Blockchain has been recognized as the solution for everything, from fixing global financial inequality, enabling people to sell their houses without an estate agent to rendering IDs for refugees. Technological innovation can impact many industries and change their way of functioning. As new technologies are developed, industries try to implement the technology in their industry to operate efficiently. Since the applications of the blockchain are tremendous, it can change the functioning and the way business is done. Blockchain is a public ledger system which records and validate each and every transaction and makes it reliable and secure. It also discards the need for any third-party or central authority for peer-to-peer transactions. Here are some prominent industries that will be overhauled by blockchain technology in the near future.
Financial sector and share trading
Utilizing blockchain technology potentially allows for greater trade accuracy and a shorter settlement process. Financial Institutes and banks are actively investing as it will soon be influenced by blockchain technology. It has the potential to develop many processes within the financial sector, including share trading. It involves middlemen like brokers in the process of buying and selling stocks. Creating a decentralized and secure ledger gives every party a valid transaction, speeds up the settlement process, allows for greater trade accuracy, and can cut out some of the middlemen while changing the role of others.
Trading has changed significantly with the initiation of computers. In the coming future, blockchain technology will not only exclude intermediates but also make the stock exchange decentralized, without a need for the central system to bring supply and demand together. Since blockchain is shared by all the associates, it is easy to prevent double-spending and verify who owns tokens at some particular point in time. They can be implemented in this sector by using digital currency like bitcoins that can be stored and carried in the form of cryptographic tokens. For instance, since bitcoins uses a peer-to-peer network to broadcast information about any transactions taking place, they can be added to blocks that are cryptographically secured, forming an immutable blockchain. Also, they can be tracked and ‘colored’ to distinguish and can be associated with the ownership of certain assets like stocks, bonds etc. In this way, many different assets can be transferred using the bitcoin blockchain, but there are also other cryptocurrency networks that are authorized for exchanging multiple assets, such as Ripple.
Supply chain management
Supply chains embrace the end-to-end flow of information, products, and services. Managing these components affects the organization’s competitive positioning in areas such as product cost, working capital requirements etc. Organizations aim to adopt innovative methods so as to streamline their supply chains, optimize efficiencies and meet consumer demands. Issues like paper-based processes are still common resulting in reduced transparency and collaboration across networks. Further, decision making amongst the member is complicated by different systems which provide limited visibility of other functions. The current supply chain process faces four key pain points.
Traceability- Capability to control events and data linked with a product
Compliance- Standards and controls to prove that regulatory conditions are met
Flexibility- ability to adapt changes without any increase in operational cost
Stakeholder management– effective governance to enable risk reduction and trust among parties
David Dalton, Partner, and Deloitte EMEA Blockchain Lab sponsor considers that “Traceability across supply chains are one of the most compelling use cases for blockchain technology” Blockchain allows organizations to effectively tackle these problems. It holds the benefits of providing greater information transparency, distributed digital ledger and relies on cryptographic principle. The implementation of blockchain in the supply chain can solve all the issues including the pain points as mentioned above. It solves the pain points in following way
Blockchain renders a full audit of data, making it traceable and keeps record keeping along the supply chain.
All blockchain transactions are tamper-proof and timestamped, hence solving the problem of compliance and providing a single source of data integrity.
Through the use of smart contracts across the supply chain, a continuous real-time tracking of data is facilitated and hence enabling flexibility.
Blockchain enables peer-to-peer interactions which can be trusted based on the digital signatures.
Discovery aims to solve such supply chain issues by implementing blockchain with the convergence of IoT, AI, and edge computing. Our solution will soon be adopted across the supply chain industry as it solves the critical issues at a very low cost.
Identity management
Online identity management has always been a time-consuming and costly process. For any purposes, there is a need for registration. A consumer can also register online but financial services like loans, mortgages or insurance require a higher level of security for the financial institution to co with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
Authentication and authorization involve some form of face-to-face checking and/or examining official government identity documents will be required. Second, the client requires a means of authentication: users need to show that they are who they claim to be each time they log into a service. Third, authorization — there needs to be evidence that they are entitled to do what they propose to do. This procedure is followed again for every new service provider.
When identity management is influenced by blockchain technology, users have the choice to decide how they want to be identified and who will be notified. There is a need to register their identity on the blockchain initially and hence can be used for other services too.
A number of startups are generating blockchain technology applications in the field of identity management. Users have to register and identify themselves once to banks or insurance companies connected to this platform, they are then recorded on the blockchain so they do not need to be registered by the other parties as well. One of the benefits of blockchain technology is that it has the potential to cut out the middlemen and provide every party the information that does not need to be verified.
Digital voting
Digital voting uses electronic devices, such as voting machines or an internet browser, to cast votes. These are sometimes referred to as e-voting when voting using a machine in a polling station, and i-voting when using a web browser. The biggest concern when considering to implement a digital voting system is security. One way the security issues can be potentially solved is through the technology of blockchain. Blockchain technology originates from the underlying architectural design of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Since it is a framework of the distributed database where records take the form of transactions, a robust and secure system for digital voting can be devised. It helps to reduce voters frauds and increase compliance for government officials.
Summary
As innovative technologies are developed, industries try to adopt them to change the functioning and also gain a competitive edge. Blockchain technology is one such that holds the capability to optimize the global infrastructure to deal with global issues that are efficient than the current system. It is the most promising technology that holds the ability to solve the issues, like transparency and frauds, being faced in the current functioning. Organizations and enterprises are now aware of the potential benefits of blockchain technology and are thus implementing them in their industries.
Read More: “Use Cases of Blockchain across various industries”
Originally published at https://discoveryiot.com
Join DiscoveryIoT for more details.