A fundamental aspect for the growth and diffusion of a technological project is the community that is created around the project itself.
Scrypta is in fact an open source technology. An infrastructure based on a decentralized and distributed and permissionless network that allows anyone to participate and build value, projects and carry out their initiatives.
One of our purposes is precisely to share the blockchain infrastructure and thus provide a high potential program for the creation of dApps on the Scrypta network.
We are happy to announce that the Easy Claims Team has studied and developed a use-case on Scrypta in the insurance sector and in particular in the claims area using our infrastructure.
Below is the interesting article by Luca Venturella — CTO of Easy Claim, which illustrates the project and its benefits.
The practical usefulness of a blockchain
by Luca Venturella
Release date: January 7, 2020
Disclaimer: to better understand the use case I must necessarily advertise the EasyClaims startup of which I am co-founder, otherwise the case studies shown here would seem too abstract.
Summary
- Introduction
- The EasyClaims use case
- Benefits
- Conclusions
Introduction
The italian Law no. 12 of 11 February 2019 is the conversion into law, with modifications, of the law decree n. 135 of 14 December 2018, the so-called Simplification Decree.
Note: the law was then further modified in the course of 2019 but not to the article we are interested in analyzing below.
This law allows the use of the blockchain, as defined within the decree in Article 8-ter, to do certain operations.
What is important for the use case that I will explain is the third paragraph that I quote verbatim:
The storage of an electronic document through the use of technologies based on distributed ledger produces the legal effects of the electronic time validation referred to in article 41 of Regulation (EU) no. 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014.
In other words, as explained in a simple way here, the electronic temporal validation and admissibility as evidence in court must be recognized.
The AgID (Agency for Digital Italy) has the task of technically defining the issue, but unfortunately I do not know that the guidelines have been issued, for which we are waiting. But the important thing is that, in all respects, it will therefore be possible to use the blockchain in accordance with the law to make the time stamping of data and documents.
As many of you will know, time stamping is a service currently provided by private entities authorized by the Italian state, such as Aruba, obviously against payment. The cost of an Aruba time stamp starts from € 0.18 + VAT, it depends on how many markings paid in advance.
The EasyClaims use case
EasyClaims is a startup that enables insurance expert studios to carry out video surveys (or video inspections) via a web platform approved by insurance companies. The experts are charged with assessing the damage caused inside buildings or car parks when returning from long-term rentals, for example. The web platform allows the expert to acquire photos and recorded videos, acquires privacy consents, gps location, etc …
But let’s get to the point.
A potential client of ours asked us some time ago if we were doing the time stamping of some data, hence the study of a possible use of the blockchain for this purpose.
For our case of using a blockchain, public and open (i.e. permissionless), we decided as EasyClaims to use Scrypta.
The choice fell on the Scrypta blockchain, and not that of bitcoin for example, because it has some features (not only technical) that we consider useful in the long term, such as the possibility of archiving files via IPFS and an excellent Italian community, in addition to our partnership, already consolidated, with Vivido which is a very active and well structured company with development experiences on Scrypta.
How does the solution proposed by us work? It is summarized in the following image:
Our client, the Expert, performs the video report and acquires the photos taken, the videos recorded and the GPS position of the insured on our Cloud.
The hash of all these files is executed, i.e. its fingerprint is created, which uniquely and certainly represents that that file exists and that it has not been manipulated. If the file were manipulated in any way the resulting new hash would be different.
These hashes are then saved on the Scrypta blockchain, from which a unique reference is released to the transactions that contain the data (so that they can be found on the blockchain later).
Hashes define the inviolable marking of the document and the transaction in the blockchain defines the time of the marking. All this is therefore valid according to the law as time stamping of documents (we wait for the AgID guidelines but basically it would work like this).
Benefits
The first benefit compared to a traditional solution is that the marking itself is thus guaranteed by the decentralization process inherent in a public blockchain. In other words, the blockchain will keep the timestamp memorized even if the original file should be lost (and perhaps recover the file from an old backup without the need for re-marking).
The second convenience is economic. At present, we are in the development phase and to make an economic comparison, the marking of 2 photos, 2 videos, the GPS position and the unique reference to the expertise, would cost 0.012 Lyra (the coin in use in Scrypta) from the actual tests that we have done.
12 thousandths of Lyra per time stamp, at the time of writing 07.01.2020, the equivalent of approximately € 0.00018. That is, a cost reduction of 99.9%.
Taking into account that a large expert study could make 100,000 claims per year, it would be a saving of € 18,000 per year (if only one marking can be used for a zip file containing all the information), in addition to the indirect costs for secure storage (if the marked files were lost, logically it would not be useful to remark the original files with a later date). The service provided by EasyClaims would be issued free of charge to retain the customer, which is not possible to do with traditional time stamping systems due to other indirect costs.
Conclusions
Time and continuous experimentation of technologies will always lead us towards a clear goal: to improve the existing conditions of the context.
It is inevitable.
It is equally inevitable that there will be clashes between conservative and progressive thinkers.
My thinking has always been pragmatic, sometimes deliberately provocative, but when I decide (or change my mind) about something I consider myself a person relevant to facts and data (data driven).
In the blockchain world, and cryptocurrencies in general, I agree that some experiments do not make sense to exist, like the recent #cbdc, but in my opinion it is extremely wrong and shortsighted to lumped all together.
Thanks for reading, constructive comments are welcome!
Luca Venturella
SCRYPTA - Adaptive BlockchainWebsite: www.scryptachain.org
Foundation: https://scrypta.foundation
Block Explorer: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/lyra
Official Github: https://github.com/scryptachain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scryptachain
Discord: https://discord.me/scryptachain
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e-mail: info@scryptachain.org
