The coming year no doubt will be just as unpredictable as 2017, as a huge range of tech trends from the cloud and blockchain to machine learning and virtual reality collide and combine. This is the latest in a series of predictions by SiliconANGLE’s staff and other experts on what’s coming in the enterprise, emerging technologies and the broader tech industry in 2018.

As the word “blockchain” entered the mainstream consciousness in 2017, services that use the distributed ledger also won some early adoption in finance, food safety, shipping, healthcare and even video games.

The attention was spurred in part by the world’s biggest blockchain-based currency, bitcoin, which saw a massive spike in volatility by year-end. With that attention, the capabilities of other blockchain systems no doubt will be put to greater use, leaving two key questions for 2018: What will those uses look like? And how will future regulation affect blockchain startups from here on out?

“We fully anticipate greater adoption of blockchain technologies in 2018 beyond financial services,” said Prasad Joshi, vice president at Infosys Ltd. “The volatility in bitcoin is an indicator of its going mainstream. Greater adoption will be driven by increased standardization, use of platform agnostic options to roll out blockchain implementations and massive uptake by nonfinancial services sectors.”

As seen in previous years, blockchains have been the engines of numerous startups and solutions produced for the financial industry. A blockchain is a secure digital ledger, the evolution of something that financiers have used for ages to track currency and accounts. Blockchains also produce reliable tokens and currency that can be used to power their platforms.

Resistance will be futile

This factor has made blockchain technologies a transformative force for startups, which can use this to earn alternate funding outside of traditional venture capital. During 2017, initial coin offerings and token crowdsales brought in close to $4 billion, according to Coindesk.

“Resistance will be futile in 2018. The speed with which everyone in the world will be trading tokens on the blockchain will defy all imagination,” Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs of Neverdie Studios told SiliconANGLE. “Through ICOs, new business models for everything we do will emerge and fabulous decentralized wealth will be driving innovation in every sector including governance. The easy access to funding achieved through ICOs will lead to the exploitation of exponential advances in tech, medicine and bio that might otherwise take years to find funding.”

With the surge in money flowing into ICOs and token sales in 2017 not predicted to slow down substantially into 2018, a greater variety of business models will more easily find funding. This will most likely lead to a huge variety of blockchain startups expanding into the market with the expectation that wild ideas might attract the attention of users willing to buy into an ICO and of traditional investors seeking a less-than-traditional stake in the growing market.

As with any popular rise of a technology, 2018 will also become the year that industry regulators start paying a lot more attention. The question of what impact regulation will have on ICOs and token sales in general may depend on how these sales are perceived.

Joshi said he believes that regulation is coming, but it will most likely lag behind adoption. Already, in the United States the Securities and Exchange Commission warned that ICOs probably fall under securities trading regulations already and both China and South Korea have both banned ICOs.

“The popularity of and curiosity in blockchain and cryptocurrency will drive regulatory interest that might then be followed by favorable changes in regulations,” said Joshi. “On the other hand, any perception of serious threat to either the economy or role of the government as regulator is likely to result in clampdowns.”

More applications coming

As for what blockchains will be doing in 2018: Ledgers have a lot more applications than just tracking accounts and currencies. Through the power of smart contracts and the ability to securely store cryptographic information accessible only by key holders in a way that is auditable by third parties, it’s possible to use blockchains to automate the transfer of digital goods, the tracking of land registries and even a method for digital identity.

“Another factor that will drive adoption of blockchain is the intense interest from government agencies and government bodies,” said Joshi. “[They will] explore blockchain in various aspects of governance such as digital identity, social benefits, land registry, intellectual property management and so on.”

It is already possible to provide voting capabilities via blockchain, a technology explored for organizations by Kaspersky Lab with Ploys and for shareholders by TMX Group Ltd.

And the concept of blockchain identity has been explored throughout 2017 by startups such as theloop Inc. with Chain ID designed for the Korea Financial Investment Association and ShoCard developing a blockchain ID card system for the enterprise.

One thing that blockchains do extremely well is that they can provide a level of control to users. Using the same private key cryptography that allows bitcoin holders to manage their bitcoins, it’s possible to manage access to any number of records in a similar manner. This means that user data can be commodified and access to it sold on open markets powered by blockchains.

In 2018, the first data marketplaces where consumers can sell data directly to data brokers, ad agencies and research groups will appear. People generate tremendous amounts of data, and most of it is scooped up by companies like Google and Facebook without a second thought. Amazon and retail chains also track shopping habits and demographic information. All of this is out of the control of the user.

However, with a blockchain and cryptography, it is possible to produce records and manage access to them. For example, Health Wizz has revealed a platform that connects blockchain technology and healthcare records. Patients can keep their own health records in secured storage and choose with whom to share them. They include doctors and hospitals, or, in a case that makes money on data, healthcare data brokers and medical research.

There are many other opportunities for data generated by users to be commoditized by blockchains that have yet to be explored. With Health Wizz near the beginning of the trend, 2018 will more than likely become the year that we see more startups offer users a new way to monetize their own data, thus generating a new and yet untouched market.

Video games lead the way

Finally, the video game industry will be using blockchains in more ways in 2018. Already, blockchains can be used to produce actual ownership of virtual items. Mobile and massively multiplayer games monetize themselves through the acquisition of virtual stuff. Gamers pay money for much of that through subscriptions or digital currency.

“Most exciting to me is that we will see blockchain tokenized virtual goods appearing in augmented reality games and apps which will lead to very significant peer-to-peer trading of value in decentralized virtual goods that feel tangible,” Jacobs said. “This will be a major call to action to brands and developers. I think Christmas 2018 will be very surreal with respect to the kind of gifts people are exchanging.”

Already, startups such as BLOCKv and DMarket have revealed virtual-item marketplaces using blockchains. As for adding blockchain assets, Unity Technologies’ partnership with GameCredits Inc. has everyone covered, as well as game developer Crytek GmbH’s partnership with Crycash. The Walt Disney Co.-incubated Dragonchain Inc. blockchain was also adopted by FlowPlay Inc. to bring digital assets into social games.

With all of these startups building marketplaces and blockchains for gaming, 2018 will see more developers testing the waters pioneered by tradable card game Spells of Genesis by EverdreamSoft. That’s a game in which the virtual cards are blockchain assets. There’s also the newly minted Ethereum-based Cryptokitties, where players get to breed and collect their own blockchain asset cats. Although both of these examples are quite limited in what they do, both of them represent clear starting points for blockchain game company models that have a good chance of gaining mainstream appeal.

Distributed markets and blockchain virtual items will most likely blaze the way for other video game publishers, distributors and developers to start building more blockchain-oriented systems into games as well. All in all, it looks like 2018 will the the year when blockchain graduates from a buzzword to a business.

Image: EverdreamSoft