Despite the favorite conviction that blockchain technology is designed to do cryptocurrency transactions and earn bitcoins, blockchain continues its entry into many regions of life: social media, gaming, healthcare, real estate, and others. The technology intends to boost work efficiency, cut costs for businesses and improve customer experience.
Blockchain can be explained as a digitalized database and it belongs to digital ledger technology (DLT), which implies no central data store or administrative functionality. Exactly why is it a benefit for an enterprise? Decentralization alongside transparency, gives each participant an opportunity to view all recorded data, ensure its security and track important information.
Here are areas blockchain has entered and has proven that this technology may be worth relying on.
Supply chain management, as an example, is a major yet vulnerable area of the workflow of numerous companies. Parties participating blockchain in the act often don’t interact together directly and still apply paper-based ways of information collection and storage. Blockchain offers complete elimination of paperwork: documents flow becomes automated, digital certification is employed as well. Moreover, each authorized person in the supply chain can track the merchandise from producer to the consumer and prevent counterfeit distribution.
Several American retail giants that encountered foodborne illnesses outbreaks and further food recalls, have implemented blockchain technology in their food supply chains. Before, tracking one product took around 7 days minimum, and nowadays a food item’s provenance can be identified for a couple seconds.
Thus, blockchain solutions made the process of recall faster, more efficient, and cost-saving. Meanwhile, customers have experienced blockchain adoption in their hypermarkets. In Walmart’s Chinese stores, for example, they can scan the QR code and get all the data about the merchandise: from the farm location to the inspection certificates.
Healthcare is the field where blockchain-based solutions have established themselves as a highly secure and transparent means of keeping electronic health records (EHR). Both doctors and patients receive authorization to access the records and utilize them when necessary. In once, blockchain solutions are powered by smart contracts which enable EHR data privacy protection. Healthcare device data and clinical research are encrypted, insurance can be executed and stored, too. Another use case is prescription medicines and equipment supply chain control.
E-commerce increasingly requires blockchain technology. Again, supply chain is an essential aspect here: monitoring goods and managing supplies tend to be challenging tasks but blockchain helps businesses manage their inventory more efficiently. Consumers who trust their money and data to e-commerce organizations are worried about data security and transparency but this problem can be addressed with blockchain development. Even slight changes in transaction are obvious on a blockchain, and tracking who made an error is no hassle anymore. It is also possible to do crypto payments.
The following area is actually related to cryptocurrency transactions. DeFi, short for decentralized finance, doesn’t only include simple assets transfer, but in addition identifies more complicated financial use cases. The implementation of blockchain plays a part in intermediary exclusion and, consequently, reduces costs. All transactions are encrypted and immutable, multi-step authentication mechanisms make the device hard to access for unauthorized members. Among recent novelties is the ability to turn to P2P lending services and digital banking.
Social media marketing has potential to be afflicted with blockchain as well. Along having its global popularity and the capability to connect people around the globe, social media is still vulnerable to account hacking, identity leakage and copyright infringement. To tackle those issues, blockchain offers author rights protection, digital identity verification and unbiased licensing.