When we say ‘blockchain’, we often imply disruptive innovation. Indeed, many industries have followed the trend, digitized and even tokenized their assets to enjoy secure, decentralized data processing.
As defined by Clayton Christensen, the scholar who coined the term, “disruptive innovation refers to a technological or market advance that fundamentally transforms or creates entirely new markets.” In other words, disruptive innovation may either revolutionize the existing market landscape or breed a completely new segment. Blockchain seems to do both things. The new areas covered by the technology include advancements in the sharing economy, crowdfunding, artificial intelligence, and more.
In this piece, we’d like to focus on the ‘traditional’ and emerging verticals where blockchain will infiltrate or perhaps dominate by 2020.
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Financial Services
Financial institutions have already tapped into the opportunities of blockchain-based apps to facilitate, automate and protect their operations.According to Forbes, 80 percent of banks have worked on developing proprietary blockchain solutions. At this point, it’s a bit early to claim victory: finance is still playing with blockchain, yet experts maintain the industry will switch from experiments to scaled commercial blockchain development by around 2020.
The governmental sector closely follows the lead. IBM, for one, is cooperating with the government of Dubai to deliver smart contracts that can optimize traffic in maritime goods flowing through the emirate’s port. Here we’re talking ~$350 billion worth of goods. By 2020, Dubai’s officials are planning to transfer all their transactions to blockchain!
Voting
Blockchain enables innovative anti-fraud algorithms in voting. Apparently, once a transaction — or a vote — is recorded on the blockchain, it’s close to impossible to tamper with it. This is one of the ways how blockchain can contribute to fair voting. A company named Votem, for instance, tested its system with a few private elections, including the Ohio State Bar Association and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The blockchain technology has been widely adopted in Estonia for shareholder voting. Moreover, Nasdaq approved the Estonian experiment as suitable for proxy voting. We’re sure to see more similar projects coming in the near future.
Real estate
Most investors expect that the first blockchain-based property lease contracts will emerge in 2022, yet some optimists predict it’s going to happen by 2020. Smart contracts are believed to fasten the process of acquiring and selling property. On the other hand, blockchain will make transactions more cost-effective and safe since the data will be made easily accessible to all parties.
Content distribution
The “trustless” features of blockchain unlock the opportunities for impeccable record keeping. In other words, the tech makes sure owners of the data are assured of peace of mind regarding their assets. Blockchain disrupts the content rights distribution and enriches the music and multimedia business. For instance, streaming services like Spotify and Deezer are among the technology’s adopters. Content creators require various types of contracts to safeguard their copyright and optimize content distribution at the same time. Placing content on a blockchain enables full process automation and direct payments to content owners.
Another great example is K.im, a publishing and monetization platform for digital content. K.im facilitates content ownership and control so content creators always get remunerated. It offers a wealth of features for all types of digital content (download/stream/view) and privacy of transactions powered by K.im Payment.
Musicoin and Revelator maintain that blockchain helps bypass the otherwise inevitable intermediaries and allows for micro-payments to the artists directly. Estimates have it that performers potentially lose up to 86% of their incomes because of content piracy. At the same time, they pay enormous commissions to streaming services and record companies. Now, blockchain enables artists to earn their music royalties without committing to a specific label.
IoT
Based on Gartner reports, there were 8.4 billion (!) IoT devices in 2017, and that figure could grow up to 20 billion by 2020. Employed in IoT, blockchain helps mitigate security risks, e.g. prevent massive DDoS attacks targeting multiple devices. The shutdown of a single device won’t affect the entire pool. This is a crucial factor for securing smart cities where downtimes are scarcely permitted and 24/7 connectivity is a must.
Supply chain management
Supply chain management is another lucrative application for blockchain. Due to real-time monitoring and recording of transactions, it’s easy to see what’s going on at every given moment. Plus, thanks to the general and public distributed ledger you always get updates about new events.
There have been numerous blockchain projects on the supply chain radar. A UK company, Provenance, states that they can employ their blockchain tech to “share your product’s journey and your business impact on environment and society.” Walmart, for one, cooperates with Tsinghua University and IBM in China to track the movement of pork in the country using blockchain. Another impressive example: mining tycoon BHP Billiton leverages the technology to follow mineral analysis performed by third party vendors.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of industries where blockchain will make its advances felt by 2020. Given the worldwide adoption of the tech and its apparent benefits of decentralization, security, and high-performance, we’re likely to see more companies — and entire verticals — jumping on the bandwagon.
