Applications of Blockchain Technology in 8 Major Industries

Blockchain technology is characterized as an encrypted and decentralized public ledger. It retains time-stamped records of contracts, transactions, and other independently recorded data, in layman's terms. Blockchain technology's primary characteristics - decentralization, immutability, integrity, and anonymity—allow it to be used in both financial and non-financial sectors such as active contracts, the Internet of Things, credit systems, security services, wireless network virtualization, and other different applications. 

According to a report by Grand View Research, Inc., the global blockchain technology market size is expected to reach USD 394.60 billion by 2028. 

Although blockchain is well-known, the technology may be adapted to a variety of different uses.

Even, the fundamental mechanism for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is blockchain technology. Without the intervention of financial institutions such as banks or other intermediaries, financial services could be offered to utilize Blockchain technology. There are many more sectors of industries leveraging blockchain for exceptional quality solutions. Let’s look at these!

Blockchain Has the Potential to Revolutionize Big Industries!

Financial services, travel and mobility, infrastructure, healthcare, public sector, agriculture and mining, education, and communication and information services are just a few areas that can benefit from blockchain technology.

Financial Services 

1. Banking

Blockchain and finance are just the beginning of blockchain technology. Banks are one of the most significant value storehouses and transfer hubs on a macroeconomic scale. Blockchains, like digital, secure, and tamper-proof ledgers, may serve the same function in the financial services ecosystem by improving accuracy and information transmission.

Banks earn handsomely from facilitating payments. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, provides a secure and low-cost method of distributing payments that eliminate the need for third-party verification and outperform standard bank transfer processing times.

2. Stock Trading

For years, companies have worked to make buying, selling, and trading stocks simpler. New blockchain-focused companies are now attempting to automate and secure the process more efficiently than any prior option.

3. Accounting 

Accountants are adopting cryptocurrency and blockchain technology as the financial industry does. Accountants work with a variety of documents that include sensitive personal or company information, such as tax forms, bank records, and spreadsheets. The use of blockchain technology may make it easier for accounting firms to keep track of this sensitive data as it is handled.

The data tracking capabilities of blockchain technology may potentially help in the automation of various accounting operations using artificial intelligence (AI), decreasing human error and fraud.

4. Insurance 

The bulk of blockchain applications in the insurance industry today are geared at enhancing operational efficiency. Rather than building new products, insurance firms are investigating how blockchain might save costs, speed up time to market, and improve client experiences.

For insurance businesses, for example, adopting a blockchain to provide a single source of truth for transactions between parties has the potential to drastically reduce processing time and costs.

Many insurance blockchain initiatives employ the immutability and version control aspects of blockchain technology to facilitate cross-border partnerships or transactions.

Travel & Mobility 

1. Automotive Manufacturing 

Recording tangible assets on a blockchain, such as vehicle components, is an excellent illustration of how the technology can be used to trace ownership in a secure, unbiased, and reliable manner. Unlike paper records, which are susceptible to falsification and physical degradation, and centralized databases, which are vulnerable to hacking, human error, and manipulation, blockchains are unchangeable. There is no one body in-charge of the ledger.

Blockchains might be used to track items through a supply chain and detect fakes. Blockchain might enable targeted recalls with a record of where parts went from the supplier to the specific car.

2. Car Leasing and Sales  

Leasing, purchasing, or selling a car is a famously fragmented process for all parties involved, but blockchain might alter that. Prospective consumers select the automobile they wish to lease using the Visa-DocuSign tool, and the transaction is recorded on the blockchain's public ledger.  The blockchain is updated with the information that the client has approved a leasing contract and an insurance policy from the driver's seat.

3. Aerospace and Defence

Blockchain or distributed ledger systems are being used by aerospace and defense firms. Parts inventory and verification, as well as staff certification monitoring, might all benefit from blockchain technology.

4. Hospitality

Commissions paid to third-party booking platforms cost large hotel chains ten percent to fifteen percent of their entire income. Smaller chains and independent hotels spend even more on third-party services, ranging from 18% to 22% of their income.

The bulk of blockchain applications in the hospitality industry today are designed to improve operational efficiency.

Infrastructure

1. Industrial Sector IoT 

Several companies are utilizing blockchain technology to facilitate any device to securely compare, engage, and transact safely without the need for a central authority.

ADEPT (Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry) is a proposal to establish the backbone of a decentralized network of Internet of Things devices using blockchain-like technology. With ADEPT, a blockchain would act as a public ledger for a large number of devices, eliminating the need for a central hub to facilitate communication.

Without the requirement for a central control system to identify them, the gadgets would be able to engage with one another on their own. This would eliminate the need for a central control system to manage software upgrades, bugs, and energy management.

2. 3D Printing 

3D printing and additive manufacturing are technologically sophisticated processes that allow digital data to be sent instantly with a mouse click. As a result, it's easier to exchange and track components and goods, resulting in more inventive digital supply networks and supply chains.

3. Construction & Architecture

Construction industry employs a diverse range of workers to complete frequently tricky projects. Verifying their identities, quality of the job, and reliability may be time-consuming and challenging. By making it easier for general contractors to authenticate identities and track progress across several teams, a blockchain-based ecosystem might help them solve this challenge.

Intelligent contracts may make it simpler to provide payments on time that are related to project milestones. At the same time, blockchain technology may assist in guaranteeing building supplies are supplied from the correct areas and are of the right quality. 

4. Real Estate

Lack of transparency before and after transactions, extensive quantities of paperwork, probable fraud, and inaccuracies in public records are all issues that buyers and sellers face. Land titles, property deeds, liens, and other documents may be recorded, tracked, and transferred using real estate blockchain apps, ensuring that all documents are correct and verifiable. 

Healthcare 

1. Exchange of Health-Related Data

Healthcare businesses are unable to securely transfer data between systems. More accurate diagnoses, more effective treatments, and more cost-efficient care might all result from improved data sharing across providers.

Hospitals, payers, and other participants in the healthcare value chain might employ blockchain technology to share network access without jeopardizing data security and integrity.

2. Claims Management 

The back end of healthcare is slow, convoluted, and expensive. Blockchain has the ability to speed up and reduce the expenses of some of these activities when used in conjunction with data standards.

Claim administration is a complex process with multiple intermediaries and dynamic procedures. Much of this job involves obtaining complicated data from several sources: payers must be aware of the services provided to a patient as well as the patient's individual plan. Doctors must determine how much to charge their patients. And everyone wants to know where a claim is in its lifespan. Blockchain streamlines this process making it more productive.

3. Pharma 

The pharmaceutical sector isn't famed for its speed. Despite the industry's concentration on innovation and problem solutions, clinical testing, FDA clearances, and other procedures are fraught with red tape.

A blockchain ledger can help to make a system more efficient, allowing for speedier innovation, better-regulated manufacturing, and more innovative medical data protection.

Blockchain might potentially be used to ensure safer drug manufacturing. If errors do arise, they may be traced back to their source. This aids in the prevention of recalls, or at the very least, allows producers to swiftly inform merchants in order to minimize the impact of dangerous pharmaceuticals on patients' health and companies' bottom lines.

4. Research & Clinical Trials 

Aside from improved data sharing, blockchain has the potential to enhance healthcare prior to treatment: in research, public sector, and clinical trials.

Effective research and clinical trials need collaboration across several sites and parties, as well as the cautious management of enormous amounts of sensitive data from a variety of sources.

Connecting heterogeneous data inside a study, which commonly takes place across several research institutions and is overseen by different researchers, is one significant purpose blockchain might provide. This would eliminate the need to merge several databases to provide a traceable record of a participant's actions.

Public Sector

1. Government and Public Records 

Another area where blockchain might assist authorities and the people they serve is to eliminate paper-based procedures, reduce fraud, and increase accountability in public service management.

2. Public Transportation 

As cities have developed, many transportation networks, which are typically costly to maintain and inefficient, have been put under strain.

Using blockchain technology, communities might gain a better understanding of how their citizens use public transport.

3. Waste Management 

Recycling is one of the most effective strategies to minimize landfill trash, yet it may be a perplexing and time-consuming process with little payoff. A strategy based on blockchain technology might help in the optimization of existing recycling operations.

Many businesses are springing up to encourage people to recycle. Recycling organizations may use blockchain-based software to better track and hence improve their recycling processes.

4. Public Assistance 

The introduction of blockchain technology might help to streamline the public assistance system, which is notoriously choked with red tape. For example, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been using blockchain to deliver humanitarian aid to refugees in a safe and private manner. Because many refugees are unable to create bank accounts, the World Food Programme can provide immediate aid by verifying and registering transactions using blockchain and biometric identification technology.

Agriculture & Mining 

1. Crops and Agriculture 

Beyond the worries about safety and traceability that the food and beverage industry has, blockchain has the potential to help the agriculture sector thrive. Throughout the agriculture supply chain, blockchain technology has the potential to enhance market expansions, transactions, and product-specific logistics.

A blockchain record in agriculture can build a degree of confidence between merchants who might not otherwise know one other. It can also aid market expansion and promote healthy competition among sellers.

2. Animal Husbandry 

In animal husbandry - the breeding and raising of animals — blockchain technology is helping to enhance food safety, traceability, and sustainability, similar to its uses in agriculture.

3. Mining 

The mining industry, which relies on the coordination and participation of multiple intermediaries with various agendas, might be transformed by blockchain. Furthermore, the business has been slow to move away from paper-based procedures, which has resulted in a lack of data transparency, making it harder to address concerns like fraud and dangerous working conditions. The use of blockchain technology to monitor metals and minerals from mine to manufacturer might improve collaboration and traceability across the supply chain.

Education, Communication, & Information Services 

1. Education and Academic 

Academic qualifications must be generally recognized and verified by their very nature. Verifying academic qualifications is mostly a manual procedure in both primary/secondary schools and university settings.

The use of blockchain technology in education might simplify verification procedures, lowering the number of fraudulent claims for undeserved credits.

2. Messaging Apps 

To improve user security and privacy, a number of messaging platforms are incorporating blockchain and crypto-related technologies into their apps.

The open-source program uses the Ethereum blockchain to enable peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need for "third-party surveillance."

3. Video Streaming 

The cost of video streaming might be deducted by decentralizing video encoding, storage, and delivery, blockchain. This might cause problems for Netflix, YouTube, and other video distribution platforms.

In the guise of a peer-to-peer algorithmic market, the decentralized network provides cloud video infrastructure — encoding, storage, and distribution. Clients pay for these services in exchange for VideoCoins, a cryptocurrency based on a new blockchain.

4. Sports Management

Investing in athletes has always been the domain of sports management agencies and companies. Nonetheless, blockchain has the ability to decentralize the process by allowing fans to invest in tomorrow's sports stars financially.

Other 

1. Cloud Computing & Storage 

When it comes to releasing IoT goods, cloud services need a large amount of computing resources and data storage capacity, which might be wasteful. Blockchain technology, which enhances connectivity, security, and processing capacity, may be used to support more decentralized cloud services.

Businesses store customers’ data on cloud storage which is vulnerable to hacker attacks. With blockchain cloud storage solutions, decentralized storage is feasible, making them less subject to attacks that might cause systemic harm and huge data loss.

2. Charity

For people who make philanthropic gifts, blockchain allows them to trace exactly where their funds are going when they arrive and in whose hands they end up.

From there, blockchain can provide the accountability and transparency needed to solve common concerns about charity gifts, such as organizational inefficiencies (or even financial malfeasance) that prevent funds from reaching their intended recipients.

3. Human Resources

Human resources professionals may find doing background checks and confirming job records to be time-consuming and labor-intensive procedures.

If job and criminal records were kept on a blockchain ledger, HR specialists would be able to speed up the screening process and move recruitment procedures quickly.

4. Forecasting 

With an unshakeably accurate transaction record backing their data analysis, forecasting operations will have a better basis for applying machine learning algorithms to produce tailored forecasts and insights as more sectors embrace blockchain in a holistic fashion.

Wrapping Up!

We believe that staying up-to-date with applications of blockchain technology is the key to keeping up with ever-changing customer demands as well as the competition. 
Here we have listed all the top blockchain technology applications in various industries that will be trending in the coming years. If you like any of these application ideas, the blockchain developers can convert your ideas into reality.