How Corporate Giants Are Leveraging
Blockchain for Business Innovation
human error and gives brands and customers more autonomy. This is true both in terms of security for the individual and financial security for businesses. For instance, when selling a house, an individual is subject to a system or business run by others. But currently, there are only so many other potential ways to facilitate this. You almost always have to use a realtor or agency. Humans can naturally make mistakes – payments may be delayed, or possibly sent to the wrong place. But blockchain would give individuals greater autonomy and create a new, more seamless way to carry out this process. This is due to smart contracts, which eliminate the need for third-party involvement in matters such as financial transactions or data storage, while providing enhanced security, speed, and privacy. In a world of continuous and significant data breaches, integrating blockchain technology such as smart contracts into such operations is increasingly crucial to ensure individuals have greater security and control over their identity.
But there are challenges for
businesses adopting blockchain
The first challenge of blockchain will be finding an effective way to implement the infrastructure into the business itself. Many businesses will not have any form of an in-house specialist. They will need to find specialist services and providers who will be able incorporate blockchain. This dilemma is in keeping with how we have seen businesses and tech evolve over the years, however. Web1 was about building and providing tech in-house, and Web2 about using large, centralized services. And Web3 has been all about decentralization. As a result, we are seeing rapidly evolving and complex technologies to facilitate this. This means that more traditional businesses and organizations—including those from the previous two web generations—will need to outsource to specialists who understand blockchain’s complexity, for integration purposes. Digital innovation has proven to become more consumable, and blockchain will be another example of this.
Some businesses will be concerned about the risks that a new infrastructure holds, such as the potential for hacking. But any type of application development comes with risk. And the current systems and frameworks that businesses operate in also carry some risk.
Another challenge of blockchain is regulation that is constantly evolving, with regulatory frameworks changing and moving at different paces around the world. As a result, corporations or developers may invest time and money in initiatives and products that may become obsolete or unworkable. While an idea may be legal and viable at one point, it could quickly become the opposite during the time it takes to develop. This requires that developers and businesses become fluent in regulatory compliance in order to be successful.
Blockchain providers and infrastructure builders, specifically, will face challenges as well. Firstly, they will have to mitigate some of the fears and misconceptions that surround Web3. High-profile collapses or scandals in the crypto arena have left many people wary and suspicious. So education about blockchain’s value will need to be central. It will take time for Web3 to gain trust and clarity. Providers will also have to build to meet demand. There are less than 1% of around 27 million developers in the world who understand and know how to build this infrastructure; bridging this gap will be crucial.
A natural step in the technology’s evolution
This is all part of a process of growth for blockchain. It’s just another step in the evolution of software and the digital world. If we consider Bluetooth, it initially started as something that was only partially adopted. Now, the technology is commonplace and something we expect in nearly all our technical interactions. In 2017, there were 3.9 billion shipments of Bluetooth devices. Last year there were 7 billion. Bluetooth is now in all smart home devices and 100 percent of key, new platform devices. Its growth provides a blueprint for what we should expect from blockchain as well—similar to any other innovation in the digitalisation of the world.
Over time blockchain will become a standard innovation that is used to optimise and simplify life. It is another layer we are adding to technological, business, and social growth. The adoption of blockchain we are now observing among huge corporations shows that it is simply the beginning of its advantages being used on an everyday basis.
