Blockchain use cases, where can the technology be applied in real life?

Where blockchain technology can be used? Why do we need blockchain at all if we have all the processes established and running?

It looks like this technology is already changing many industries. It improves the efficiency of operations, boosts the safety level, reduces costs, and makes them more efficient.

What sectors already benefit from the new technology? Let’s explore them in more detail.

Financial Sector — for Money Transfer

If you use a traditional banking system to send money, you have an intermediary — a bank. The entire process looks like this.

Instead of sending funds directly, you send them first to the bank, and only later, the bank sends the money to the recipient. It causes delays, and the bank charges a fee for its services.

What if a bank wants to change transaction data or in any other way impact your transfer? It is a centralized system, you cannot see what is happening inside of it. So, everything is possible.

If you send money in a blockchain, you don’t need intermediaries. The funds are sent directly to the recipient. It means no delays, and no fees by third parties are charged.

Blockchain is 100% transparent. All participants can track all the actions on a blockchain. This technology is not only faster and cheaper for financial transactions but is also more secure.

Digital Identity

What is identity at all? In the legal sense, identity is a collection of claims about a person, place, or thing. For people, it normally consists of their first and last name, nationality, and date of birth. This data is presented in some kind of national identifier such as a driving license, a passport, an ID, etc.

While the majority of us take our identities for granted, it is not the case for approximately 1.1 bln of people. According to the data provided by the World Bank, about 1.1 bln of people cannot claim ownership over their data.

Source: https://id4d.worldbank.org/global-dataset

It leaves them in a vulnerable condition — they cannot vote, access financial services, own property, open a bank account, participate in the economic and political life of their country, etc.

Now, we may appreciate more the fact that we have access to our identity.

But can we benefit from it to the full extent?

All our data is issued by central authorities and stored on the servers of the same central authorities. We don’t own it. Can we somehow benefit from it? To some extent, yes, but we cannot enjoy all the value that our personal data generates. For example, when our data is sold to advertising agencies, we don’t get any share from the sales. Moreover, we don’t even know that such a sale took place.

Security is another problem with storing data in a centralized server. If such a centralized company is hacked, or if there is a data leak or loss, users will suffer.

How can blockchain help?

It can boost accessibility.

It can boost the accessibility of getting an identity. Of those 1.1 bln people who cannot handle all the paperwork and connected expenses to get the identity, the majority have a mobile device. It is sufficient to access blockchain-based identity solutions. If identity can be received and stored on a blockchain, more people will have access to getting it.

It can solve security issues.

Blockchain is a distributed network. It means that it is stored on many devices. To steal personal data, it is not enough to hack one device. The hacker would need to hack all the devices where this data is stored. If a blockchain is developed enough, it is practically impossible to change any data recorded on it.

Blockchain-based identity solutions also effectively solve the issue of fake identities. Blockchain is 100% transparent. So, any network participant will see clearly what is your real identity, and what is its copy.

Managing Global Supply Chains

The international trade sector is inefficient because it still relies on outdated processes. It involves a lot of paperwork. The majority of it is done manually which increases the possibility of human error, boosts costs, and delays the process. One transaction in international trade can take up to 90 days to be processed!

Security is another concern in international trade. The use of paper opens opportunities for fraudsters — it is easy to forge paper documentation.

By moving to the blockchain, global trade companies solve all these issues. Smart contracts can take care of all the legal agreements.

For example:

Kate wants to buy wheat from John. A smart contract checks whether Kate has enough money to do so and whether John has enough wheat to sell.

Once everything is checked, both Kate and John confirm the purchase. The smart contract blocks funds in Kate’s account.

John sends wheat to the address provided by Kate. It is recorded on a blockchain. The smart contract sends the payment for the wheat to John’s account.

In this scenario, nobody can cheat. Everything is regulated by a smart contract. No paperwork is needed, there is no place for human error, everything is absolutely transparent, and nothing can be forged.

Healthcare

The healthcare sector can benefit greatly from blockchain technology. Now, healthcare providers store data of their patients in a centralized repository, for example, in a database of a clinic. The problem is that different repositories aren’t connected. It causes the following problems:

• When a patient needs to change a healthcare service provider, the process of getting the patient’s data is slow and difficult. The patient may be forced to execute duplicate tests. In emergency cases, specialists may not have a full vision of the patient’s case, and it may even cost the patient life.
• When a clinical trial is on, its administrators need to compare the medical data of the trial’s participants. Collecting the data from different databases is a long and laborious process that also delays the validation of the trial’s results.

Blockchain has many use cases in the healthcare sector.

A blockchain-based database of patients can speed up the exchange of information between different healthcare facilities. Patients will have control over their information. They won’t be able to change anything that doctors wrote down but they will be able to grant certain specialists access to specific data only. For example, a patient may want to share his full profile with his doctor.

But the same patient may prefer to provide only non-identifiable data to a researcher who is working on a trial.

Only specialists from the medical community (authorized persons) can access the blockchain. Patients have access to their medical profiles and can control them by providing access to specialists (fully or partially) or denying it.