Blockchain is far more than only cryptocurrencies, even though bitcoin network was the first real world application of blockchain. There are several other use cases for this technology and blockchain shows a lot of promise for a variety of useful applications.
Supply chain.Walmart uses blockchain technology to optimize its supply chain.
Their challenge was to trace the path of every farm or agricultural field that their products originate from, which could give insights to make better business decisions.
Their approach was to work with IBM to develop and integrate Hyperledger fabric blockchain into their supply chain ecosystem.
The results that Walmart achieved by this, is that they could increase the tracing duration their origin of their instore products from 7 days to 2.2 seconds.
Ethereum which was introduced as a blockchain in 2013, is used as smart contracts across various industries. A smart contract is a set of computers made rules which can be verified, negotiated and enforce execution, all in a digital form.
These smart contracts have the potential to replace conventional contracts which of those makes the intermediaries also responsible for enforcing a contract.
But, in the case of smart contracts have blockchain acting as the intermediary which cannot be bribed or tricked to give out any biased judgment. Hence this technology will enforce both parties to honor the smart contract.
The biggest problem in the healthcare ecosystem is that organizations hold multiple and fragmented information about patients. Blockchain helps the industry to solve this problem by putting the healthcare record and transactions in the blockchain network to create a smart healthcare ecosystem.
A smart contract is launched to give time limited access to the patients’ health records.
A patient can give time limited access to doctors to remotely review their records and get medical advises. Patients can give health insurers access to monitor their health records and also for verification of treatment and payment settlements. The data from wearable fitness devices can also be used to transfer value and payments.
Patients can give pharmaceutical research institutions a time limited access of their health records for medical trial purposes.
The doctors can write the diagnosis, prescriptions, scans, lab results and notes which can be recorded as transactions in the blockchain.
The pharmacy dispenses the patients’ medications and records the transaction in the blockchain.
The problem in the Real estate industry is it that the process is complex and has a lot of intermediaries involved. home inspectors, real estate agents, banks and local governments are supposed to validate a transaction before completing it.
Blockchain is helping the industry by drastically simplifying the process. The local, national and provisional housing regulations are codified on the blockchain smart contract.
India has looked at blockchain for complicated land registration problems and frauds in the country. In the year 2013, New Delhi has reported over 181 cases of property fraud and Mumbai has reported close to 173 cases.
To counter this issue, the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh state government has partnered and work with a Swedish company “Roma Way” to put their land registry system on a blockchain network.
Non-fungible tokens are digital assets that are backed by blockchain which can give you a proof of ownership of the asset. Ethereum ERC 721 was the first standard for representing a non-fungible digital asset on the Ethereum blockchain.
Generally, NFT’s are available for anyone in the world to obtain. But, NFT’s are tracked using blockchain to provide the owner or creator of the digital asset (NFT) with a proof of ownership forever. Blockchain helps that the digital asset represented is authentically one of a kind, NFT’s are now being used in the world to commercialize digital asset in art, music, sports and much more in the field of entertainment.
Blockchain has immense hidden potential to explore over time and is being integrated by various industries in different countries.