Blockchain Technology Applications in the Real World
Worldwide, blockchain spending is expected to increase to $15.9 billion by 2023, according to Statista
Over the past few years, blockchain technology has proven to be a phenomenal technology. The new features of blockchain technology make business processes more efficient, safer and more transparent and take the industry towards a new “decentralized” direction. Other blockchain technologies including cryptocurrencies, Dapps and digital wallets, among others, are giving rise to new markets.
Applications of blockchain technology in industry
Blockchain technology has proven useful in all industries. Technology is giving every industry a facelift from finance to supply chain and creating demand for it blockchain professionals in this worldwide business overhaul.
Make cross-border payments faster
Cross-border payments are costly due to the involvement of several third parties that make payment processing slower and heavily taxed. Using blockchain technology in cross-border payments will eliminate the need for third parties and reduce the cost of processing payments.
Minimize ad fraud in digital advertising
In 2016, advertisers lost $7.2 billion on digital advertising. What this means is that clicks on ads were not human clicks, instead the clicks originated from bots. Click fraud is increasing by 50% annually. In a study of 135 million ads on Internet Explorer, 50% of ad views were non-human. Similarly, 20.5% of ad impressions on Chrome were found to be non-human. Blockchain can provide greater transparency in the metadata of the audience viewing an ad. The use of blockchain can prevent fake clicks by tracing back to the origin and seeing if the click was human or bot.
Blockchain for government agencies
Rigged EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) have been reported across various countries during the election season. Security problems have been recorded several times, which defeats the purpose of the election. India, USA and other democratic countries across the world have reported several cases of rigged EVMs. The immutability attribute of blockchain can be used to secure votes. In 2018, Sierra Leone conducted the world’s first blockchain-based voting. In the future, we may see increased use of blockchain-based ballots for elections.
Blockchain for Cybersecurity
Data breaches are common and affect industries worldwide. These breaches expose millions of personally sensitive data that affect lives. This is dangerous, especially when it can be done with a simple phishing email. Blockchain inherently secures stored data by its decentralized architecture and cryptography.
Furthermore, cloud storage is vulnerable to hacking. With the help of blockchain, this can be reduced to a large extent.
Blockchain for the Supply Chain
The logistics industry involves a large number of suppliers, which makes it very complex. The food supply chain faces pollution, theft and several other problems. Using blockchain’s decentralized attribute, third-party providers can be eliminated. In collaboration with IBM, Walmart has created a blockchain-based network that makes it easier to trace the origin of food and helps avoid food disasters for businesses.
Blockchain for IoT
The wave of the Internet of Things (IoT) is sweeping the industry with its innovative applications. Scaling IoT comes with its challenges. For example, storing data created by devices in one place makes it highly vulnerable to hacking. A decentralized network that connects millions of devices is less prone to hacking and more secure. IBM and Samsung are working on ADEPT (a blockchain-based system) that will allow devices to communicate with each other, update software, handle errors and observe energy practices.
All in all, it is only a matter of time before we see blockchain become a mainstream technology among a number of emerging technologies and see the demand for blockchain engineer grow in the process.
