Maybe you string enough lights on your roof to give Clark Griswald a run for his money. Maybe you can identify mistletoe and holly in the wild, chop down your own Christmas tree, and know exactly how many Hallmark Keepsake ornaments they've issued since 1973. You can rattle off all of Santa's reindeer—backwards, starting with Rudolph and ending in Dasher, and know all the words to O' Tannenbaum. Including all the verses. In German. You own White Christmas—which is indisputably the best Christmas movie ever—on Blu Ray, DVD, VHS, and Betamax (I've included a link if you have no idea what that is). And heck, you even make figgy pudding on Christmas Eve.
No doubt about it, you're a true Christmas fan. But this Christmas, there is so much more that you know about, as Santa straps on today's hottest new technological advancement: The blockchain.
St. Nicholas, is stepping up his game for Christmas 2017, and if you want to hang onto your crown as the biggest Christmas fan ever, you need to be in the loop.
It's only to be expected, really, that Santa would need a serious upgrade. He has a lot of running around to do, lots of children to classify as naughty or nice, a lot of chimneys to climb down, and a lot of presents to deliver. And in 2017, he has come across a solution that is bound to make his life a little easier this year.
Before we go any further, we should make clear exactly what it was that sold Santa on blockchain technology. It first came to his attention when Mrs. Claus read about the astounding rise of bitcoin in her morning paper. Santa began reading around the topic (thinking that perhaps the elves could mine some to give to the children) and soon realized that bitcoin was just the beginning. It was the blockchain behind the currency that was the real secret to its success, with companies in the space such as Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. seeing their stock prices soaring (and who we went to for help on the technical aspects of how Blockchain works). This was a company that was not only invested in cryptocurrencies but was acting as an incubator for everything from new anti-corruption voting systems to highly transparent and efficient recording tools. Santa saw its potential immediately, adopting blockchain technology and, as a result, finishing his Christmas preparation earlier than ever before.
In case you want some talking points with which you can impress your friends at the office Christmas party (unlike Facebook, it's okay to refer to it as the blockchain): blockchain is a way of decentralizing transactional data—data of any kind, including contract-based data and data about who has been naughty and who has been nice—so that no single entity regulates the transactions. Instead, everyone in the network regulates every transaction—like lots and lots of read-only files that are strung together—no one file can be altered, but new files can be added by anyone on the network.
That's good news for Santa, who employs millions of elves to manage his data. In non-corporate speak, blockchain cuts out the middlemen—like banks and copious cookie-eating data elves—allows transactions to update instantaneously, and stops any tampering with earlier records.
The adoption of Santa's blockchain technology will help Santa to deliver toys on time and help him to process oodles of data for his naughty or nice list, manage labor costs associated with maintaining that list, and ensure the integrity of the list.
Makin' A List
Yeah, Santa dives down chimneys and delivers presents, but what about the other 364 days of the year? Santa is responsible for keeping track of who is naughty or nice—to the tune of 1.9 billion children throughout the year—an arduous task. This is approximately six times that of Amazon's users.
Speaking of enigmas, Santa's list (a.k.a. the Who's Naughty Or Nice list, or WNON), is sort of an enigma. No one really knows how Santa updates that list, or if it even updates at all—a mystery that Santa has kept on the down low lest the list fall prey to manipulation by naughty children. But Santa has informed us that long ago, his list was kept on physical paper (for you millennials, paper is a very thin sheet of wood pulp used to write on). It was all too easy for previous records to be altered or even lost, and there were too many elves writing on different versions of the list all at once—making for an imprecise business. As technology progressed, the list was eventually moved to a database. But Santa's problems persisted as records could still be altered and files corrupted.
Well, no more. Santa's new blockchain technology allows live, real-time updates to the naughty and nice list—which is now, in essence, infinitely long and can keep up with the burgeoning population of children. In addition, Santa's new WNON list can never be lost.
Elves On Shelves will now be retrofitted with handheld scanners that write to the blockchain in real time, bypassing the manual entry of the data elves. And each record will be its own unalterable record. The result? Santa can instantly access the network and get a real-time view of who's naughty or nice, allowing him to keep tabs on the elves progress as well as plan toymaking accordingly. This means not only lag-free updates, but also saves millions of data-elf-hours. The savings can then be passed on to the children.
Elves who once managed databases will be retrained as toymakers to keep up with the increased demand as Santa steps up the number of gifts each child will receive as a result of the cost savings.
To recap, Santa's blockchain WNON benefits are as follows:
- WNON requires fewer elves
- WNON can expand infinitely as the population of the world expands
- WNON cannot be lost
- Ensures integrity of data
- Real-time information and elf-oversight from Santa
- More toys for me
Beyond WNON
Santa's blockchain adoption goes behind what it's doing on the front end of Christmas. All Christmas Eve/Christmas Day activities will also be part of the blockchain, including present loading, sleigh tracking (sorry NORAD), and deliveries. Every step of the way will be tracked, recorded, and monitored as a Rudolph-guided Santa flies through the night to deliver his floo-floobers and tah-tinkers to the Cindy Lou Whos of the world.
Unstealable
Santa's new tech will also ensure the safety of Christmas, as the Grinch is still as worthy of an adversary as he was back in the '50s. Bent on stealing Christmas year after year, the Grinch is constantly looking for new ways to keep Christmas from coming, despite his heart growing two sizes. One area that has been vulnerable in years past is Santa's email, as the Grinch seeks to delete items off wish lists and even entire emails. But now, Christmas lists are uploaded directly to the blockchain, in an unalterable file. What's more, blockchain will be the end to misdelivered mail. Who can keep track of all these email addresses anyway?
The Who's Who Of Blockchain
Santa is among the growing list of pioneering blockchain adopters that are topping today's headlines, the likes of which include the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Sony, the Russian government, Petroteq, Nokia, Maersk, AMD, Barclays, and behemoth Walmart, to name just a few.
What's more, almost 57 percent of the world's big corporations (20,000 employees or more) are considering blockchain technology, with two-thirds of surveyed companies saying that they expect the technology to be integrated by end-2018 (a full year behind Santa).
In the words of Steven Nerayoff, Chairman of Global Blockchain Technologies Corp., "You can invest in blockchain, you can create blockchain technologies, or you can use blockchain technologies—but the option to ignore blockchain technologies no longer exists". Santa appears to have taken these words to heart, and we suspect more companies will share Santa's nose for perfection heading into the new year.
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Julianne Geiger authored this article contributed by Tom Kool an editor of OilPrice.com, the leading online energy news site, to the ARRA News Service.
Tags: Julianne Geiger, Tom Kool, Oilprice.com, Santa, Putting Christmas, On The Blockchain, Saving Billions, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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