Blockchains Untangled: 
Public, Private, Smart Contracts, Applications, Issues
C. Mohan
IBM Almaden Research Center 
San Jose, CA 95120, USA 
@seemohan http://bit.ly/CMbcDB

27 de agosto, segunda-feira, às 10:40 h.
Local: Auditório Roxinho (em frente ao NCE)
Centro de Ciências Matemáticas e Natureza
Avenida Athos da Silveira Ramos, 274
Cidade Universitária – Ilha do Fundão

The concept of a distributed ledger was invented as the underlying technology of the public or permissionless Bitcoin cryptocurrency network. But the adoption and further adaptation of it for use in the private or permissioned environments is what I consider to be of practical consequence and hence only such private blockchain systems will be the focus of this talk.
Computer companies like IBM, Intel, Oracle, Baidu and Microsoft, and many key players in different vertical industry segments have recognized the applicability of blockchains in environments other than cryptocurrencies. IBM did some pioneering work by architecting and implementing Fabric, and then open sourcing it. Now Fabric is being enhanced via the Hyperledger Consortium as part of The Linux Foundation. A couple of the other efforts include Enterprise Ethereum, Sawtooth and R3 Corda.

While currently there is no standard in the private blockchain space, all the ongoing efforts involve some combination of database, transaction, encryption, virtualization, consensus and other distributed systems technologies. Some of the application areas in which blockchain pilots are being carried out are: smart contracts, derivatives processing, e-governance, Know Your Customer (KYC), healthcare, supply chain management and provenance management.

In this talk, I will describe some use-case scenarios, especially those in production deployment. I will also survey the landscape of private blockchain systems with respect to their architectures in general and their approaches to some specific technical areas. I will also discuss some of the opportunities that exist and the challenges that need to be addressed. Since most of the blockchain efforts are still in a nascent state, the time is right for mainstream database and distributed systems researchers and practitioners to get more deeply involved to focus on the numerous open problems.

Extensive blockchain related collateral can be found at http://bit.ly/CMbcDB

Bio: Dr. C. Mohan joined IBM Almaden Research Center (San Jose, California) in 1981 where he worked until May 2006 on a number of topics in the areas of database, workflow and transaction management. From June 2006, he worked as the IBM India Chief Scientist, based in Bangalore, with responsibilities that relate to serving as the executive technical leader of IBM India within and outside IBM. In February 2009, at the end of his India assignment, Mohan resumed his research activities at IBM Almaden. Mohan is the primary inventor of the ARIES family of database recovery and concurrency control methods, and the industry-standard Presumed Abort commit protocol. He was named an IBM Fellow, IBM’s highest technical position, in 1997 for being recognized worldwide as a leading innovator in transaction management. In 2009, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He received the 1996 ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. In 2002, he was named an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, he was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the widespread commercial, academic and research impact of his ARIES work which has been extensively covered in textbooks and university courses. From IBM, Mohan has received 2 Corporate and 8 Outstanding Innovation/Technical Achievement Awards. He is an inventor on 50 patents and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997. Mohan works very closely with numerous IBM product and research groups, and his research results are implemented in numerous IBM and non-IBM prototypes and products like DB2, MQSeries, WebSphere, Informix, Cloudscape, Lotus Notes, Microsoft SQLServer and System Z Parallel Sysplex. He is currently focused on Blockchain, Big Data and HTAP technologies (http://bit.ly/CMbcDB, http://bit.ly/CMgMDS). Since August 2016, he has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University. He has been on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum and has been an editor of VLDB Journal, and Distributed and Parallel Databases. He is currently a member of the Academy Leadership Team of the IBM Academy of Technology. In the past, he has been a member of IBM’s Research Management Council (RMC), IBM’s Technical Leadership Team (TLT), IBM India’s Senior Leadership Team, the Bharti Technical Advisory Council, the Academic Senate of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore and the Steering Council of IBM’s Software Group Architecture Board. Mohan received his PhD in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. In 2003, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras from which he received a B.Tech. in chemical engineering in 1977. Mohan is a frequent speaker in North America, Europe and India, and has given talks in 40 countries. He is very active on social media and has a huge following. More information can be found in the Wikipedia page at http://bit.ly/CMwIkP