the product is genuine or counterfeit
• Healthcare: Benefits of using blockchain applications in healthcare come from protection of health-care records, addressing insurance fraud, identification of counterfeit products and also removal of middlemen and protection of the supply chain.
• Voting: During elections, votes can be cast onto a blockchain that prevents tampering and ensures that votes can be verified on a real-time basis giving transparency of the whole process
• Real Estate: Various types of real estate assets such as parcels of land, houses or buildings can be digitized on a blockchain to capture their properties and verify their ownership before any transactions. Also, all historical transfers of the real estate can be verified to ensure transparency and prevent fraudulent exchange.

Hyperledger Nairobi will be hosting the next coding meetup on Saturday, July 27 at the IBM offices located on the 4^th floor of The Atrium Building off Chaka Road. Interested candidates can sign up through https://www.meetup.com/Hyperledger-Nairobi/events/zrtqtqyzkbkc/