What does a career in blockchain actually look like?

Alberta has the potential to become a hub for revolutionary database technology

Blockchain is new enough to still be difficult to explain, other than to say that the technology started by playing a key role in the buying and selling of cryptocurrency.

But another way to describe blockchain is as a promising technology sector avenue through which Alberta can continue to drive towards economic diversification. The way Alexis Pappas and Koleya Karringen see things, the province is ideal to act as a hub for companies working in the space.

First, Alberta has an attractively low cost of living, explains Pappas, director of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium and co-author with Karringen of the curriculum for NAIT’s Blockchain certificate, which launched this fall. Pappas also points to the great technical talent in the province and relatively cheap energy (blockchain requires a lot of both).

Learn more about NAIT’s Blockchain for Financial Services certificate

Alberta, she adds, would lead the charge. “It’s not the case right now that every major city is trying to do this.” Also, adoption is at a point where “we know we can be reasonably successful if we do this right.”

We spoke with Pappas and Karringen about the basics of the technology, growing applications across sectors, and what a career in the industry might look like for those who have learned to fully explain what blockchain is and how to use it.

A simple way to think about blockchain

“A lot of people think about blockchain [as] something extremely technical, such as machine learning or AI, says Karringen, who teaches courses with Pappas in the certificate programme.

“Blockchain is essentially a database.”

That database, Karrington explains, is designed to allow multiple parties to meet and agree on facts that can be immediately used to complete a transaction (such as a sale of cryptocurrency).

It is embedded in blocks of information linked together in a way that guarantees that the data is secure, and therefore reliable, and requires no further verification.

Blockchain as a global solution (or, it’s not just about cryptocurrency)

However, databases made of conventional spreadsheets and tables cannot always be considered reliable by all users – creating “a hidden friction that [is] slows down the economy globally, says Pappas.

That friction comes from companies introducing third parties, such as notaries, to verify data before a transaction can take place, thus also introducing a delay.

Eliminating this lag could add $1.76 trillion to world GDP by 2030, says Pappas, citing a recent PwC report.

“That kind of friction happens in every industry.”

In finance, it can take the form of a conventional audit. In energy markets, it can arise as disputes over royalties. In supply chains, it can slow the transfer of products to market.

Pappas points to Wal-Mart as an example of the latter. The retail giant makes 500,000 shipments a year to stores across Canada using its own fleet and others. This generates a lot of data that affects invoicing – so much so that discrepancies once delayed 70% of invoice payments and increased transaction costs. Introducing blockchain to verify that data led to discrepancies of less than 1% of invoices.

For Pappas, it’s proof that blockchain is “the leading solution” for challenges to a variety of business functions.

Current careers in blockchain

Wal-Mart, like any company, needs employees with the right skills to help implement such a solution. Pappas and Karringen designed their curriculum to help students look at business problems across industries and understand how blockchain can be used.

Through discussions and case studies, the program also shows where students can look for these opportunities.

“Something like 90% of the top Fortune 100 companies currently have blockchain deployments underway,” says Pappas.

An area of ​​rapid growth is smart contracting, where changes to information in the database will automatically generate a new agreement that can be immediately put in place, which saves time and money. Right now, the opportunities in this field are “just held back by a lack of people who are actually able to carry out these projects,” says Pappas.

But the biggest source of career opportunities may come as a bit of a surprise: cryptocurrency, including everything from mining to protecting against fraud. “The kind of work that goes into developing cryptocurrency exchanges and protocols is a huge employment driver.”

Blockchain and the future

The metaverse may be virtual, but it has a real economy of its own—one that will grow to be worth $8 to $13 trillion by 2030, Pappas says, citing a recent study by Citigroup. That economy will be underpinned by blockchain.

Whether it’s rooted in the web or not, she adds, “there is a general consensus among major investors and financial institutions that the economy in the near future is going to be primarily digital — and that blockchain is going to be an important part of that economy .”

Dads feel it’s time to prepare for that shift. “People who see it coming … are going to be significantly ahead of the game. Albertans can be a big part of the development and we can get a head start into the digital economy.

“This is a very appropriate time for us to move on.”

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