Hybrid Chains — Supply Chain, Healthcare, and Real Estate
Disclaimer — Views my own and not at all affiliated with anyone else
While buzz around web3 predominately centers around public chains, more serious institutional / enterprise interest in blockchain use cases props up significant value in the concept of a “hybrid chain”.
Hybrid Chains — Public chain transparency, private chain privacy
Hybrid chains offer customization opportunities to balance transparency and privacy to service specific use cases. While innovative, key considerations to enable successful implementation include increased implementation complexity, cross-chain governance coordination, and elevated cost.
This article highlights the immense value of hybrid blockchains in specific industries such as supply chain, healthcare, and real estate. Through real-world use cases, we will explore how hybrid blockchains are revolutionizing these sectors, ensuring transparency, privacy, and efficiency.
1.) Supply Chain: The supply chain industry faces numerous challenges related to traceability, authenticity, and transparency. Hybrid blockchains provide an ideal solution by allowing participants to track goods securely while maintaining sensitive business information.
Use Case: Food Traceability
A hybrid blockchain can be leveraged to create a transparent and immutable record of food products throughout the supply chain. The public layer ensures transparency by enabling consumers to verify the origin, quality, and safety of the food. Meanwhile, the private layer protects sensitive supplier data, such as pricing and contracts. An example is the collaboration between Walmart and IBM, utilizing IBM’s Food Trust platform, which combines the transparency of a public blockchain with the privacy of a private network to ensure food traceability.
2.) Healthcare: The healthcare industry is characterized by the need for data privacy, security, and interoperability. Hybrid blockchains offer a robust solution for sharing patient records, streamlining processes, and ensuring confidentiality.
Use Case: Secure Medical Data Exchange
Hybrid blockchains can facilitate secure medical data exchange by combining the public layer for interoperability and the private layer for protecting patient privacy. Patient records can be securely shared among healthcare providers, allowing for improved coordination and continuity of care. An example is MedRec, a hybrid blockchain project developed by researchers at MIT, which enables patients to control access to their medical records while enabling healthcare providers to securely exchange data.
3.) Real Estate: Real estate transactions involve multiple parties, lengthy processes, and a significant amount of documentation. Hybrid blockchains can streamline and secure real estate transactions by enabling transparency while maintaining confidentiality.
Use Case: Property Title Management
Hybrid blockchains can be used to manage property titles, ensuring transparency in ownership records while protecting sensitive financial information. The public layer can store property ownership history, while the private layer can handle financial details and contractual agreements. Propy, a blockchain-based real estate platform, utilizes a hybrid blockchain to enable secure property transactions globally, improving efficiency and reducing fraud.
Solutions leveraging hybrid blockchains have flown under the radar, yet have proven to be game-changers in industries such as supply chain, healthcare, and real estate. While public chains have had notable boom and bust cycles, institutions have quietly continued to evaluate alternatives to existing database and workflow structures. As applications continue to hit the main stage, it’s worth tracking how public chains continue to embrace innovation around privacy, security, and transparency interoperability and the role hybrid chains can play.
