Despite the popular belief that blockchain technology is only designed for cryptocurrency transactions and bitcoin earnings, blockchain continues to make its way into many areas of life: social media, gaming, healthcare, real estate, and others. Technology seeks to increase work efficiency, reduce costs for businesses and improve customer experience.
Blockchain can be interpreted as a digitized database and belongs to Digital Ledger Technology (DLT), which implies no central data store or administrative functionality. Why is this an advantage for an enterprise? Decentralization with transparency, allows every single participant to view all recorded data, ensure its security and track important information.
This is where blockchain has already stepped in and proven that this technology is worth relying on.
Supply chain management, for example, is a major but underserved part of many companies’ workflows. The parties involved in the process often do not communicate directly with each other and still apply paper-based methods of data collection and storage. Blockchain offers complete elimination of paperwork: document flow becomes automated, digital certification is also employed. More importantly, each authorized member of the supply chain can track the product from manufacturer to consumer and prevent counterfeit distribution.
Several American retail giants that have faced foodborne disease outbreaks and further food recalls have implemented blockchain technology in their food supply chains. Earlier, it took a minimum of 7 days to track a product, and in these days a food item can be identified in seconds.
Thus, blockchain solutions have made the withdrawal process faster, more efficient and cost saving. Meanwhile, consumers have also experienced blockchain adoption in their hypermarkets. In Walmart’s Chinese stores, for example, they can scan the QR code and get all the information about the product: from the farm’s location to the inspection certificate.
Healthcare is one area where blockchain-based solutions have established themselves as a highly secure and transparent way of keeping electronic health records (EHR). Both the doctor and the patient are authorized to access the records and use them as needed. At the same time, blockchain solutions are powered by smart contracts that enable EHR data privacy protection. Healthcare device data and clinical research is encrypted, insurance can be executed and stored. Another use case is prescription drug and equipment supply chain control.
E-commerce increasingly requires blockchain technology. Again, supply chain is an important aspect here: tracking products and managing supply is often challenging work but blockchain helps businesses manage their inventory more efficiently. Consumers who trust their money and data to e-commerce companies are concerned about data security and transparency, but this issue can be addressed through blockchain development. Even slight changes in transactions are evident on the blockchain, and tracking who made a mistake is no longer a problem. Crypto payments are also possible.
The next area actually deals with cryptocurrency transactions. DeFi, short for decentralized finance, not only encompasses simple asset transfers, but also refers to more complex financial use cases. The implementation of blockchain contributes to the elimination of intermediaries and, consequently, reduces costs. All transactions are encrypted and immutable, the multi-step authentication process makes it difficult for unauthorized members to access the system. Among the latest innovations are P2P lending services and opportunities to turn to digital banking.
Social media is likely to be influenced by blockchain. Despite its global popularity and ability to connect people around the world, social media is still vulnerable to account hacking, identity leaks and copyright infringement. To address these issues, blockchain provides author rights protection, digital identity verification, and neutral licensing.
Real estate, e-governance, gaming industry and many others have joined the blockchain adoption wave. Once your business chooses innovation, entrust the technology implementation to one of the enterprise blockchain companies that will build a future-proof enterprise DLT for you. With blockchain, your business will change the rules of the game in your field.