Crypto A.M. shines its spotlight on Protokol; enterprise blockchain, simplified

Gartner predicts that the business value-add of blockchain will grow to over $176 billion by 2025, and exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030. However, despite most businesses understanding that blockchain can unlock a huge range of benefits, enterprise adoption has been cautious. Many organisations are struggling to understand how to use blockchain technology in a way that drives real value for their business. This can be down to a number of factors, including complex processes, lack of resource, platform scaling constraints, and an inability for many platforms and providers to interoperate with existing IT infrastructure. This is where Protokol comes in.

The CEO, Lars Rensing, has the firm belief that “blockchain technology is complicated, but using it doesn’t have to be”, and this is the principle on which Protokol is founded. Businesses attempting to adopt blockchain technology at scale have been faced with a wide variety of challenges. From the broad lack of in-house blockchain capabilities to difficulty understanding how blockchain can best integrate into the business, the benefits that it can unlock, as well as issues around scalability — blockchain implementation is seen as an intimidating and lengthy task. Protokol’s mission is to simplify this unnecessarily complex process by taking a straightforward approach — helping to connect businesses with valuable blockchain solutions that they really need and that they really understand.

The company offers solutions across the whole blockchain development lifecycle, its core services include:

• Digital Advisory: An advisory service focusing on identifying where and how blockchain fits into your digital transformation strategy.
• Blockchain Consulting: A consultancy-led service focusing on the discovery of blockchain innovation opportunities, use cases, and solution advisory.
• Blockchain Engineering: Custom blockchain development and integration services to build anything from PoCs to large-scale solution deployments.
• Blockchain Support: Maintaining, improving, and growing your blockchain solution post-build, from node management to network updates and audits.

Protokol was founded by key members of ARK, a leading blockchain platform, popular with developers; and it’s this technology that Protokol uses as a foundation for its enterprise solutions. The platform itself has spent the last three years being battle-tested and enhanced as open-source software — with a best-in-class community of developers and an in-house team of experts building a wide variety of different projects using the technology. This extensive R&D meant that the team spent years understanding how this technology could be adapted to solve real-world problems for businesses, so building enterprise-grade solutions was a natural next step.

Protokol is focused on providing enterprise blockchain solutions that are customised to a business’s unique needs. By combining robust and highly adaptable technology with a simple approach, it is making blockchain easy-to-use. Fundamentally for enterprises, Protokol’s solutions are also flexible and interoperable, working alongside existing IT systems rather than against them. This not only makes integration easy but also means projects can be implemented quicker and at a lower cost. The team believes that simplicity goes beyond integration however, which is why education and consultancy is such an important aspect of the business. Protokol works to ensure its clients have a deep understanding of how their blockchain solutions can really deliver value in their organisation, allowing for greater adoption, a better ROI, and a smoother process overall.

Lars Rensing told Crypto AM: “We’ve always been keen to explore how ARK’s blockchain technology could transform business environments, but we didn’t want to jump into the market without the technology to back us up. Testing the platform in an open-source community for a number of years has allowed us to ensure that Protokol’s tech is powerful, reliable, and adaptable enough to not only solve business challenges but solve them at scale and while integrating with complex enterprise infrastructures.”

Protokol has even identified key target industries where blockchain can add the most value and impact, including sports & esports, telecoms, manufacturing, supply chain, energy & utilities, IoT, and media & entertainment. For the sport and media industries, Protokol is already working on solutions for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), essentially digital assets that enable the creation of rare & unique items that can’t be destroyed, replicated or forged. Applications include everything from digital trading cards to in-game assets and verifiable memorabilia that fans can buy and trade. Not only is this increasing transparency and solving issues relating to ownership in these industries, but it’s facilitating new and innovative business streams to boost revenues.

The company is also developing an adaptable digital identities framework for blockchain-based digital identities. These have a number of benefits for both individuals and enterprises, including protecting consumers’ personal data, and making customer data management less time and resource-intensive for the companies that manage it. Secure digital identities have the power to save on the staggering labour hours and litigation costs that stem from poorly managed data, not to mention the resulting brand damage. By creating secure digital identity solutions that are highly adaptable and fully interoperable, Protokol is helping businesses such as Telecoms companies diversify, by opening up new “identity-as-a-service” business models.

Protokol’s blockchain experts are now available to advise on where blockchain can add the most value to your enterprise. To book a consultation and begin creating a use case for your organisation, visit: protokol.com/contact.