Izertis celebrates the Designing a New Future with Blockchain event

Last Tuesday, April 2, Izertis celebrated the event "Designing a New Future with Blockchain" and, simultaneously, a hackaton, in the Impact Hub Gobernador in Madrid in collaboration with Alastria and with the sponsorship of Liferay and Bankia.

The Digital Transformation is a way to shore up the business strategy through the use of new and cutting-edge technologies, such as Blockchain.

In this sense Sheila Méndez, Director of Digital Transformation of Izertis, highlighted Blockchain’s potential: "Blockchain enables the exchange of assets of a real value between two parties. Until now, the exchange of value could not be traced, but thanks to Blockchain it can be now. This modifies all processes, many sectors and many value chains that now operate in a certain way".

There is no doubt that Blockchain is a transformative technology. "Blockchain is the new Internet, the new way of communicating, where the data ceases to be ‘something’. For this, we must analyse all processes, rethink them and reengineer processes", said Montse Guardia, General Manager of Alastria.

Currently there are many and very high expectations around Blockchain and it is clear that it is a technology that will change everything and that is here to stay.

Blockchain can be analysed from many perspectives. One of the most innovative is to analyse it from the point of view of education. Urko Larrañaga, Head of Blockchain of Izertis, said: "What we cannot do is to apply the same method of learning in all companies and in all sectors. We have to be able to know how to apply Blockchain depending on the project and on each initiative".

And there are more and more companies and institutions that are promoting and developing Blockchain projects, as is the case of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia. To facilitate the collection of taxes, in 2016 the internal use of Blockchain was raised within the administration to later extend its use to citizens and companies. "For this, we launched a public contest to find a technological partner with whom we would develop a Blockchain platform", explained Gorka Oteiza, Infrastructure Architect at Lantik. Izertis was the technological consultancy that won that contest and is now developing that platform that will be available between June and September.

On the other hand, from Alastria they want to favour the use of Blockchain in Spain and Europe. In the Alastria model the partners collaborate to build the network and the infrastructure to be able to compete later among them. It is a model of cooperation. "We have begun to work this year on interoperability, through which the different Blockchain networks can interact and integrate with each other", added Juan Luis Gozalo, DevOps Manager of Alastria.

After the presentation in which the functioning of Alastria was explained, Joaquín Cabezas, Head of Smart Apps of Izertis; Juan Gigli, Account Executive of Liferay, Inc and Daniel de Francisco, Consultant & Sofware Engineer of Liferay, made an interesting demo with apples and pears to explain a case study of Blockchain.

For his part, Richard Villaverde, Responsible for Information Systems of Capsa Food, explained how with Blockchain they are able to solve real business challenges and that affect their income statement. "There are a lot of interlocutors in the export process that make the management very complex and the information at the end is of bad quality. The challenge is to obtain a solution that allows to know the state of the conditions of supply and goods and which comply with four keys: integrated, data quality, safety and traceability of the process and this is achieved with Blockchain".

After this presentation, a networking was held in which attendees could talk and dispel their doubts with the speakers and participants in the event, after which Alberto Gómez Toribio, Blockchain & Innovation Specialist of Bankia, gave a vision of Blockchain from a financial point of view. "Blockchain is not a solution that can be applied to everything, since it serves to generate transactions", he said. He also commented that are currently companies that are being financed in a different way, through cryptocurrencies: the ISO and he added that work is being done on the regulation of this type of transactions.

Referring to these regulations, after this presentation a round table was held in which experts discussed what is the applicable legal framework in Blockchain, moderated by Felipe López, Head of Business Development of Izertis and in which participated Alejandro Gómez de la Cruz, CEO and Cofounder of Icofunding, Julián Inza, Coordinator of the Research Group "Judiciary Blockchain" and Pablo Fernández Burgueño, Lawyer and Professor specialized in Blockchain, currently working in SmartHC Comunication.

"To address the legal implications in any topic related to Blockchain, we must divide it into two: those that refer to value movements (cryptocurrency) and those that do not (traceability, digital integrity…)", explained Alejandro Gómez de la Cruz.

For his part, Pablo Fernández Burgueño, referring to the legal steps that must be followed to create a development based on Blockchain, said: "Before using a technology , it is necessary to see what regulations affect this technology and the consequences that may exist in relationship to it, so you have to make an assessment of risk and impact".

"Most of the legislation that exists is perfectly applicable to situations that are managed with Blockchain. Here apply two concepts: legislation and applicable law", said Julián Inza.

Afterwards, the projects in which the participants worked on the hackathon that was held simultaneously were presented, being the winner decided by voting. To develop these projects, the BaaS of Izertis, a node of Alastria and the Stockmind platform of Bankia were available to the participants and they also had the support of experts from Izertis. The winning project was a proof of a concept to exchange tickets for different events between users and companies. The award was the support for 6 months by the Blockchain team of Izertis.