Should Hollywood have its own blockchain?

Blockchain heralded the advent of Web 3.0, a sequel to the intricacies of the World Wide Web. As its popularity and adoption has grown, there have been records of substantial investment in blockchain and its consequent asset classes like cryptocurrencies and NFTs. This wave of investment has not escaped the big names in Hollywood. The likes of Shawn Mendes, Snoop Dogg, Floyd Mayweather, Jim Carrey, Paris Hilton and Eminem are heavily invested in blockchain-powered asset classes.

The financial industry is arguably the biggest adopter of blockchain technology, with everyone from private financial firms to central banks of entire countries adapting their processes to integrate blockchain. But the possibilities that exist with blockchain make it adaptable to all industries.

Deepak Thapliyal is the CEO of Chain, a company dedicated to institutionalizing blockchain. “Blockchain is undoubtedly the future of traditional finance, but it has many more uses than monetary transactions,” says Thapliyal. “To get the most out of blockchain, we need to scale it down, not scale it up.”

Hollywood’s data threat is costing the industry dearly

From pirating unreleased content to extorting production funds, security breaches in Hollywood are more common than some might think. Major production studios and companies like Disney, Sony and Netflix
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have been on the wrong side of these intrusions before, and the problem doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

One reason for this is that Hollywood production houses love to outsource much of their work to vendors, struggling to provide them with top quality results at competitive prices. From creating eye-catching, eye-catching trailers to high-end editing and 3D visual effects, the work of Hollywood’s top studios is often the lifeblood of these vendors and a huge boost to their wallets.

Thapliyal revealed that this constant exchange of sensitive information between studios and vendors exposes huge cybersecurity holes, especially on the vendor side. “These third-party production equipment often don’t have network security measures as robust as the big studios, and hackers understand that, so they usually attack these providers to access unpublished sensitive content and publish it on torrent sites or demand ransom from the studios. Either way, hacks like this mean a colossal financial loss for the studios.

The sentiment aligns with the piracy of Disney and Netflix, in particular. by Netflix Orange is the new black, and Disney Pirates of the Caribbean sequel were the two hacks that happened in a post-production facility. Going all the way back to the Sony Pictures hack in 2014, there have been numerous hacking attempts against major studios for years, and whether through ransom or unplanned releases, these companies are losing a lot of money.

“In entertainment, an unplanned early release of a film or documentary could set back more than $15 million from opening weekend box office projections. It is to prevent situations like this that the blockchain was designed, and that is what we are also trying to achieve: a world of guaranteed data security on any given supply chain. Thapliyal’s Chain has worked with NASDAQ heavyweights
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, Tiffany and company.Citibank and other brands in retail, banking, sports and entertainment to create fully customizable blockchain solutions that meet their unique needs.

Blockchain as a solution; only smaller

Blockchain technology uses a “strength in numbers” approach to security. Its decentralized ideology means that records on the blockchain are immutable since records of every transaction on the chain exist on hundreds of thousands of devices in a linked peer-to-peer network. The blockchain is anonymous, open-source, and permissionless, giving users complete freedom to transact securely and anonymously. But it also allows users to carry out nefarious activities on the network just like Ransomware used Bitcoin
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to collect ransom from his victims.

Thapliyal does not believe this iteration of the blockchain is a one-size-fits-all solution to protecting data and financial transactions. According to him, “public blockchains like Ethereum
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and Bitcoin are fine for everyday personal use and individuals transacting cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but businesses and industries need something more exclusive with a nice level of access control. We look beyond the main line of blockchain operations. Without reinventing the core of how blockchain works, we’ve created a set of tools that allow us to duplicate its framework and nest it so that it makes sense for unique businesses on a case-by-case basis.

On private blockchains, there is no public access or public miners, and users are not anonymous. “It may seem counterproductive for us to advocate the adoption of private blockchains, especially since on the face of it this appears to run counter to fundamental principles of security, privacy and transparency” , admits Thapliyal, “but it’s not.”

The main difference between a custom blockchain and public blockchains is the level of access. It’s important for companies and institutions to always keep their sensitive company and customer information secure, and leaving it at the mercy of a public blockchain doesn’t make much business sense.

“In any major business transaction, the identity of all parties involved must be known, the transaction must be verified by a reliable and credible central authority, and be traceable across the network. Of course, just like public blockchains, transaction records are evenly distributed across private network blocks and cannot be manipulated by any party.When neither party is anonymous, it helps build trust and foster strong partnerships.Different companies operate under different different policies and have different customer needs, so they each need a regulated blockchain developed to meet those needs and adhere to their policies and philosophy.

There is also the debate over the efficiency between private and public blockchains. Mining on a public blockchain is an extreme sport in terms of power consumption. For example, one second is enough to perform only about seven Bitcoin transactions. The speed is caused by too many users initiating too many transactions on public blockchains. Just compare that with the transaction speed on private blockchains like Hyperledge and Ripple – they can process and validate thousands of transactions per second. Fees and energy costs on private blockchains are also significantly lower, allowing businesses to create their own tokens and digital products, conduct financial transactions, transfer sensitive documents, and set their own security settings. security in a way that aligns with their best interests.

If adoption of custom blockchains becomes common practice, in addition to helping Hollywood reduce its hacking and hacking problems, the economic benefits could be globally disruptive.