One year after its creation, the network has the participation of more than 14 public and private entities. There is no reward cryptocurrency for creating new blocks and the use of the network is free.
On Monday, October 21st, the Argentine Federal Blockchain (BFA) and participating entities of that permissioned network met at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires. There were new members of the public sector and private companies that will join the BFA.
One year after the creation of the BFA and 4 months after the launch of its mainnet, more than 14 public and private entities presented the use cases that they plan to conduct, those that are in prototype and those that are in production.
BFA technical leader Alejandro Elustondo talked about the operation of the blockchain and how its members are organized.
It should be noted that Argentine Federal Blockchain is a clone of the Ethereum code, but the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism was changed to Proof of Authority (PoA) and the nodes that keep the complete history and add new blocks with transactions are called sealing nodes. At the beginning, it was an initiative of NIC Argentina, but now C&S Company is working on the block explorer and is comprised of different entities that have a sealing node.
As to why they decided to make a new Blockchain, since the Bitcoin, Ethereum and other public blockchains already exist, Elustondo responded that it was an issue of costs. In a public blockchain, each transaction is paid in the network’s native cryptocurrency. On the other hand, in the BFA there is a Smart Contract that distributes the necessary GAS free of charge to users who complete a form and undergo the process of accepting a new member on the BFA page.
In that sense, he also explained that, due to the lack of a cryptocurrency with market value, a sealing node receives no monetary incentive to keep it active and generate new blocks. The goal is for it to be a collaborative network and have approximately 26 nodes. The new entities will choose if they want to add a new sealing node.
Use Cases in Public and Private Entities
More than 14 entities explained their work and implementations on this network. One of the most interesting cases was that of the publications in the Official Gazette of the Nation. They explained that they abandoned the Bitcoin blockchain to save the Hash of the PDF document of the Official Bulletin, changed blockchains four (4) months ago, and became the first users of the BFA.
There was also a presentation on the University Information System where they explained the feasibility of using the BFA, in the case of Certifications and Tenders in the academic field, as a future project work.
The National Office of Information Technology, Municipality of Carlos Casares (Province of Buenos Aires), Argentine Naval Prefecture, Nic Argentina, Municipality of the City of Mendoza, Ministry of Transportation of the Nation, Secretariat of Modernization of the Nation and SENASA also presented their initiatives and proposals for implementation.
The challenges of the complexity of verifying the integrity of a document in Blockchain using Hash of PDF documents, and the portability of these documents, were addressed in a presentation by the company OS CYTY. They stressed that these use cases will not be massive unless it is possible to create solutions that allow the end user to do it in a few steps and without unnecessary complexity.
By Willmen Blanco
