Blockchain technology is used not only for investing or trading. Many companies from supermarkets and airlines to banks and government agencies find it handy when it comes to solving business problems. In fact, most of us already use the services of companies that closely work with the blockchain.
What is a blockchain platform?
Imagine that you have to find a birthday cake for a party. You can simply buy a cake in the store close by and maybe redecorate it a little, so it suits the party's theme. Or, if you want to have a cake with special fillings and design, you can bake it from scratch and create something unique.
As you might have guessed, in this case blockchain is our cake. Principles are the same. If you don’t feel like writing code from the beginning, you can take a pre-made platform and customize it. You can come up with a general idea, name and logo, some features, and the blockchain platform will take care of all the technical things, such as security and transactions.
The most famous blockchain platforms
- Ethereum. It allows you to create apps based on smart contracts from different areas of life: finance, insurance, investment funds, online games, etc.
- Bitcoin. This is a financial platform, which issues BTC cryptocurrency. Other currencies also can work on Bitcoin blockchain, like Dogecoin, for instance, which is actively supported by Elon Musk (who recently bought Twitter).
- Hyperledger. This is a blockchain platform by the Linux Foundation. There are frameworks for creating digital passports, cloud services and account books.
- Corda. Cords is a system for storing and transferring assets between financial institutions, such as stocks, bonds, loans and others.
- Solana. This blockchain is focused on speed: it can process 65,000 transactions per second (Ethereum does only 30).
- Polkadot. It allows you to combine multiple blockchains into one ecosystem.
Not all projects have their own platforms. For example, Litecoin runs on the Bitcoin blockchain network. And it's not good or bad, it just happened that way. If you want to make your own blockchain, you can use a pre-made code as a base from GitHub, for instance.
How do companies use blockchain?
Since the blockchain is difficult to hack, it is often used to protect digital assets: files, documents or transactions. For example, you can formalize the ownership of land and real estate in it, as it is already happening in Georgia. Many major companies are using blockchain, such as:
- Maersk – for tracking shipping.
- Renault – for the certification of auto parts.
- IBM – for developing a system of interbank transfers (similar to Swift).
Blockchain technology is usually used in these sectors:
- Cryptocurrencies. If you have been on the Internet in the last five years, then you have probably heard about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and others. All of them are using blockchain technology.
- Smart contracts. While using the blockchain, you can conclude a secure contract with any counterparty – a tenant of your apartment, for instance.
- Government structures. After Bitcoin took off, the blockchain used to be a funny thing for geeks. And now it is being used by banks, big companies and even some governments. For example, the government of Taiwan uses the Ethereum-based blockchain to protect against cyberattacks from China.
- Medicine. Scammers and hackers just love to use our health data in their ‘job’. To avoid leaks, now many clinics transfer patients' medical records to the blockchain so that they cannot be stolen, hacked or faked. It is also convenient to fill out such cards and transfer between different institutions.
- Internet of things. Any smart device is linked to some server: it transmits data, downloads updates, and refers to the “Ok, Google”. If someone hacks this server, then they could control the device remotely - for example, set the temperature of the entire house to 32 ° C. To avoid this, many companies store user data in blockchain.
Real case of using blockchain by a major company
The Hyperledger platform is used by both businesses and government companies. For example it has worked with Nike Inc, Walmart, Maersk Group, Emirates Airline, the Government of Dubai and the People's Bank of China. The Hyperledger website has a section in which there are detailed cases of using blockchain by various companies. Let's take one of them as an example.
Walmart is the world's largest wholesale and retail chain. The company has begun using Hyperledger Fabric to track food deliveries. It's a precaution for when dangerous diseases are found in products and there is a need to quickly track the source of supply. Without blockchain technology, it could take days or even weeks to track.
Walmart even has challenged the blockchain. The company first tested Hyperledger Fabric on two products in two countries: mango in the US and pork in China. The testing was successful: in the United States, the time to track the source of a mango supply was reduced from 7 days to 2.2 seconds, and in China, they introduced a system for uploading pork certificates to the blockchain network. Walmart has continued to use Hyperledger Fabric and is already tracking other products.
What's next
According to experts, up to 10% of global GDP will be stored in the blockchain by 2027. For example, digital distributors will be able to license movies, music, and books through NFT tokens. And the government will transfer elections, purchases and other procedures to the blockchain.
What will come of this is hard to say. But If you are interested in how the technology will develop further, follow our blog here – we are publishing news about blockchains and cryptocurrencies every week.
