Blockchain technology has become increasingly available across industries because of how well it helps to organize data. By creating a shared, digital ledger for your business, blockchain helps ensure easy access to important information and allows employees to monitor the inner workings of the company.
This increased traceability and transparency help many businesses be successful, and this isn't just limited to businesses in finance or technology. Many industries from healthcare to higher education could benefit from the advantages of blockchain technology. Below, 15 Forbes Technology Council members share which businesses or industries they believe will benefit the most and why.
1. Law Enforcement And Security
Law enforcement and the security industry could benefit from blockchain-based techniques to ensure that video recordings used for evidence are genuine. Having video evidence signed and time-stamped in a non-repudiable fashion, using blockchain, protects it from being faked, altered or denied by anyone using tools like deepfake software that are widely available on the internet. - Thomas Jensen, Milestone Systems
2. Supply Chains
The temp-assurance or cold-chain space will benefit greatly from leveraging blockchain. The collective supply chain is very difficult to track and trace from end to end, especially with so many different and independent players involved in getting even one package to its destination. Blockchain can ensure that critical medicine is delivered safely within key parameters. The same is true for food. - Samantha Williams, Sonoco
3. Identity Management
Blockchain will play a huge role in identity management. The use of blockchain to manage identity can allow people to take ownership of their identity by generating a global ID that can serve multiple purposes. Blockchain technology offers users a sense of security that no third party will be able to access their personally identifiable information without their consent, which may present a solution to many challenges. - Farhan Masood, Soloinsight Inc.
4. Software Security
Blockchain can greatly improve the security of software, enabling software dependency controls that are automatic, tamper-proof and decentralized. Events like the supply chain attack on NPM show the importance of software traceability to a company's security posture. In the future, purchasers of software will look for in-depth dependency graphs, like the ingredients lists on your favorite snack. - Jason Gong, Firezone
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5. Media
In the world we live in, media production and distribution (think NBC, ESPN, Sky, NFL, Amazon and others), content ownership and licensing are where the money is made. Blockchain could possibly transform the rights and ownership of media (audio or video) assets. The challenge is that the industry runs off standards defined by SMPTE and other standards bodies that would need to be developed. - Scott Murray, Telestream
6. Messaging Apps
Messaging apps have now become an inseparable part of our daily lives. But with this convenience comes some other concerning issues, like cybertheft and the hacking of personal data. With blockchain, there is no need for names, IDs or phone numbers. You can simply sign up with a crypto wallet address. Blockchain will help protect your messaging history and files with anonymous and non-connected nodes. - Margarita Simonova, ILoveMyQA
7. SAAS Companies
Blockchain technology is well suited for SAAS companies with durable revenue that need credit lines. Traditionally, this process is complicated and takes too long for founders to cover gaps in their corporate revenue. With smart contracts, a founder could submit their annual recurring revenue and receive a credit line in less than five minutes securely on the blockchain. - Jonathan Stone, TradeAlgo
8. Real Estate
Real estate can benefit greatly from blockchain as a traditionally conservative industry with high barriers to entry. In recent years, we’ve seen blockchain eliminate middlemen in the industry such as agents, brokers, property managers, lenders and others, thus not only increasing transparency and accountability, but also providing direct access for smaller players like homeowners and investors. - Peter Abualzolof, Mashvisor
9. Travel And Mobility
The travel and mobility industry could benefit from blockchain to streamline airline ticket sales and aircraft maintenance records by encapsulating the fields in a digital token for simplicity. Automobile parts could be recorded as tokens for fraud prevention and ease of access. Automobile sellers and renters could benefit from a streamlined sales process that minimizes user clicks and paperwork. - Vivian Lyon, Plaza Dynamics
10. Banking And Finance
Blockchain would help anything associated with banking and finance, as money-related fraud is on the rise. Though blockchain has downsides, especially in performance, I believe that it can be improved in the near future. Soon, we’ll see more blockchain-based alternatives to third-party payment services, bringing additional security and convenience to customers, as well as different currency support and international transactions. - Nadya Knysh, a1qa
11. Shipping And Logistics
Having trackable, transparent records and logs will hugely benefit this industry, but having such ability without the need of being centralized (much like the physical process itself) allows for much greater scale and completeness. - Lewis Liu, Eigen Technologies
12. Government Operations
My opinion would be that government-related operations could benefit since an automated flow will give the clarity and operational transparency that the people are claiming. Government expenses, investments, tax collections and other government revenue generations can be integrated into a public blockchain. It’s a timely need for many countries that are trying to rebuild for a better future and avoid corruption. - Upendra Pieris, OREL IT Pvt Ltd
13. Healthcare
Blockchain would enable end-to-end understanding of both the clinical information and the spend at an individual patient level. This would enable patients to truly own their own health. - Jennifer Esposito, Magic Leap
14. Product Development
Supply chain, a general ledger and distributed transactions can help speed up and give transparency to that industry. Currently, everything is in disarray because of proprietary systems that do not talk to each other. This has become a massive problem now that there are shortages of parts. Adding blockchain technology will make sure that all parts or products are traceable at all times. - Mercedes Soria, Knightscope
15. Higher Education
Higher education can greatly benefit from blockchain technology for credentialing. The students will be able to maintain control of their own data and grant access to it as they see fit. This approach will help universalize the data and make it standard across platforms while also ensuring that it is trusted and audited constantly. - Tal Frankfurt, Cloud for Good
