60 FUTURESHOCK Blockchain
Tom Bollich, CTO of MadHive, says OTT advertising needs a rethink. Could blockchain technology be the solution? Words by Neal Romanek BLOCK PARTY
his technology will definitely change the world, completely,” says Tom Bollich, CTO of MadHive. Part of the founding team of Zynga,
Bollich values independence as one of the key lures of blockchain technology. It’s very diicult to monopolise control over it its shared information ecosystem. “It was great for us at Zynga to build on top of the Facebook ecosystem. It was great, until Facebook turned it o. But with blockchain you have an ecosystem that can’t just be turned o.” Bollich points out that the Internet was around for 20 years, with not many people using it. But when TCP/IP became the established protocol in 1983, there was a sea change that allowed for an entirely new and eicient way of exchanging information and the World Wide Web was born. But the TCP/IP technology has evolved in such a way that it tends to put the large players – Amazon, Google, Netflix etc – at the centre. How often, after all do we look beyond the first few returns of a Google search – let alone the first few pages? Who-owns-what is the key principle that drives control and revenue on the Internet as we see it today, and most of the attention on the Internet is controlled by a few players. Bollich envisions a new blockchain- enabled ecosystem which will allow a decentralised, and privacy-centric, Internet to evolve. “Blockchain allows you to store code and data in a protocol that nobody owns. It’s a little bit like crowd computing, but it’s sitting above merely running on people’s computers. “Blockchain and bitcoin were the first time you were able to give one of something over the Internet,” explains Bollich. “Before blockchain it wasn’t possible, unless you went through an intermediary, like a bank or a company. If you needed to send one thing, you went to a supposedly trusted source, and then they sent that thing. Now using blockchain, I can send you one bitcoin
who brought games like Farmville to a little social platform called Facebook in its early growth phase, Bollich is now a partner in MadHive, another venture riding the wave of new Internet technologies. Based in New York, with oices scheduled to open in Omsk, Russia, the company aims to use blockchain technology to transform the world of advertising. ‘Blockchain’ is a term starting to appear more frequently in headlines, but few people really understand it. And those that think they do quickly realise they don’t once they try explaining it to someone else. So here’s our stab at it: At its most basic, blockchain is a way of accounting over the Internet using a decentralised ledger. So far it has mostly been used for moving wealth around – primarily in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The record ‘blocks’ in a blockchain system are encrypted and are very resistant to being manipulated or hacked. Blockchain combines both privacy and verifiability. Those with an analogue mindset might imagine a colossal blackboard where transactions are chalked up and we all get to see that blackboard, no matter where we are. In a world increasingly confused about what is fact and what is fake, blockchain seems to oer ways of storing data that are verifiable universally.
TOM BOLLICH: CTO of MadHive, Tom thinks that blockchain oers significant opportunities for advertising
THIS TECHNOLOGY WILL DEFINITELY CHANGE THE WORLD , COMPLETELY
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