Blockchain is an open-source distributed database using state-of-the-art cryptography through a distributed ledger that enables trust among disparate individuals or third parties. Blockchain transforms the way transactions happen in the Internet age. A blockchain block is immutable, the information and details of the data contained on the blockchain are virtually impossible to change. The impact on every segment of industry and services verticals is hard to calculate. Blockchain is a new and emerging technology family positioned on the leading edge of the technology hype curve. It is not bleeding or cutting-edge technology; nor is it fully formed, standardized, or supported by best practices. The Blockchain Technical Community is highly fragmented and badly needs what the IEEE can deliver; a stabilizing think space of seasoned professionals specifically trained and positioned to make a difference. Blockchain is by far the most forward thinking, impactful, and disruptive emerging technology family that the Future Directions Committee and the IEEE has sought to embrace.
As Internet usages are proliferating, communications networks are faced with new shortcomings. Future networks will have to support in 2022 mobile traffic volumes 1000 times larger than today and a spectrum crunch is anticipated. Wireless access rates are today significantly lower than those of fixed access, which prevents the emergence of ubiquitous low cost integrated access continuum with context independent operational characteristics. Communication networks energy consumption is growing rapidly, especially in the radio part of mobile networks. The proliferation of connected devices makes it very difficult to maintain similar performance characteristics over an ever larger portfolio of technologies and requirements (i.e.Ultra High Definition TV vs. M2M, IoT). Heterogeneity of access technologies entails unsustainable cost with increasing difficulties to integrate an ever larger set of resources with reduced OPEX. Network infrastructure openness is still limited. It prevents the emergence of integrated OTT (cloud)-network integration with predictable end to end performance characteristics, and limits the possibility for networks to become programmable infrastructures for innovation with functionalities exposed to developers’ communities.
This 5G SUMMIT focuses on exploring and elucidating all facets of the next generation of Blockchain technology, business and societal gaps and challenges between the different blockchain technologies proposed in the market to enable a proper vision of Blockchain, evolutionary or revolutionary, to go beyond just access by embracing and facilitating the upfront integration of all new technologies (5G/6G, IoT, SDN/NFV, Cloud Computing, ..) to be user-transparent, app-oriented, service-ready, ubiquitous and lowest cost.
Some of the worldwide Blockchain experts have been invited and attracted to share their state-of-the-art knowledge with the emerging Blockchain community from around the world in view of facilitating the worldwide harmonization of research and best practices for deployment of viable user scenarios in the global 5G ecosystem, the built-in security and privacy by design in 5G, and explore the different ways to enable Internet protocols over the next generation of empowered devices in order to reach convergence and end to end transparency led by the IEEE 5G Technical subCommittee which is supporting technically this event.
