Here’s a quick fact: Not everyone is familiar with Blockchain and its applications. Why it matters for Technology?
The future of Blockchain is bright, and it is going to play a crucial role, not only ion the business world but also in our day-to-day life. Blockchain will surely land you in an area where opportunities are abundant. Blockchain certification plays a major role in becoming a blockchain professional.
To me, that makes the rewards of learning it even sweeter.
Since most of your competitors aren’t doing it, blockchain applications should give you a competitive edge.
That said, I decided to discuss the importance of Blockchain and its application for how it can help you grow your business.
Everything you need to know – wrapped up in this post.
Let’s hop right in.
A lot of startups are showing interest in working with blockchain technology. Using one Bitcoin is worth greater than $8,370 at the time of this writing. Each day new companies are launching, attempting to make the most of the market economies.
Blockchain has been a lot of buzzwords these days, and that’s because it is a backbone behind the very famous cryptocurrency network called bitcoin. However, the applications of blockchain are much more beyond cryptocurrency applications.
Some believe that blockchain technology could eventually be more important than the internet.
let’s reacquaint ourselves with the blockchain technology now, shall we?
What is Blockchain?
The blockchain is the algorithm behind distributed ledger technology. The concept of blockchain was first mentioned without naming its term in the research paper, which was published by an unidentified individual called Satoshi Nakamoto in the year 2008. Since then, blockchain is used to create various cryptocurrency networks and business network applications.
If we discuss the applications of the blockchain, it extends much more beyond cryptocurrency applications. So let’s discuss a short history of blockchain and try to understand how blockchain came into existence.
Here we are discussing the history of Blockchain with a short story. The underlying theme of Blockchain is not a new concept. Instead, it’s been the inspiration from the famous timestamp based ordering algorithms of the ’90s. These were used to prevent document tampering and to maintain ledgers and transactions facilitating secure payment gateways.
Since then, many programmers, scientists, blockchain specialists, and cryptographers have been working on this concept to produce an active cryptocurrency network called Bitcoin.
The primary motive behind blockchain is to solve two significant challenges, as listed below:
- To overcome double spending.
- To create a distributed environment by eliminating central authority.
Let’s go through both of them and try to understand what those problems were in detail.
Let’s start with solving the double spending problem.
Vinod
Balance: $5
| From | Amount | To |
| Vinod | $5 | Sandeep |
| Vinod | $5 | Sandeep |
Let us assume that we have a person called Vinod, and he has $5 in his balance. Now let’s consider the case of a distributed system where exists various machines and nodes exist maintaining a copy of the balance of Vinod.
Now let’s say Vinod has transferred $5 to Sandeep and so we have to create a ledger entry on “Vinod transfers $5 to Sandeep”. Since we are talking about the distributed system, we cannot assure that the order has been transmitted and confirmed by the participant of the distributed network through a particular ledger.
Before the ledger is received and confirmed by the specific participant in the network. The attacker will send a fraudulent data that Vinod has $5 transaction with Sandeep to the rest of system. In such cases, we cannot ensure that the order in which the ledgers have been received, and at the other end it may happen that the $5 have been spending twice.
Therefore, we can consider this as a classic example of a double spending problem, which is a popular thing in any of the transition management system. One of the design goals of blockchain was to prevent such double spending that is happening in the native system.
Next comes the trust of the third party. One of the primary goals of the blockchain is to eliminate the lack of confidence of third party. In any convince payment system, we have a mediator or a third party mediating the transition of money between two parties.
Let’s consider an example of a Bank, in this case Vinod once again wants to transfer $5 to Sandeep now bank being active as a third-party mediator will have to create two entries one will debit entry for the Vinod and the other being the credit entry of the Sandeep. In such instances, it is essential having a trusted third party to maintain the transaction between the two parties, so the Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper revolves around 3 things.
The motive of creating P2P cryptographic payment system is to solve the problems existing in double spending systems and to eliminate the need of a central trusted third party as trust agent to confirm the transactions. This concept is extended as a disturbed ledger technology and is used in other applications besides cryptocurrency.
Many people assume that the blockchain technology is confined to only Financial transactions. But the fact is that its applications have been expanding to different sectors such as health, education, transportation, manufacturing, government, etc..
Applications of Blockchain
Blockchain has gained immense popularity and expanding its functionalities to different segments, to take them to the next level. Below mentioned are some industries which have benefited from the implementation of Blockchain. Let’s discuss them in detail.
Financial Transaction:
The challenges connected with financial transactions are immense. Right away, most organizations depend on outdated software or ungraceful paperwork. Girija Sahu – The CEO of Conversionfish, a blockchain-based solution for financial transaction explained the significant challenges in the company’s white paper. She believes that every business has to spend a lot of time sorting through spreadsheets, PDFs, and papers to process document manually.
“Smart contracts utilize applications code to automate jobs, thereby shaving off a range of business processes.”
One of the significant challenges in fund transaction is managing and tracking transactions and expenditures. Blockchain could solve these sorts of issues by reducing inaccurate data and improving more transparent expenditure tracking.
Education Sector:
Blockchain can bring lots of opportunities in the education sector in 2019.
On-demand Learning Platforms
Through blockchain, we can create independent learning platforms, where teachers and students can interact with each other over training sessions. Here, both parties can share information such as assignments, fee, duration, etc. agreed originally and listed as clever contracts for transparent implementation.
This could create a win-win scenario for both parties, with no necessity of having outside management authorities or regulatory bodies to pay conditions which normally occupy the prices.
International verification of academic credentials
Indeed, the most crucial part in our education sector is academic credentials must be universally identified and acknowledge. Even education is a primary objective of any country, tracing academic credential as manual is a big challenge for management. We can reduce the unauthorized claims and unearned educational credits using blockchain technology to a greater extent.
Banking Sector:
We are still using old methodologies in the banking sector for financial transactions. In the traditional banking system, it may take longer time for commercial operations and be even more expensive. We cannot fully rely on the traditional banking systems because of cyber crimes.
Most of the banks are facing security threats because of cyber attacks. It is a shocking thing that the banking sector has lost $100 million dollars in recent times. Using blockchain technology, banking sectors can reduce cybercrimes to a greater extent, thus saving time and increase efficiency in banking sector.
Health Care Sector:
According to cbinsight Research Bureau 2017 report , 87% of healthcare institutions, technology providers, life science companies are using Blockchain technology.
By 2022, Most of these institutions will spend an average of $56 million on Blockchain related projects.
So what solutions are they most commonly implementing in the health care industry?
Treatment architecture
Through blockchain technology, we can analyze and evaluate the patient’s data and reports, help select the correct individual treatment path anytime.
Data Transparency
Past few years, technology has transform our world, when it comes to the health care industry, the urgency of growth climbs to higher levels. Quality healthcare services depend on the advanced technology is the need for today.
Here Blockchain helps to keep patient data safe and accurate so that it will be easy for both ends of personals.
Final Thoughts:
Nobody can have the capacity to halt the technological progress in each business as the technological changes are unavoidable. Coming to the blockchain technologies, it’s growing incredibly and been entering every business making its impact.
We can declare that each business will gain brilliant results in terms of revenue with expertise using blockchain technology. Soon, blockchain is definitely going to have its footprint in every sector.
