Blockchain technology has revolutionized the way we transact online and drastically changed numerous industries. The electronic payments and banking industry, for example, is traditionally controlled and operated by centralized entities, such as banks or governments.
Following the Great Recession in 2008, Bitcoin (BTC) was created as an alternative method of transferring and storing wealth without the reliance on centralized banks. Since then, Bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrency and its whitepaper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, have given us a glimpse into what a blockchain can look like, act like, and what role it can fill in the industry.
Suddenly, everyone had a new, decentralized, and non-custodial way through which they could digitally transfer something of monetary value from one location in the world to another.
However, disruption of other industries by blockchain technology did not stop there; today, we will be exploring some of the most influential industries that blockchain technology has already disrupted, can disrupt, and is positioned to disrupt in the future.
Blockchain Technology and Its Role
Bitcoin’s overall popularity has managed to demonstrate the application of blockchain technology in the finance space; however, entrepreneurs believe that it could transform many more industries.
The use cases for transparent and verifiable transactions and data storage can be endless, especially given the fact that blockchain technology operates through a decentralized platform and requires no supervision.
As companies use blockchain to gain a higher level of transparency as well as utility across the digital information ecosystem, they are taking advantage of the numerous benefits offered by blockchain technology.
Blockchain features decentralized trust, low operational costs, no single point of failure, enhanced security and confidentiality, and quick transactions. Moreover, its transparent and ubiquitous recording system optimizes fraud reduction and all-around accessibility. As a result, this is incredibly advantageous for many businesses across different sectors.
How Blockchain Technology Has Evolved
Since the initial introduction of Bitcoin, blockchain technology has evolved tremendously.
Competing blockchains, such as Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Algorand, and many others, have managed to grab the attention of developers.
Some introduced smart contracts, others introduced non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and then there were networks that introduced asset fractionalization, enabling fractional ownership of specific assets linked to tokens through the process of tokenization.
By leveraging these various technologies, many industries will be able to incorporate blockchain into their operations and improve existing processes. In this article, we’ll discuss the top sectors that stand to benefit from blockchain technology in the future.
The Top Industries That Blockchain Technology Can Disrupt
We will be diving into multiple industries, including real estate, finance, social media, marketing, and communication individually, to see what will enable them to stand apart and what will lead to their evolution within the Web3 space.
The Real Estate Industry
Asset tokenization is a process where an issuer can essentially create digital token that can be processed or recorded on digital network, known as a blockchain. Tokens can represent a digital or physical asset (in our case, the physical asset is real estate).
In cases such as ours, the main goal of the blockchain is to be proof or a guarantee that once someone buys a token that is a representation of an asset, there is no single authority that can erase or change that ownership, making it fully immutable.
Additionally, it enables fractionalized sales or purchases, where a person would be able to buy, for example, 10% of a property or a token that is equal to 10% of the property instead of buying the entire property.
Asset fractionalization occurs when developers or companies aim to indicate which asset they want to fractionalize; this is not limited to real estate and can include precious metals, for example. Investors can then purchase a share of the underlying asset. This makes an otherwise illiquid asset class liquid, as it becomes available to many more people.
In the real-estate space, this has resulted in democratizing real-estate ownership of high value and providing additional investment opportunities for investors.
It bridges formal investments into existing decentralized ecosystems filled with decentralized applications (dApps) and allows those holders, over time, to re-sell their tokenized ownership of the real estate in question.
All of the transaction data is then recorded on top of the public ledger, referred to as a blockchain, and this contributes towards a higher level of security, transparency, and appeal.
A notable project that can be seen as a solid example here is United States Property Coin (USP). USP is a real estate-backed cryptocurrency designed to provide fractional ownership of a real estate portfolio.
By owning USP, investors can essentially become fractional owners of a real-world property portfolio. This essentially opens up the asset class to a lot more people and no longer requires people to get loans or get a mortgage in order to enter the real estate industry.
The Finance Industry
The use of blockchain technology, as well as the distributed ledger, can support cross-border trade of transactions, which would otherwise not be cheap due to the costs associated with trading and documentation processes. Additionally, blockchain technology reduces the time it takes for transactions to occur on a global scale and even eliminates the need for paper.
With the rise of smart contracts supporting blockchains, we have seen an evolution in the blockchain space in the form of Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
Decentralized Finance has the main goal of offering financial instruments without relying on intermediaries, such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks, through the use of smart contracts.
DeFi consists of stablecoins, purpose-built software, and hardware, all of which enable the development and functionality of applications. Technology such as this also enables peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and borrowing, providing users with additional ways through which they can potentially make money through yield farming and liquidity mining, among others.
All of these components can disrupt and impact the finance industry tremendously.
The Social Media Industry
Web2 social media networks have long been under fire for their data-collection practices, yet they strive to offer users a free service. To offset the cost of this offering, these companies often sell user information to advertisers and other third parties.
While social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are gratis to most users, their all-encompassing terms of service could be costly in the long run when privacy is sacrificed. Therefore it’s important for people to familiarize themselves with these regulations before engaging on any platform.
Web3 and blockchain technology as a whole can disrupt this industry due to the fact that they can create social media channels that operate a bit differently.
Instead of signing up for each service individually with an email and connecting their data countless times, users could theoretically connect their cryptocurrency wallet, which might feature a tokenized version of their data, and disconnect it at a later point in time if they do not want to use the social media platform without requesting a centralized provider to remove their data from its servers.
This means that the data will not be stored on centralized servers that companies own and can be disconnected at any point in time, where the user maintains full ownership over their data.
Social media platforms built with blockchain technology and tokenization facilitate users to monetize their content, thereby allowing them to capitalize on the value of their digital creations and content. They would be able to monetize images, videos, audio files such as podcasts, or anything else, as tipping mechanisms could be implemented. After all, the cryptocurrency wallets of these users can be connected, so they can easily transfer low-fee cryptocurrencies to one another.
The Marketing Industry
The marketing industry is on the cusp of a revolution, as blockchain technology has enabled it to make groundbreaking advancements. With this innovative development in our grasp, we can expect immense growth and progress for businesses within the sphere.
For many years, users were subjected to whatever advertisements companies chose for them. There are algorithms and systems currently implemented across social media platforms that aim to essentially provide users with relevant ads; however, they are not always accurate to 100%.
Leveraging the blockchain, users could be given access to an innovative system that rewards them for taking part in advertising activities. By clicking on ads relevant to their interests and informing platforms of their relevance, participants would be able to receive cryptocurrency payouts as a reward, thus providing a win-win situation for both the user and the advertiser.
It doesn’t have to stop there, though. Users in the future might also have the potential to gain in more ways than one. Through watching ads, they might be able to earn cryptocurrencies and be exposed to beneficial products or services while having full control of what is being shown; simultaneously creating value for advertisers by targeting people who fit their demographics.
This fundamentally shifts the marketing industry to a whole new level and provides value to all involved parties.
The Communication Industry
Blockchain technology is transforming the way data is stored and communicated, setting new standards for information security. With its ability to make records immutable, verifiable and traceable in an entire decentralized ecosystem, blockchain provides revolutionary opportunities for communication industries around the world.
This revolutionary communication ecosystem empowers customers to take full control of their experience. By leveraging the power of blockchain, trust is solidified between participants as trust, transparency and security are all greatly enhanced within this secure environment.
Blockchain technology is heavily connected with cryptography, as each message can be fully encrypted and unreadable for others than the two parties involved in the conversation as well.
This can lead to secure, private messaging. The decentralized data provides a way for users to have peace of mind when messaging each other.
There are messenger applications developed that utilize blockchain technology to provide a fully decentralized messaging service and aim to tackle common issues, such as privacy.
By not requiring any personal information and providing complete encryption, users of this messaging solution can benefit from heightened security and privacy. Traditional centralized services struggle to provide similar levels of protection since messages are stored on servers or demand phone numbers for authentication purposes.
Through a Web3-enabled solution, all of it can be anonymous as well as transparent.
Moving Forward With Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize numerous industries- from finance to entertainment and beyond. The open source nature of blockchain allows developers around the world a powerful platform on which they can build decentralized applications, as well as other projects that harness its promising capabilities.
What all of this means is that over time, we will likely see many more decentralized applications (dApps) begin utilizing Decentralized Finance (DeFi), tokenization, fractionalization, and other technologies and disrupt multiple other industries.
As blockchain technology continues to progress, it is likely that further advances will be made – introducing new applications and tools which can revolutionize the efficiency of multiple industries.
