45 Blockchain Use Cases and Ethereum
“The blockchain start-ups that have done ICOs are just at the beginning of something. Ask me how they are doing in a year or two years from now. I know for a fact it won’t be any different from the statistics of all start-ups: 80% of them will not make it” William Mougayar
Blockchain is a nascent technology, ripe with ongoing innovations and the accelerated growth of new related-technologies continue to emerge. However we need to consider that the future of mainstream blockchain technology will rely on decreasing the startup failure rate and providing a protocol process to do so.
What is blockchain?
With the emergence of Bitcoin and other blockchains, it became feasible to reconsider a solution realized in a decentralized manner, where one that does not require a central party trusted to keep all the data secure and accessible. The blockchain technology is one of the most promising upcoming technological trends in the information technology domain. It enables a ledger that can be accessed by parties involved in the transaction and can act as the universal irrefutable depository of all transactions between the involved parties.
The numerous benefits involved have already attracted the attention and hence, investments as well as many technological giants. Not only does the technology hold the ability to disrupt the way the financial sector often works but will also have ramifications on many other industries including consumer goods, technology, and media & telecom, among others.
Negligible fees for transaction in blockchain distributed ledger applications, elimination of third parties in business deals, and less chances of fraud and identity theft are the key drivers for the growth of global blockchain distributed ledger market. Moreover, increase in awareness toward blockchain distributed ledger applications among people is expected to provide lucrative opportunities to market players. Smart contracts reduce the friction of tracking and compensating contributors.
45 Use Cases
To fully understand the implications of Blockchain it’s important to take note of the potential applications, and how they can be adopted. The transfer of value has always been an extremely expensive and slow process. This is particularly true for cross-border payments. The blockchain is able to speed up and simplify this process reducing the costs significantly.This makes it excellent for international payments and money transfers.The Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study by Dr. Garrick Hileman and Michel Rauchs presents a systematic and comprehensive picture of a rapidly evolving industry, examining how blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are being used in the public sector and enterprise. It is available here and outlines the following applications
· Tax filing
· 3D printing
· Asset management
· Authentication
· Business licensing & authorization
· Business process re-engineering
· Commercial distribution management
· Crowdfunding
· Digital manufacturing
· Document management & exchange system
· Education
· Electronic patient records management
· Energy credits
· Fraud prevention in Internet of Things
· Government account settlement & reconciliation
· Increased liquidity in inefficient markets with low volumes through the use of smart contracts Internet of Things
· Issuance of equity shares
· Logistics
· Loyalty points and rewards
· Mortgages
· Prevention of cyber fraud and hacks
· Real property purchase
· Smart utility grids
· Supply chain management
· Training and development Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filings
· Real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system
· Remittances
· Interbank payments
· Asset transfer
· Clearing and settlement of securities
· Financial messaging system
· Syndicated loans
· Trade finance
· Transfer, clearing, and settlement of securities
· Official government identification documents management
· Land registry
· Business incorporation records
· Birth and death certificates
· Supply chain cargo tracking
· Traceability of food products
· Tracking car fleets
· Tracking of funds
· Shareholder voting
· Transaction monitoring
· Humanitarian cash-based transfer
· Mobile money transfers
· Retail purchases
· Salary and bill payments
Where does Ethereum fit in?
Ethereum is a distributed public blockchain network. Although there are some significant technical differences between the two, the most important distinction to note is that Bitcoin and Ethereum differ substantially in purpose and capability. Bitcoin offers one particular application of blockchain technology, a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments.
While the Bitcoin blockchain is used to track ownership of digital currency (bitcoins), the Ethereum blockchain focuses on running the programming code of any decentralized application.While all blockchains have the ability to process code, most are severely limited. Ethereum is different. Rather than giving a set of limited operations, Ethereum allows developers to create whatever operations they want.
This means developers can build thousands of different applications that go way beyond anything we have seen before. And so it’s very fair to say that we have a plethora of potential applications , however its vital, now more than ever to ensure that we develop new emerging blockchain technology with strong business modelling philosophy.
