Disney has made open source its Dragonchain blockchain. Dragonchain is being touted as a public/private blockchain by the corporation famous for animated cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto.
Disney and Blockchain may sound like an odd mix but as a company Disney has always been at the forefront of utilising technology. At the company’s Disney World resorts, they already use MagicBands that help customers enter theme parks, unlock hotel doors and purchase consumable items and merchandise. In a world where the newer generation is increasingly transfixed by technological distractions like mobile phones and video games, keeping up to date matters.
This is not Disney’s first toying with Blockchain. In fact Disney conducted a Blockchain marriage at the Disney World Bitcoin Conference way back in 2014. We have also covered the news of Disney looking for Blockchain talent in recent times.
What is Dragonchain?
Dragonchain was released to the public on October 2, 2016 with a modified Apache 2 open source license.
The purpose of the Blockchain is to help businesses track and trade anything of value without requiring a central point of control. Basically Dragonchain is yet another Blockchain which helps maintain records and processes transactions. This is similar to what Bitcoin is based on, but a bit different as well.
In a document released that details the architecture of Dragonchain, Disney says, “In Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies, we witness the use of “Proof of Work” (PoW) algorithms as a basis for consensus in a “trustless” system. In this architecture, “proof” will be abstracted and may be implemented in one or more ways for a given Blockchain. For some uses, one may desire to use a trust based system, for instance, in a fully private Blockchain system. One may also find value in a hybrid proof configuration that would see trust applied alongside limited Proof of Work to add additional security against attack (i.e. a potential attacker would not only need to compromise or attain a set of private keys, but would also need to perform computation to accomplish the configured Proof to reassemble a given Blockchain.”
A Multi-Currency Blockchain
Disney has come up with a multicurrency-capable Blockchain. This perhaps is the interesting part of the Blockchain. In the Dragonchain architecture draft, they say, “This architecture should be multi-currency capable. That is, generally that if a currency use case is defined, that a node(s) may define a currency and support its use. More than one currency may be in use concurrently on the network as a whole.”
Since Dragonchain is multicurrency-enabled it might even help Disney price its products and services in multiple currencies for visiting foreign tourists at its parks. It is also conceivable that it might help the company expand to other foreign locations easily as well.
Disney’s move reinforces Blockchain utility
Why would a company like Disney make a foray into Blockchain? What could be the possible utility? One possibility could be that Disney could use Blockchain to track ‘points’ as customers play games at their theme parks.
Another possibility is that Disney is pondering the introduction of tokens or some sort of it's own currency that could be used at their facilities. In any case, Blockchain can potentially allow Disney to carry out transactions more seamlessly and securely.
Bitcoin and Blockchain are revolutionising the world as we breathe. More companies are exploring the way they can use technology driven by Blockchain. Disney is no exception.
We do not know how exactly in the future Disney will use Blockchain. They might even have just worked on Dragonchain for enterprise purposes, but there is also a possibility that in the future Mickey Mouse may be driven by Blockchain.
