No-Code Blockchain Integration: The Future of Business-to-Blockchain?
How Unibright enables you to create production-grade workflows integrated on the blockchain & more, without writing a single line of code!
The blockchain space has been around for a while now and there have been many projects that started as whitepaper dreams and didn’t go much further beyond that. There have also been many blockchain companies who’ve put their heads down and kept on developing without being distracted by any charts & crypto bubbles. One company in particular is offering very interesting solutions for some of the biggest bottlenecks within the industry. The company I’m talking about is Unibright.io.
Blockchains and Smart Contracts
First, let’s talk about what blockchain and smart contracts are in the first place. A blockchain is nothing more than a ledger or database which is shared across a network of computers. Every certain period of time data gets added as a so-called “block” to this “chain” of data, hence blockchain. All these computers share the same copy of the blockchain (basically a database) and regular checks are done to ensure no-one is trying to cheat. Because it’s not one single entity checking the database but a distributed network of computers, there is no need to trust whether the data on the blockchain is legit. The people in this distributed network are making sure it is and are rewarded for it with cryptocurrency in return. Most blockchains are also permission-less, meaning everyone in the world has permission to view every single transaction on the blockchain, resulting in unprecedented transparency. There are a whole lot of details & variations to many different blockchains, however that’s the basic gist of it.
And what then is a smart contract? This is nothing more than an agreement between two people in the form of computer code, stored on the blockchain. The transactions that happen in a smart contract are only processed once the pre-determined conditions are met, without needing approval from a third party. Simply put, smart contracts are programs running on the distributed network of a blockchain, rather than on a centralized (cloud) server.
The two most well known blockchains at the moment are the Bitcoin network and Ethereum network. There are quite some differences between the two, however the biggest difference is probably regarding their programming languages. The Bitcoin network (intentionally) doesn’t allow for much complexity in smart contracts to keep the network safe & predictable. The Ethereum network does allow for complex smart contracts, which enables endless applications to be built on the network (but also brings its own drawbacks). Many people compare these two networks to a transparent & decentralized version of money (Bitcoin) and a transparent & decentralized version of the internet (Ethereum).
Why should I put something on a blockchain, while it’s much faster, easier & cheaper to just use legacy systems?
Well, it depends on your use-case. In many cases legacy systems are actually the more sensible way to go. Most applications and services simply don’t need to be verified in a transparent, decentralized manner. However, some particular use-cases would in fact benefit much from this advantage.
Charity and supply chain industries are notorious for lack of transparency. Do you know at which date and from which country & region those coffee beans were harvested? Do you know how long it took for them to get to your supermarket? How about knowing whether the coffee farmers were fairly paid for their goods & services? And of course, has anybody ever seen where those 5 dollars you donated to the poor donkeys in Peru actually went?
As explained in the video above, you can see the how, what, when & where anything within a process happens by recording the end-to-end process of industries like supply chain & charity on a blockchain! Not only would it create transparency & accountability for end consumers, but also for every person involved in actually getting the products or funds from A to Z. Many shipping company employees are still plowing through endless pages of transportation & approval documents, looking for lost containers caused by a misplaced piece of paper. Every bit of information on any transported container could easily be found if the whole process were simply put on a permissioned blockchain (encrypted so only authorized personnel could make sense of it so the data remains private, hence permissioned).
Alright, so how do I actually develop something like that on a blockchain? I’ve heard it’s not an easy thing to build and blockchain developers are scarce & quite expensive.
That’s where Unibright comes in. Unibright is a company with the goal of facilitating the integration of blockchain technology into existing business. They develop enterprise applications, invest in start-ups, build process modelling tools and create a 360° ecosystem around tokenized assets. They’ve devided this in five distinct services:
- Unibright Thinktank: Turning ideas into working products & businesses.
- Unibright Solutions: Empowering businesses to transform their processes and systems with blockchain technology.
- Unibright Ventures: Providing Venture Capital services — financing, mentoring, and research collaboration to emerging projects and start-ups.
- Unibright Framework: Integrating business processes into blockchain, without a single line of code!
- Unibright Freequity: Offering services in all relevant stages of a tokenization process and integrate them into markets and system landscapes.
As an application developer myself, especially the latter two services seem very interesting!
The Unibright Framework
The Unibright Framework enables you to create a workflow on a blockchain, without having to write a single line of code! That’s right, no need to hire a 200k/year Solidity developer. You yourself are the right person for the job! This could be a particularly useful solution for charity institutions or businesses in the supply-chain industry, as mentioned in the examples earlier.
The founders of Unibright have written a very clear article on how to create a demo workflow application on the blockchain yourself! You can also follow them along by watching the walkthrough below. And if you’d like to see a more practical example of an SAP integration, check it out here.
I’ve created an example workflow myself as well, by using the demo mode, demonstrating the trade and transportation of rice. If you’ve read the article or watched the walkthrough above, you’ve seen that the creation of the steps and actions to be approved is extremely easy & can be done by anyone. The creation of the workflow is very simple, secure & transparent and doesn’t require any knowledge of smart contracts or any line of code!
Once the workflow is successfully validated, you can preview the code it has generated for one of the available blockchain programming languages (in this case the widely used Solidity language for an Ethereum smart contract, however more scripting languages are available, so it could be implemented on various different blockchains).
After having done this, you can deploy the smart contract to the specified blockchain and see the workflow you created in action! I recommend watching the walkthrough video to see how exactly the approval process works for each step in a workflow & how you can see the results of it on the actual blockchain.
Interested? Try out building your own demo framework & deploy a simple smart contract on a blockchain! If you see the value for your own orginization and you would like to know more about implementing the Unibright Framework in a production-grade environment, contact the team here.
Unibright Freequity
Possibly the most exciting service in their offering is Unibright Freequity. With this service you can basically tokenize anything and put it on the blockchain as an asset! The implications of this are huge! You would be able to tokenize anything on the blockchain as a security. Real estate, vehicles, works of art, your company’s products & services, your own net worth, you name it! This way anything can be valued and traded like traditional assets & companies. You’re certain you’ll be successful in life and want to hold stock in yourself? Basically betting on your own success? Or maybe you’re more comfortable with betting on the success of Elon Musk? It’s possible! And again, when using Unibright Freequity there’s no need to hire a blockchain expert, since not a single line of code needs to be written on your end.
At the time of writing, the demo mode is going to be opened up by the team for experimentation very shortly. I’ll be updating this section once the service is open for experimentation. For a preview of how the service will look like, check it the video below. And again, if you like more information on using the service in a production environment, contact the team here.
Conclusion
All in all, Unibright offers very easy to use blockchain-to-business integration services, ready to be implemented right now. Rather than offering whitepaper dreams, the company focuses on solving real-world business problems with real-world business solutions. On the blockchain. Without having to deal with the hassle blockchain brings with it.
I believe no-code solutions like this are the next step in bringing blockchain applications & integrations to legacy systems & traditional business. It’s exciting to see where the blockchain space will go in the years to come!
