Blockchain: Disruptions And Opportunities

There has been a resounding expectation by a lot of experts in the crypto community about the opportunities and gains that blockchain adoption could yield in the near future. In this post, we are going to take a look at what has changed so far in industries that have adopted it.

Although it has disrupted nearly all major industries, there are five of them where this process was the most successful by this date. These are supply chain management, healthcare, banking, voting systems, and cybersecurity.

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management for retail, logistics, and e-tail sectors has always appeared to be a more likely candidate for blockchain disruption from the get-go. This could be because of the many parties that are involved in the chain of supply — manufacturer, exporter, retailer, and the end user. Getting rid of the middlemen is one of the fundamental reasons why blockchain technology was invented.

Due to the complexities of the trade, it is crucial that the parties involved can keep track of the freight, and blockchain provides a perfect solution for that. This technology allows them to keep a close track and manage the distribution channel.

Moreover, due to the digital signatures, tampering with records or inaccurate labeling has been rendered nearly impossible.

Currently, a number of startups are already using or offering blockchain solutions for supply chain management. These include Skuchain, Blockfreight, Clause, Maersk, Walmart, and IBM.

Maersk, the world’s leading shipping company, has already adopted blockchain technology from IBM to track shipping containers. Walmart uses the same technology to track 1.1 million items’ journey from manufacturers to shelves.

Healthcare Industry

Medical records require safe storage, access-only security, and controlled sharing due to their sensitive nature. Guardtime, a cybersecurity company, uses blockchain technology to create a keyless entry system.

Estonia quickly adopted this system. The country uses it to protect all of its patients’ medical records and appears to be the first to adopt a blockchain-based system in the health industry on a large scale.

This has created lots of possibilities not just for Estonia but for many other countries across the globe to adopt blockchain in this sector.

In the United States, Gem does the same thing. It partnered with CDC to experiment the use of blockchain technology to monitor infectious diseases. The main goal was to give patients control over their medical records and genomic data.

Banking

When the the blockchain disruptions first hit the banking industry, experts said that this was just the beginning. Guess what! They were correct. From a macro perspective, we can see why this was the case given that banks act as a critical transfer hub and storehouse of value.

Blockchain’s secure, digitized, and tamper-proof ledger can serve the same function but with better efficiency and accuracy in information sharing for the entire financial service ecosystem.

It would be interesting to note that some major banks around the world have swiftly moved to the blockchain-based way of transacting business. Some notable examples include the Royal Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bank, Swiss bank UBS, and UK-based Barclays. These are experimenting with blockchain as a way to expedite back office functions and settlement.

According to experts, this adoption could eliminate the costs of the middleman by $20 billion.

Startup R3 is already working with more than 80 consortia of banks, regulators, and technology partners. It wants to develop Corda — a blockchain platform that is designed to be the new operating system for financial markets.

Voting

Why blockchain adoption in voting? Elections in the past have always been marred with the lack of transparency and rigging, both of which have led to disgruntled voters. It is pivotal that elections are provided with reliable voter identification, record keeping, vote tracking, and tallying system.

Blockchain seems to be a more capable candidate for such a task because it could serve as a foundational infrastructure for the vote casting, tracking, and counting. Therefore, it could potentially eliminate the need for vote recount by eliminating frauds.

Typical examples of startups that are working towards achieving the blockchain voting system include Follow My Vote, Voatz, and Democracy Earth. In particular, Follow My Vote released the alpha version of its stake-weighted end-to-end blockchain voting solution.

Cybersecurity and Cloud Infrastructure

The traditional internet infrastructure has been privy to constant threat from hackers, especially when considering the Internet of Things. What’s more, there is a greater risk to the civil society due to the power plants and transportation systems being equipped with connected sensors.

Luckily, the adoption of blockchain innovation could help avert such risks as seen with companies such as Xage Security.

Xage Security adopted blockchain-based tamper-proof ledgers for safe and secure data sharing across industrial device networks.

Wrapping Up

The blockchain ledger can be made public, but what makes it a hack-proof solution is that it can send communication through advanced cryptographic technology. This ensures that data is intercepted in the interim. As a result, worldwide adoption of blockchain could eliminate the probability of hacking.

In terms of development, the present state of the blockchain technology could be compared to where the internet was 20 years ago. According to the infographic below, with the rapid rate of adoption, it could bring about a major disruption sooner than projected. Hopefully, all companies will board the blockchain ride or face rejection.

Infographic URL: https://bitfortune.net/blockchain-disruptions-infographic/

Blockchain: Disruptions And Opportunities was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.