I'm sure you have read before about Bitcoin or at least heard about it at a ‘FinTech’ like paper. You may have even used Bitcoins before but I know that, when this subject comes up, fierce debates often follow. My intention today is not to talk about what is Blockchain, its value to the organizations or even to try to guess the future of Blockchain, no. I want to talk about Blockchain and Salesforce technologies working together, mentioning examples and use cases that add value to Salesforce customers.

One of the aspects I found out in the very beginning of my research is that Blockchain is an emerging technology, still in the infancy stages and this fact contributes to different opinions in terms of value. There are people who say that we are witnessing a tremendous opportunity to create value from the emergence of a new paradigm in financial services and markets, whilst others say nothing will change and Blockchain is 'over-hyped'.

Regardless of the way of thinking, it's important to first try to find examples of Blockchain in Salesforce ecosystem, but this actually reveled to be very difficult. The first attempt was ForceCoin, developed by Jiri Kram. This could have been the first Blockchain platform built in force.com. Now, there are rumors that Salesforce is likely to enter the Blockchain space in 2017, either through an acquisition route, or through partnerships.

In terms of use cases, I observed that those can be grouped into few categories, mainly:

1. Healthcare
2. Smart Contracts
3. Provenance Tracking

In each of these areas, Salesforce has proven before to be able to handle complex requirements. On top of that, Salesforce developers have the capability to improve the technology by adding layers for better data management through validation rules, security and sharing settings.

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