Rajat Rajbhandari - A Book About Blockchain: How Companies Can Adopt Public Blockchain to Leap into the Future

A Book About Blockchain

A Book About Blockchain

How Companies Can Adopt Public Blockchain to Leap into the Future

Rajat Rajbhandari, PhD

A Book About Blockchain: How Companies Can Adopt Public Blockchain to Leap into the Future

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2021 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-95334-938-5 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-95334-939-2 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Business Law and Corporate Risk Management Collection

Collection ISSN: 2333-6722 (print)
Collection ISSN: 2333-6730 (electronic)

Cover design by Dishebh Shrestha and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

Advanced Quotes for A Book About Blockchain

I am impressed by the deep conceptual understanding that Rajat has. In this book, he conveys to the reader a practical, down-to-earth version of blockchain with all its elements.

As a business leader, and someone who pushed the envelope in applying technology to the resources industry, I view this book as perhaps the simplest end-to-end explanation of blockchain. It is a must read for any leader/startup entrepreneur or consultant.

Ricardo Escobar (Former CIO BHP Billiton)

It is quite simply the best book about blockchain for corporate executives. It will prove invaluable to early adopting project managers, strategists, and IT professionals as corporations experiment with blockchain and digital currencies. It perfectly nails the sweet spot between breathless hype over the technologys enormous potential and a too deep technical dive.

Chris Ballinger (CEO and Founder of MOBI), Former Chief Financial Officer of Toyota Research Institute

Rajats technical understanding and real-world experience allows him to pierce the hype bubble to deliver a sober look at the promise of blockchain. This is an important book for professionals evaluating blockchain technology and its implications for their businesses.

Patrick Duffy, President of Blockchain in Transport Alliance

Description

Executives, consultants, and strategists are wondering how to participate in the blockchain economy. They are wondering whether new business models that will emerge because of this novel technology will disrupt theirs or whether they will ignore their businesses and create completely different models. In this book I attempt to answer those questions. By the time you finish, you will understand what blockchain economy is, how to participate in it, and avoid being disrupted or, even worse, ignored. Drawing from my own experiences as research scientist and entrepreneur, the book describes methods to transform existing business by using digitized trust that is industrialized at scale.

Keywords

Blockchain; trust machine; smart contract; autonomous networks; consensus mechanisms; non fungible digital tokens; cryptocurrencies; tokenized platforms; decentralized autonomous organization; crypto governance; horizontal business innovation; risk management; interoperability.

Contents

A Book About Blockchain would not have been possible without the support of my family. They shared my belief that writing this book was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a novel way to share my experience with others. They tolerated me locking myself in a room for hours during nights and weekends. The dexFreight family kept me motivated Hector Hernandez, Ricardo Escobar, Adrian Giannini, Jim Handoush, Renat Khasanshyn. Also, special thanks to Ginger Goodin, Juan Carlo Villa, Art Richards, Hector Monsegur, Chris Ballinger, Santosh Shrestha, Rana Basu, Jorge Murillo, Dominik Batz, Ocean Protocol team, MOBI team, RSK and IOV Labs team. Much of this book is a result of experiences, heated discussions, and consultations we shared. I am grateful to Ken Melendez for proofreading the manuscript and Dishebh Shrestha for an amazing cover design and to the eSatya team for sponsoring the book website. Finally, I would not have started the book if my brother-in-law and a fellow blockchain enthusiast, Ruchin Singh, had not one day said to me, Why dont you write a book about blockchain?

A Personal Preface

Dear Readers,

Are you a c-level executive, consultant, architect, strategist, program manager wondering how you can participate in the blockchain economy? Are you thinking about transforming your businesses and implementing changes in your organization? Are you wondering if new business models that will emerge because of this novel technology will disrupt yours? Or will the technology ignore your business and create completely new ones? This book answers these questions and more at a fundamental level in a way an executive can understand. By the time youve finished the book, youll understand what the blockchain economy is, how to participate in it, and avoid being disrupted or, worse, ignored. You need a playbook to not only transform but also architect your existing business into a new digital economy, the one in which trust is industrialized at scale.

This book is also about my personal journey and the challenges I faced as an entrepreneur in blockchain space. A significant portion of this book includes my own experiences as a researcher, CEO, CIO, and a startup cofounder. This book will help you short circuit the challenges I faced and remove obstacles for you early in the process of transforming your business.

I learned about blockchain in early 2013 but never bothered to inquire about it. When the first Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was hacked, in June 2016, I started to look seriously into why it was hacked. Note: to learn more about the hack, please read The DAO, the hack, the soft fork, and the hard fork published in

Unlike most people, who learned about blockchain via Bitcoin, I learned about it because of smart contracts. Back then, I was not a huge believer in Bitcoin compared with now. I did not see Bitcoin making a significant contribution to business process improvement.

I wanted to know how blockchain worked at the code level and was drawn to Andreas Antonopoulos book Mastering Bitcoin published in December 2014. The engineer in me said that I had to understand the fundamentals and go straight to the source.

I learned more, wrote code, and had long discussions with friends about the technology. In 2017 I published a report describing how blockchain will revolutionize the transportation and mobility industries. At this point I was on a roll. I was invited to dozens of events and delivered talks to several companies. I also moderated and spoke on multiple blockchain panels. I felt a sense of obligation to speak on stage at those events. Each event motivated me (and still does), giving me a sense of purpose to educate others about blockchains fundamentals and theory. I developed a passion to evangelize blockchain to groups of people at conferences and summits. In return, I learned about their pain points, blind spots in workflow, internal issues being discussed at the c-level, their concerns about challenging environments to implement blockchain, and much more.