Future Technology: AI-enabled Blockchain

Nowadays, blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the two hottest topics to discuss. Both technologies have their issues and challenges to face but researchers and developers have been rolling out to find the solutions by combining AI with blockchain technology.

If these technologies are applied together, there will be a new era of the digital world. Blockchain technology was introduced with the creation of Bitcoin. After that, various blockchain networks came but none of them were able to fully adopt an advanced AI into the blockchain network. 

Some of the projects have claimed that they have created AI-powered blockchain technology but in reality, such news is mostly the hype for the fundraising process through ICO.

To have a highly functional AI-powered blockchain to solve so many challenges of the current blockchain networks, we might still wait a few years. It is said Microsoft is also working to bring such AI-enabled blockchain shortly and Microsoft is also using blockchain solutions for various purposes to bring the results quickly for the users. It’s about Microsoft but there can be other bigger companies to work in a similar field.  

So, this article attempts to cover what would happen once blockchain meets with AI.

The blockchain is based on the distributed ledger technology (DLT). Data can be stored in the distributed ledgers to form an immutable database that is better than the centralized servers to prevent notorious problems like a single-point failure.

There are different types of blockchain networks but mainly, private blockchains are for the invited and known participants but public networks are for everyone. Strong blockchain networks use advanced encryption to ensure the protection of data stored in each block. There are so many advantages of blockchain technology.

Some of them are as follows:

• Blockchain provides high security by forming an irreversibly recorded database.
• Not only the records of the financial transactions, blockchain technology can be used to store virtually anything with value.
• Blockchain technology has made things possible to maintain transparency as the data can be stored in different locations (Each participating node can see the stored data).
• The instant traceability features of the blockchain can help to provide proof for the digital data ownership, details of the products, transaction records, and many more. 
• Increased efficiency and speed of the blockchain helps so many industries to get results very quickly. 
• A smart contract of a blockchain is an automated system that allows so many operations to complete automatically.

Despite the so many advantages of blockchain technology, there are still so many issues and challenges to face. Such challenges are affecting the global adoption of blockchain technology.

Challenges of the Blockchain Technology:

• It is true, blockchain technology has not gone for the mainstream adoption trend. There are some issues and challenges. 
• Scalability is one of the major problems of most blockchain networks now. 
• Current centralization-prone consensus protocols.
• Privacy is another concern. Transaction records are available for everyone. There is the risk, attackers can analyze the transaction patterns to reach the real users.
• Complex to understand and adopt the blockchains for the real-life use-cases.
• Big data inadequacies: As we know, each block of a blockchain has a limited capacity to store the specific data in a different format (Mostly in the txt format). Some blockchain networks have implemented the function to share arbitrary data but it is not enough to fulfill future demands. 
• High latency and blockchain overhead have always been the problem. As more computers are connected to the network to perform the different operations, more nodes are needed to sync the data.

What would happen if AI and Blockchain come together?

Decentralized blockchain networks still have human intervention in various roles like transaction mining, producing the new blocks, including the new transactions into the new blocks, and running the validator nodes, etc.

In absence of human intelligence, AI acts to do things effectively and accurately with higher efficiency. AI itself can be categorized as centralized and decentralized AI.

In the future, both sorts of AI can be used in the different blockchain networks to solve the above problems. Instead of human intervention, AI will be there to solve the problem to keep the blockchain highly effective. 

Machine learning is also a part of AI and a well-managed larger dataset can help to form a better AI for blockchain technology. It is true, so many experts should get rolled out to construct a high-quality AI for its effectiveness. Microsoft is also working to decentralize AI by creating a machine learning model for blockchain technology i.e. Sharing Updatable Models (SUM) on Blockchain.

Figure: Sharing Updatable Models (SUM) on Blockchain

On the other hand, blockchain is famous for ensuring the reliability of data by sharing data securely to a distributed ledger before the AI ​​assists blockchain in extracts insights before validating the data. There is already progress to create AI but mostly, projects have designed such AI for their purposes and mostly they are centralized.

Due to a lack of resources and availability, the benefits of AI have not been available for a larger number of users around the world. In the future, we expect decentralized AI-powered blockchain networks for everyone.

It sounds very good for Artificial Intelligence (AI) but there are still some potential challenges to be faced by AI:

• High computing power is needed for the algorithm of AI and obviously, a normal computer will not be enough to power up the algorithm.
• AI works according to the pre-managed datasets and it may have an issue with explainability.
• Privacy & trustworthiness.
• Complexities to implement some products.
• Implementing AI technologies is not cheaper so cost fact is also needed to consider here.
• Different systems of different industries are collecting the sensor data and obviously, storage and data acquisition are other notable challenges because if the collected data is huge, the algorithm of AI needs a huge computing power and storage spaces. 
• Ethical challenges.

In the future, we believe there will be affordable powerful supercomputers and even quantum computers to solve all the issues related to both AI and blockchain technology.

In addition to the blockchain with AI, there will be powerful computers to share computing powers. Even now, high-speed internet(5G) is more likely to go for the mainstream adoption trend soon so in this case, current blockchain technology will not be able to meet the requirements of the latest technologies of IoE (Internet of Everything). So, if the blockchain meets AI following solutions can be observed:

• Whenever the AI of a blockchain provides a decision, blockchain forms immutable and transparent records to share.
• There will be so many nodes to share the computing powers. If advanced computers like supercomputers and Quantum computers are there, algorithms of AI-enabled blockchain will get sufficient computing powers for smooth operations.
• Blockchain helps AI to be more coherent and understandable.
• AI-enabled blockchain will reduce human intervention massively so developers can be focused on developing AI and other components of the blockchain. 
• Blockchain with AI will solve the limitations of IoT data.
• AI-enabled blockchain could solve so many limitations presented in the DeFi sector. 

Implementation of AI into the blockchain will open the doors for endless possibilities and inventions. It will be the new digital generation with the increased adoption rate of the blockchain by so many industries and institutions. So, the following sectors will get benefits if such blockchains eventually come into the existence:

• In the medical sector for secure sharing of medical data.
• NFT & DeFi marketplaces.
• Tracking royalties of the music and the digital properties.
• Cross-border payments with the cheapest cost.
• Anti-money laundering tracking system and transaction detections for illicit goods.
• Supply chain and logistics monitoring.
• The voting system provides a quick result.
• Advertising sectors.
• Original content creation with a help of blockchain technology. It will be helpful for educational institutions.
• Personal identity management & security in the government sectors.
• Cryptocurrency exchange and fund management for consumers.
• The real estate processing platform.
• Real-time & effective IoT operating systems.

Here are a few examples but there can be even more benefits. Future of the blockchain technology will not be used just for financial tools, it will be even more for the Internet of Everything. 

Conclusion:

Blockchain technology is making progress at its own pace and now, we have some highly scalable blockchain networks with larger TPS (Transactions Per Second) and they are eco-friendly too but it is not enough to go for the mainstream adoption trend as such blockchain networks also have some shortcomings.  AI-enabled blockchain can solve such limitations by ensuring larger digital and data capabilities. As we know, genuine technology has to bring real transformation to normal life with mass adoption. AI-enabled blockchain should also act in the same way in the future.