In 2017, when the popularity of Bitcoin started growing, the media and even investors could not think of any better blockchain use case than crypto investments. However, with the passage of time, we realized that blockchain can be applied to pretty much any industry in order to yield a variety of benefits.
Are you a business owner looking to scale business operations? Blockchain may just be the solution for you! We have highlighted 15 blockchain use cases that will transform the business world.
15 Most Applicable Blockchain Use Cases
1. Contracts and Documents
This is the most popular use of blockchain. As we can use smart contracts to auto-execute agreements in an encrypted and decentralized environment. Let’s just view this blockchain use case from the perspective of classified documents and contracts.
Other data structures are quite prone to hacking. Hence, they are often left at the discretion of a specific group of people monitoring the network. If we use blockchain to store classified documents, we can automate these administrative processes and allow for a more productive workforce. Moreover, the documents and contracts can be stored without having to rely on a centralized authority to enforce them. What’s even more exciting is that the contracts can be self-executed at the stipulated date and time.
Since the network is decentralized, there will not be a single point of failure and the system will never crash even if a node goes down.
2. Supply Chain Management
There is already increasing use of blockchain platforms within the supply chain industry. The reasons are quite understandable as this data structure provides one of the best means for provenance, tracking, privacy, and transparency. Moreover, the transparency feature of blockchain can prevent malicious activities within the supply chain.
Moreover, automation is also required in an industry where transaction fees are rising drastically. This would reduce such costs and benefit all players.
3. Healthcare
Some patients are concerned about their private data being leaked due to glitches in traditional systems. Unfortunately, even some crime organizations hack such directories to get the records and then exploit their targets. With permissioned blockchains springing up, we can implement necessary measures to ensure only authorized people have access to the data and every action is accounted for.
Furthermore, with the help of blockchain in healthcare, we are now able to solve one of the most troubling issues. That is matching the health records for patients efficiently and accurately.
Blockchain healthcare use cases can also allow us to prevent or at least diminish frauds related to this industry. Examples include tampering with medical records and test reports.
4. Education
Educational records are often forged by counterfeiting parties to serve their ill motives and deprive thousands of people of their rights. With the help of blockchain, we can keep a tamper-proof record of students who have:
- Taken courses in an organization
- Attempted tests with any certifying body
- Received degrees from any university around the world
As a result, we would not only be able to reduce administrative costs (since everything can be verified on the public ledger) but make the entire academic record of a student explicitly available for universities and relevant employers.
5. Finance
With the launch of Bitcoin, finance was probably the first industry to experience a sheer implementation of blockchain technology. Since then, it has been a successful transition. Other than cryptocurrencies, banks, and some financial institutions have also started using blockchain to offer more security, efficiency, and reduction in transaction fees to their clients.
Moreover, even though international banking transactions take several days to be cleared, blockchain can make it happen within minutes. This is because the technology is entirely decentralized and does not require any intermediaries, hence diminishing transactional and operational costs as well.
Therefore, the use of blockchain in finance can make the world a lot more globalized and can comply with industrial regulations more efficiently.
6. Distributed Computing
The availability of computing resources is crucial for the survival of all industries and independent stakeholders in our tech and economical landscapes. Everybody needs computing power but unfortunately, it is left in the hands of a few, who often abuse the resources and establish their monopoly.
Since blockchain goes against the notion of monopoly by offering decentralization, we can make distributed computing available to everyone across the world, while being a comparatively inexpensive option. What’s more exciting is that individuals with surplus computing resources will be able to share it with anyone in the World and earn money for providing the service.
Essentially, distributed computing would create a blockchain-based use case for cloud computing where people, even in the remotest part of the World would be able to avail the services without requiring any hardware.
7. Social Networking
There could be plenty of blockchain use cases when we think about social networks. There wasn’t any trend a couple of years ago, but Facebook and other giants are now hiring blockchain engineers quite eagerly.
With the use of blockchain for social networks, we can further minimize cyberbullying from fake profiles since every action will be accounted for and people will know that whatever they do can be retrieved from the ledger. Furthermore, we can use blockchain to create social media platforms, allowing users to make money by uploading quality posts and generating revenue based on the number of comments, shares, and likes.
8. Energy
The energy sector required a major overhauling for the last couple of decades and progress has gone well. It happens to be a perfect opportunity to integrate blockchain use cases in this industry. It is also worth mentioning that according to a report published by EY, more than 100 use cases are being developed for this niche!
The extent of corruption in this sector is so high that the US alone faces a loss of roughly $150 billion per annum while transferring energy. Apart from corruption, long-distance transmission adds a major contribution to aggravate the issues. It is a critical requirement to make plenty of local power stations and utilize the blockchain to transfer power to each household by maintaining the record in an open ledger.
Furthermore, it has also become possible to trade surplus energy, produced by a household or office, with the help of smart contracts. The residents of NY even tried this blockchain use case 3 years ago, with fruitful results.
Compliance happens to be yet another major concern in the energy sector where authorities spend billions on regulations. Well, this cost can be reduced significantly with the help of blockchain as it can get rid of the following:
- Fraud
- Data loss
- Inefficiency and unauthorized usage of resources
9. Ride Sharing
Blockchain happens to be a primary use case in the shared economy and when things are ‘shared’, the need for provenance and tracking surges exponentially.
As of yet, Uber, Careem, and Ola have dominated the ride-sharing market and yet, they do not even own a single car. Because they have established their monopoly in the market, they have access over your private information – gallery, contacts, you name it.
We could implement a blockchain use case in this scenario and overhaul the current scenario where every driver could use a public ledger to offer plenty of add-ons, mention and update his fare and offer accept payment options (even crypto), without having to share personal details from the mobile phone. As a result, the drivers won’t have to pay a dime to any intermediary and the customers will also be delighted because of lower fares.
10. Fitness Tracking
Although fitness tracking with blockchain is not quite popular, it might become a great thing in the years to come, given that the awareness is growing quite decently. We already discussed how blockchain use cases in the field of healthcare are changing the industry. Well, some researchers suggest that adding fitness tracking as a module would extend the utility and consumers will be able to monitor their health more easily.
In order to serve the purpose, Nokia launched its pilot program to get the user’s steps and hours of sleep as an input just to test the utility of the use case when it comes to real-time tracking of health data.
In my opinion, the most practical blockchain use case in this regard was offered by MintHealth. They set different milestones for people to stay healthy. In return, they are rewarded with crypto tokens. These tokens can be used for other healthcare services on the platform.
11. Human Resource
Blockchain use cases are quite extensive in the HR niche due to plenty of reasons. Firstly, recruitment is a time-consuming process. Organizations hire 3rd parties to do it on their behalf. However, they charge a hefty amount for providing these services. With the help of blockchain, we can preset some necessary conditions and use smart contracts. This automates the recruitment process without spending any recurring amount.
Furthermore, since HR managers are required to run verification on the applicants, we can use blockchain here to ensure that the past records of an applicant are not tampered with. Hiring managers can also run reliable checks on their history.
It is also worth noticing that HR managers are bound to follow rules and regulations in order to keep the applicants’ and employees’ data secure. The current checks in place are not that efficient and secure. Therefore, we could also enlist the help of blockchain in this case. Auditors won’t have to worry about the reliability of data when performing checks.
12. Knowledge Sharing
Unfortunately, as of yet, the knowledge we are receiving is quite controlled. With the help of blockchain, we can decentralize the entire model and allow anyone to post content. What’s even more exciting is that there will be a detailed record for every change made to any website.
Furthermore, we can also implement a business model here which would allow contributors to earn money if their content receives a minimum threshold of appreciation as decided in the smart contract.
13. Advertising
The advertising industry is worth several billions of dollars. Therefore, this sector requires immediate implementation of blockchain so that everything remains efficient and decentralized.
Firstly, advertising requires hefty transactions from both sides. And since the current methods are insecure and inefficient, we could use a globally acceptable cryptocurrency for payments. Secondly, clients are also concerned about their money not being well-spent on the marketing campaigns. We could make use of blockchain’s transparency and efficiency to guarantee that.
14. Cybersecurity
Blockchain use cases can enhance the efficiency of cybersecurity. The overhauling of the entire internet is not feasible. Hence, we should focus on implementing as many distributed ledgers as possible. It would also allow us to prevent any unauthorized access by verifying the users and then adding their IPs to the ledger.
Furthermore, if the DNS is decentralized, hackers have a relatively difficult time breaking through the firewall.
15. Retailing
It is easy to see how blockchain can benefit the retailing industry. It has the potential to automate payments and use hashing to verify the goods. Therefore, it allows us to monitor inventory changes quite closely. All without doubting the integrity of data.
