You’ve probably been hearing about blockchain technology quite often lately. This is not surprising. Since its inception, blockchain has caused controversy among specialists. Some consider this to be just another trend, a theory that is poorly applicable in practice.

Others say that blockchain is our future. The global blockchain market size is expected to reach USD 39.7 billion by 2025, according to MarketsandMarkets. These numbers demonstrate that there are actually many blockchain enthusiasts.

But how exactly can companies use blockchain, and how blockchain can help your business? Find out in this article.

Effective Asset Management with Asset Tokenization

The tokenization of assets, the transfer of the right to an asset into a digital format, has opened up new business opportunities for many industries.

First, it is an excellent solution for assets with poor liquidity. Due to the possibility of distributed ownership, the owners of such assets can be sure that they can quickly sell them at market price.

For example, 3 people who bought tokens representing your asset may own the rights for it at the same time. Asset tokenization also lets you carry out transactions without the involvement of third parties by using smart contracts.

Advantages of asset tokenization:

• Increased asset liquidity through distributed ownership.
• Global access to assets.
• Improved cost-efficiency of buying and selling assets.
• System transparency, which increases the level of trust between counterparties.
• Fast deal execution thanks to self-executing smart contracts.
• Reducing the entry barrier for investors.

Where is used: finance, real estate, healthcare, sports, and others.

Reliable Digital Identity Management

Digital identity simplifies the process of storing and managing our personal information, allowing us to perform banking transactions, open bank accounts, log into our email accounts, access our medical data without the need to provide our physical documents.

However, managing digital identities is a real challenge for any business. Currently, most of the information is stored on centralized servers, which increases the risk of fraud.

Users often don’t understand exactly how companies use their data and have no control over it. Blockchain can overcome these problems and provide a reliable storage and management system for digital IDs.

Advantages of blockchain digital identity:

• Decentralized database that solves the single point of failure problem.
• Increased level of data storage reliability.
• Prevents fraud with identities due to the immutability of data recorded on the blockchain
• Providing so-called self-sovereign identity, where users can control their IDs and choose who to share their data with.
• Providing interoperability of the ID across multiple platforms that solves the problem of creating a separate ID for each separate system

Where is used: healthcare, finance, supply chain, eCommerce, government, telecom, smart cities, and others.

Secure Agreements with Smart Contracts

Smart contracts have become one of the most promising use cases for blockchain technology. Unlike traditional contracts, which are certified by lawyers and notaries to be legally enforceable, smart contracts are a programmable protocol that regulates the execution of the terms of the contract itself.

All conditions of the deal are written in the form of a code in the format of if/then, respectively, the occurrence of a certain event triggers a chain of subsequent events.

For example, you receive an advance payment, tokens transferring rights to the asset are sent to the buyer, the buyer receives the token, then you get the rest of the payment.

Advantages of smart contracts:

• Reliability. The data recorded on a blockchain cannot be changed or destroyed, which imposes obligations on the parties.
• No intermediaries are needed, since smart contracts are concluded by two parties, and their implementation is provided by blockchain technology.
• Increased transaction speed due to the automation of all major stages.
• Better deal conditions due to lower transaction costs.

Where is used: finance, insurance, logistics, retail, and others.

Better Performance Applications with dApps

Decentralized apps (dApps) are applications similar to smart contracts. They work in exactly the same way, but they are not only used for finance. Compared to regular applications, dApps have advantages: improved speed, better performance, and, most importantly, user trust, since dApps are open source, and any changes in them are made based on consensus.

Advantages of dApps:

• Improved application performance due to the lack of a single control center.
• Increased speed.
• Increased security thanks to the properties of blockchain technology.
• User confidence through decentralized management.
• Ease of integrating dApps to create an ecosystem of applications.

Where is used: finance, logistics, marketing, gambling, gaming.

Secure Cloud Storage

Blockchain can also compete with traditional cloud data storage. Thanks to the distributed ledger, files on a blockchain are split into parts, which are then stored on dozens of different nodes. This approach provides secure storage of information.

Only owners of files have full access to them using a unique private key. Such a data warehouse is less susceptible to hacker attacks and provides better privacy. Free storage capacity is used to store data, which hosts sell to data owners.

Hosts are rewarded for storage, which ensures that they are interested in the safekeeping of your information. However, according to the How to Drive Your Business with Blockchain ebook, we should keep in mind that blockchain data storage is mainly suitable for storing metadata and transaction data, not for storing big data and media.

Tying It All Together

As you can see, blockchain has huge business potential. With this technology, you can improve efficiency at lower costs, build a more transparent and secure system at the same time. However, keep in mind that the choice of technology primarily depends on business goals.

Several reasons are indicating that you may not need blockchain. For example, if you are not ready for this level of decentralization or you are satisfied with the terms of partnership with third parties and it makes no sense for you to get rid of them.

Before making a final decision about blockchain implementation in your company, you should consult with experienced blockchain specialists who can study your request and put all the benefits of blockchain into practice. While this technology is not yet mainstream you have a real chance to drive your business with a high-performance blockchain solution.