Russia May Become World Leader in Blockchain Technology Adoption in 2018

Russia could become a world leader in the adoption of the blockchain technology next year, Chairman of Russia’s Vnesheconombank (VEB) Sergey Gorkov told Sputnik on Saturday, stressing that the mass use of the technology will take place in 2019-2020.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Gorkov said that the blockchain technology will be implemented in Russia by 2020.

"We did not expect such an upsurge of interest [in the blockchain], technologies, I believe, will become a reality in 2017-2018,… 2018 will be the year of 'trial and error,' while 2019-2020 — a real period of implementation," he said.

Gorkov noted that the VEB would prepare directions for the development of blockchain in October and was also negotiating with Rostelecom telecommunications operator and the Russian Post on the possibility of using the technology.

"We have created a group at the level of the Russian government on the introduction of blockchain, no other country in the world has it. I believe that in 2018 Russia could become a leader in the adoption of the blockchain technology," Gorkov pointed out.

Blockchain technology is a distributed database, all replicas of which are regularly updated to add the information about all new transactions. Every time a transaction occurs, it is encrypted in a block, which is then sent out to all network users. Each block has a time-stamp and a reference to the previous block, which allows to establish the sequence of transactions. The data is therefore transparent and very difficult to change, which makes it a helpful security solution for any distribution or transaction processes.