The magical spreadsheet in the sky
(how we learned to trust in blockchain)
Trust, but verify — Russian Proverb
We’ve been busy at Kraken, we’ve built what we think is the world’s first blockchain enabled engineering information management platform. That statement is dripping with hype but we don’t think it’s hyperbole because we haven’t seen another one.
It’s fair to say that’s there’s probably a bit of hype around blockchain. Mention it to most people it conjures up images of Bitcoin, dangerous bubbles or the dark web.
Like most things cruising the hype cycle, they’re hyped for a reason and once you get to the heart of it and dig into what it really is you can start to get the point. Sadly it won’t do a lot of things that people claim, it’s not a digital unicorn that will make everything right, it won’t solve world hunger. In fact, there’s a good argument that its a slower, worse performing, expensive, energy hungry database.
Yet we chose to build a product that uses it.
But first of all, a brief primer on what the blockchain is. This is hugely simplified, so I’ll include further reading at the bottom if you want to know more.
Super Simple Blockchain
What is it though? Well, obviously it’s a distributed transaction ledger secured by cryptographic links. I will concede that isn’t really that useful a description to the majority of people. So I’ll try again.
My favourite ‘explain it like I’m five’ version is:
It’s a spreadsheet in the sky that everyone has a copy of.
Except actually it’s lots and lots of spreadsheets in the sky that are all joined together. Blockchain is a record of transactions, in this analogy a ledger (aka block) is one of the spreadsheets. The contents of each of those blocks is then added together using some really hard sums (cryptographic hash). When the block gets filled the result of that sum is added to the next new block to create a link (aka a chain). Add your blocks together in a chain and you get your block-chain, geddit?
Everyone can have a copy of these transactions, they are in the sky (or more accurately, distributed/decentralised). If you have permission to make that change or transaction then your changes get added to the ledger and everyone gets informed what the new state of the data is.
The beauty is, the old recorded state of the data doesn’t go anywhere, you just get a historical record of the data at all the points changes are made. If you want to change or corrupt that historical ledger you also need to corrupt 51% of the parties involved to get a consensus. Which, is much harder than corrupting one central record keeper.
Once the data is recorded this makes it really hard to change the record, not impossible, but for all practical purposes this makes blockchain transactions immutable (or unchanging).
Or just think of it as: a magical carved in stone spreadsheets in the sky joined together using the force.
The first conceptualisation of blockchain was a core concept of recording the transactions of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. It hasn’t taken long to realise that you can record all sorts of other transactions too.
Super Powerful Trust
The really exciting part of blockchain is actually what it lets you do, which is trust. You can trust because you can verify. If you can anchor and record your transactions (any digital exchange of data) to a blockchain then you can be part of the spreadsheet in the sky.
Blockchain technology offers a new, elegant and secure way for our users to track and trace the provenance and integrity of their data, there are huge numbers of models, components and documents that make up an engineering project whose authenticity you can verify.
We use the blockchain to permanently record the changes to your engineering data and documents, when they are shared or added to by external collaborators, (such as vendors or contractors), time-stamping data and making it so it cannot be changed or tampered with. Changes that are made are added to the record and you can see what they are and when they were added. You get a digital audit trail.
You can stop doubting authenticity, records are permanently linked, so no one can ever tamper with or forge a record on their own; and these records can be checked by any party, at any time. It is super powerful trust.
If you work in Oil & Gas, Nuclear, Utilities, Renewables or any construction sector, you’ll be familiar with transmittals: the formal dispatch of documents, drawings datasheets etc along with data about them, time, revision, status.
Transmittals are contractual and management-of -change necessity. In the event of a dispute the transmittal is fallen back on to prove who sent what and when. Imagine what the world spends on transmittals, the transaction costs, the time to prepare them and all the effort that goes into them?
Now we automatically create that formal dispatch for both your data and documents, except its now just part of the process, you get all the good stuff that the transmittal gives you, without the overhead and cost, we do the heavy lifting and you don’t even need us to check on it.
If you think how long it takes to build something, your plant or platform then it’s probably good that you can trust the data about it for a long time.
Whether you are a CFIHOS project or BIM we can give you a record of the digital data that’s collected, when it was added to, changed, approved or received and we give you the ability to go back and check its integrity after the event.
Part of the reason, in our experience, that our industry has struggled to move away from a document-centric to a data-centric approach is that a document feels like a solid thing that you can refer back to. A bit like having a £10, €10 or $10 note in your hand. So in the same way Bitcoin changed the way we transact with money we want to change the way we transact with engineering and construction data and bring that trust.
Basically what we are trying to achieve is that trust in your data in the same way you trust in a document by having something solid that you can refer back to.
We’re really big on how we want to create trust in your data and now we’re creating more. Best of all we’re just getting started, compliance and MOC are our first steps, trusted records, identity, and transactions are where we’re at now and improving all these to drive down cost and improve trust.
Next, we want to change how contracts are driven, extend that trust to your physical equipment and supply chain and more, so watch this space.
If you’d like to see how we can give you more trust in your data then drop us a line.
Further Reading
The super simple blockchain guide above is designed to be just that, and some things have a more nuanced reality or are are really simplified for the sake of brevity. We’d be happy to go into more detail if you want to talk to us though.
If you want to know more then these are some excellent primers:
