How blockchain can accelerate your business processes
Such terms as e-banking, cryptocurrencies and NFC payments are no surprise for modern users anymore.
Yet, the matter of security and low commission fees stands out sharply nowadays.
Nobody wants to be hacked or waste money on extra fees. The good news: the blockchain technology solves both problems at once.
Here’s how.
Main principles of blockchain
Gartner research shows that the business based on blockchain will be worth around $10 billion.
The capabilities of this technology are huge and it’ll be applied in different fields starting from medical records management and financial solutions ending with e-voting.
What is blockchain?
It’s the solution that allows for storing a different kind of information including transactions data, insurance-related data, patent rights and much more.
Its core difference from other solutions is that it doesn’t store the registry in just one place. In other words, it is decentralized.
How does it work?
Records form blocks that are connected in a chronological order and combined in a chain powered by complicated and brainy algorithms. All these records are encrypted.
Then, each block in this chain is connected to the previous block, and each of them stores its own records.
The new blocks can only be added to the end of a chain. This way, as soon as the new block is added and when the registry gets updated — the stored data cannot be changed anymore.
As I already mentioned, this solution is decentralized, meaning that the data is stored on multiple computers and the register is updated simultaneously on all of them.
If someone tries to change the block, the system will report about that. That’s the reason why it’s considered hard to hack.
Technology’s advantages
Here are several of the most evident advantages that blockchain technology has.
Security is guaranteed due to the cryptographic encryption along with a digital signature.
Hard to hack because the data isn’t kept in one place and in case of emergency it is possible to recover the original record with the help of neighboring sources.
Transparent operations imply that businesses can get almost instant notifications informing about the completed transaction.
No extra payments to mediators since the technology is decentralized.
Fast transactions are reached due to the absence of necessity to use any payment systems.
Blockchain in the field of finance
Leading banks of the world already took part in the development of solutions based on blockchain or already rolled out one.
Let’s take Visa as an example. This company has recently announced that it joins the blockchain race to bring its customers payments that are cheaper and faster.
Let’s consider how this technology impacts FinTech.
Wallet
Blockchain is similar to a simple digital wallet.
It serves as an identifier and allows its users to send and receive money. The address of any wallet is encrypted and consists of letters and numbers. That’s how it may look like:
12TFVXGDWF3GMSDjftnfKWpyEhgsW9DymN
Transactions
All the transactions are recorded to NoSQL database that in turn are integrated into the wallet.
Blocks
They serve to keep transactions, as well as the hash value of the previous block.
This way, it allows users to create a chain that’s the cornerstone of the blockchain technology.
Benefits that blockchain brings to the financial industry
The international transactions are expensive (take 5-20% of the amount) and slow in most cases. Blockchain solves this issue and reduces expenses to 2-3% of the total amount users intend to transfer.
Identification of users is easy and secure with blockchain. The thing is users enter information about them into the system after what other services can use this data.
Stock exchange can become decentralized with the help of blockchain and all the mediators like brokers will be removed.
Other spheres that can find this technology useful
Let’s take a look at some of them.
Shipping services
This sphere has a lot of mediators responsible for processing payments, as well as documents. Blockchain helps get rid of the unnecessary mediators and save money.
Real estate
In the real estate industry, smart contracts can facilitate processes of verifying and receiving payments. In turn, it contributes to better audit process of rental agreements.
Car industry
If you are involved in any kind of business connected with car renting or selling, you can find this technology quite helpful. It allows effectively manage the ownership, as well as provide a digital key for customers who intended to rent a car.
Education
One school in California already confirmed that it intends to use this technology for authenticating the certificates of their students.
Healthcare
This industry is full of very important documents and sensitive data, that’s why secure and fast solutions based on blockchain sound really promising for the sphere of healthcare.
Integrating blockchain into an app
There are several ways to include the blockchain technology in your organizational processes:
- There are a couple of ready-made solutions. To use them, you should add several code lines to your application. With their help, you will able to manipulate with Bitcoins. For instance, BitPay service has API for this purpose.
- These services offer its customers a ready-made environment that allows developers to avoid integration of Bitcoin features, as well as connection to the network. You can try Holloblock.io and Insight.is for this purpose.
- To do so, you can use some libraries that facilitate dealing with blockchain. Bitcoinj and toshi.io can cover some of your needs.
Blockchain solutions develop rapidly and gain popularity in different industries. This technology has all the chances to become the main development trend in the next few years.
What do you think? How do you use the blockchain technology in your projects? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
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