Because of its characteristics, in particular, immutability, censorship resistance, transparency, and privacy, blockchain could easily, in many situations, replace the centralized server backend infrastructure that has been the only option since the 1960s. The blockchain network can support many different applications, systems, and processes.
In nearly every industry you look at, there is most likely a startup using blockchain to build solutions to one or more challenges. The following are some of the industries with notable use cases for blockchain:
Supply chains are critical to the functioning of society. Everything we consume must move from the point of production, often thousands of miles away, to the local retail store. If it is a service, the provider depends on a supply chain to get whatever resources they need to deliver.
Ordinarily, supply chain management is complex, and multiple parties or stakeholders are involved. This creates loopholes such that counterfeits can be introduced into the system. Meanwhile, the cost of securing the supply chains is passed on to the consumer, driving the price up.
A quality blockchain can give supply chains is transparency through the use of distributed ledger technology for data processing and storage. The ledgers make it easy to authenticate and track product provenance, reducing the proliferation of counterfeits.
The ledgers are not only accessible to all stakeholders, but the data recorded on them is immutable. That means any of the stakeholders cannot arbitrarily change it.
Also, the blockchain makes the interaction among stakeholders in the supply chain seamlessly and less costly through smart contracts. That includes the execution of trade finance trading transactions.
The efficiency of health services depends on the collection, storage, and sharing of data. The doctor, the pharmacist, and the nurse need accurate data to deliver appropriate care.
Unfortunately, how medical records are created and used often impedes the delivery of health care services. Each service provider a patient visits often collects and stores data in their local silo-ed database.
If at all they share the data with other service providers seeing the same patient, it is often limited to what they consider important. Nuanced trends in the patient's health, which become critical in the long term, might be missed.
Also, while it is their data, the patient has very little control over how it is used once they have given it to the service provider.
These are some of the challenges in the health care industry that the blockchain can be used to solve. It offers a mechanism for storing data on a public ledger in an encrypted form.
The patient can then move from one service provider to another with their entire medical records. They have full control over the data through a private key, which could be their biometrics.
Whenever they visit a doctor, they can use this private key to offer them limited access to read and add more data to the file.
With all their data in one file, it becomes easy to track and identify emerging threats to the patient's health. Besides, the patient has control over their sensitive information and can permit their health data for use in research. They might even be compensated when that happens.
Meanwhile, service providers have fewer overheads to take care of especially in regard to medical record systems. In particular, the system's security is improved with marginal cost as mass hacks are not possible on the blockchain, further improving data integrity in the healthcare system.
The process of authenticating real estate ownership often includes numerous third parties, significantly increasing the cost of transacting.
The blockchain can make real estate transactions faster, more secure, and less costly. This is especially possible through the creation of an identity for a digital asset on the blockchain. This identity is minted as a non-fungible token (NFT).
These digital representations of the asset can easily be searched, verified, and traded on the blockchain without the need for counterparties to go through a third party. Besides, the buyer and seller can use a smart contract to exchange the price and title securely and transparently.
Blockchain can also improve home leasing systems. For example, it is possible to create smart keys that stop working at the expiry of the contract but also at the end of a stay period.
Keeping financial records in an easy way to audit and authenticate is the goal of any accounting system. While conventional accounting systems have evolved to be highly secure and dependable, they still have vulnerabilities that allow for the tampering of records.
The Blockchain offers opportunities to make it even easier to audit and authenticate accounting records. It also makes the data even more secure. This is especially possible because the data is stored in digital files where it becomes immutable. There is also increased transparency as stakeholders can easily have secure real-time access.
One of the challenges the insurance industry faces is fraud. According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud (CAIF), American consumers and insurers lose more than $100 billion yearly to fraud. The prevalence of fraud in the industry makes it hard to automate claim systems.
The blockchain offers the mechanism to create automated systems that are not only immutable and secure but also transparent to all stakeholders, especially regarding reinsurance.
Conventional financial institutions have struggled to eliminate financial exclusion. According to a report by the World Bank, over a billion adult individuals around remain unbanked.
The lack of appropriate infrastructure and the high overhead cost has always stood in the way. Since 2000 significant progress has been achieved through the use of the internet and mobile telephony.
The blockchain has the potential to increase financial inclusion. The technology removes the intermediaries in financial service delivery, which have had to incur costs and accumulate profits.
Many already use decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to access financial services such as saving, lending, and forex. These applications remove intermediaries in financial services.
Even though blockchain offers different benefits to multiple industries, there are common solutions. They include the following:
The Blockchain is being used as the vehicle through which value is transmitted through the internet. That opens up the possibility of offering financial-related services such as credit and trade financing.
Since blockchain is an internet-based decentralized platform, it does not recognize international borders. That means sending value between two people in the same room is similar to sending value between people on the opposite ends of the globe. This makes services like remittance and trade financing a lot less complex and cheaper.
Whether it is electing politicians, members of a board, or the governance decisions of an organization, the blockchain offers a better mechanism for doing it.
In particular, it makes the process transparent and more secure, especially through immutability and cryptography.
All industries benefit from blockchain through automation using smart contracts. Indeed, automation has always been possible, even without blockchain. However, smart contracts on the blockchain offer security and immutability to systems and processes.
In general terms, blockchain offers any system or process that uses its security. This comes especially from its inherent immutability features and the use of cryptography to secure data and identities.
In most systems, it is important to verify the identity of users. The old way of doing things has been to collect users' data and file it in databases saved on servers. This, however, creates the risk of hacks and data misuse.
A user can move around with a digital identity that can easily be verified and authenticated. That is what blockchain is offering. The user can carry and secure their identifying data and provide access using a private key whenever necessary.
It is still early days in the adoption and innovation of blockchain. The use cases of the technology are bound to grow, especially with the emergence of other technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and 3D printing.
The Casper Network is built to provide the capacity to support systems and processes in different industries.
The Casper Network offers the capacity for highly dynamic and upgradeable smart contracts, which are the building blocks of any blockchain application, system, or process.
The team behind the Casper Network project is committed to making it as easy as possible for small, medium, and large-scale businesses to estimate their need for the technology and to onboard it where it is necessary.
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