Blockchain for 2018 and Beyond: A (growing) list of blockchain use cases

Does your company have a New Year's innovation resolution? 2018 brings an incredible opportunity to take part in the next technological revolution -- where Blockchain Technology and SaaS will integrate more seamlessly to produce higher efficiencies for a myriad of business processes.

The benefits of blockchain and FlureeDB’s mission to bring them to common enterprise applications deliver an unprecedented number of use cases spanning numerous industries. By shear design, the below list is always incomplete, as new innovators across the industry spectrum are finding novel ways to leverage blockchain technology. What did I miss? Ping me in the comments.

The blockchain process of transacting and storing information on a decentralized, distributed ledger yields many benefits for enterprise application data:

• An integrated network, updated in real-time with always-consistent data
• Ability to set rules for each blockchain enforces compliance
• Tracing data from provenance to present to reduce disputes or discourage fraudulent activity
• Increased efficiency of industry processes, reduced auditing costs
• Consent, protection, and control of consumer/customer data
• High level of trust in repository of transactional data

While blockchain use cases are exciting to explore and research, it’s important to point out the gap between potential and tangibility of implementation. FlureeDB hopes to bridge this utility gap, bringing a practical solution to any enterprise application wishing to manifest blockchain’s benefits. Without further ado:

Every/Any Industry

• Information-sharing across organizations - trust, transparency, and efficiency
• Supply Chain Management - With FlureeDB, a consortium of stakeholders in a supply chain can own, operate and enforce rules for their own shared blockchain.
• Coordinate logistics, payments, financial terms, and contract rules
• End-to-End visibility and tracking of supply chain process in real-time
• Auditing - Records can be instantly independently verified.
• Compliance - Track processes against regulations with pre-defined rules
• Business Contracts -- Set pre-defined rules for transactions between two or more companies engaged in a partnership

Automotive

• Track truthful, full history of vehicle from pre-production to sale
• Supply chain parts management

Banking, Financial, Fintech

• Streamline payments processing with high efficiency, fast and secure transactions
• Empower global transactions, tearing down national currency borders
• Minimize auditing complexity for any financial ledger

Charity

• Tracking donation allocation, accountability, integrity
• Reduce overhead and complexity of donation payment processing

Cloud Storage

• Increased security with a shift from centralized data security to decentralized network
• Lower transactional costs within a decentralized network
• Crowdsourcing unused cloud storage

Commercial Vehicles and Transportation

• Tracking journey stops; paired with IoT to create an immutable ledger of trip data

Credit History

• Make credit reports more accurate, transparent, and accessible

Cybersecurity 

• Fight hacking with immutability of ledger
• Guarantee validity with data integrity
• No Single Point of Failure (decrease in IP-based DDoS attack success)

Donations

• Provide auditable trail for donations to prevent fraud
• Ensure crowdfunded campaigns receive donations and contributors are compensated

Education

• Digitizing, verifying academic credentials
• Federated repository of academic information specific to class, professor, and student

Energy

• Bypass public grids to allow for cheaper, peer to peer energy transfer
• Smart utility metering

Forecasting

• Combined with machine learning algorithms, blockchain can provide a decentralized forecasting tool

Government and Voting

• Reduce voter fraud, inefficiencies with verifiable audit trails
• Minimize government fraud, digitize most processes
• Increase accountability and compliance for government officials
• Identity validation; integrity of citizen registry data

Gun Safety

• Tracking gun ownership and possession related information
• Tracking criminal ID history and attempts to purchase

Human Resources

• Background checks: Verification of identity, employment history
• Payment and benefits process validation - smart contracts

Insurance

• Improve multi-party contracts
• Streamline risk contract efficiency
• Streamline claims adjudication
• Reduce disputes with transparency of shared data

IOT

• Ability for IoT applications to contribute transactional data to blockchains
• Implications across industries (trucking/transportation, supply chain integrity, etc.)

Law enforcement

• Integrity of evidence, resistance to falsification of case data
• Documentation of time-stamped, chronological chain of facts

Legal

• Smart contracts with defined rules, expiration, and accessibility for relevant parties.

Marketing

• Bypass intermediaries, providing more cost-effective advertising

Media

• Control of ownership rights
• Anti-piracy / copyright infringement
• Use of smart contracts for artist compensation/legal proceedings
• Payments processing -- cryptographic, secure, and anti-3rd party (this opens up content availability internationally)

Medical / Healthcare

• Drug Supply Chain Integrity
• Patient Databases/Indexes on blockchain
• Claims Adjudication
• Medical Supply Chain Management
• Transparency and Automation within the patient-to-hospital or patient-to-doctor transactions
• Clinical trial provenance - integrity with an auditable trail of data exchange
• Efficiency, privacy, and ownership of patient health data

Public Transportation/Ride Sharing

• Streamline public transportation
• Provide more accurate payment for ride, gas, and wear and tear

Real Estate

• Transparency within agreements
• Verify property information, update and decentralize records
• Reduce paperwork, digitize transactional processes
• Record, track, transfer land titles

Travel 

• Passenger Identification, boarding, passport, payment, and other documentation digitized and verified
• Loyalty programs digitization and tracking

Wills and Inheritances

• Smart contracts to determine validity of will and allocation of inheritances

As Enterprises across industries begin to adopt blockchain technology into their everyday processes, use cases will expand exponentially.

What is your use case? Ping me or comment!

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FlureeDB is free for beta use: www.flur.ee