Applications of blockchain technology
Blockchain has been in the news, for all the right reasons, in the past 1 year or so. The recent spike in the prices of bitcoins and all other crypto-currencies have only heightened the enthusiasm for this technology.
So is it something that would be applied anywhere and everywhere? Would certain industries benefit more from it than others? Is it a panacea that can solve every problem?
These are generally the questions, that we get asked most often. There seems to be an air of enigma around the applicability of blockchain. Let’s try and clear some of that up.
To understand the application of blockchain, we first need to have a knowledge of what exactly it is.
In the simplest of terms, it is a distributed open ledger that is immutable and hence brings in more transparency and accountability, whereas reducing overheads like verification.
So, can it solve every problem? Most certainly not. However, there are many areas where it can be of immense benefit.
Blockchain, as a technology, shines when there is a business network involved and an exchange of assets takes place between them. Currently, this exchange happens via a central trusted authority that leads to inefficiency, disputes, and arbitration. Blockchain can change all that.
The Finance industry has several interesting use cases for blockchain, like cross-border transactions, online identity management, commercial transaction codes as smart contracts and much more. It has also been one of the first to embrace this technology, and many banks now have established their in-house research that is trying to uncover the potential of this technology.
But finance is not the only sector. Many experts believe that the application of blockchain, dovetailed with IoT (Internet of Things) would redefine supply chain management. Imagine you are able to trace every shipment, everywhere. And this is stored in an immutable ledger which can be queried to and which is agreed upon by all the parties. It opens a lot of possibilities like fighting counterfeit, establishing provenance, and in general a much faster and automated supply chain.
Health too, can gain immensely from this. Especially maintaining patient records, clinical trails and coordination amongst various departments.
Another use case is social data. What if you don’t have to use gmail, facebook, instagram to exhange information and data with your friends. Opens up several possibilities..right? Blockchain is currently being used to enable peer to peer exchange of data, and several application are already live (steemit, blockstack).
Similarly strategy can be replicated in ecommerce. It could allow us to purchase directly from the seller without having to use a platform like Amazon and ebay. Quite revolutionary!
Small and medium enterprises, NGOs that have multiple departments are also looking at the possibility of using blockchain to circumvent the bureaucracy that eventually creeps in.
A lot of research is actively happening at the moment, and the future looks very bright for blockchain.
Want to know how your business can benefit? Get in touch with our team of experts who can help you out identify the possible advantage you can garner.
Originally published at Techracers | Fintech | Fantasy Sports Application Development.
