Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is open source. It can increase supply chain transparency and improve product management.
Today, it’s not only the financial industry impacted by this development, but dozens are, from textile to social media. It’s only up to businesses whether it’s for the best and how they choose to jump on the trend.
If you like being up-to-date with news on economics, tech, etc., you might wonder what’s with all the craze around cryptocurrency and bitcoin. Here are some of the industries that build the hype.
Internet
The internet gave birth to a plethora of means of advertising. Ads add massive amounts of mobile data usage to loading web pages, and any lack of protocols harms both consumers and advertisers.
As a consequence, the company Brave crowdfunded $35M in 2017, with the scope to compensate users and advertisers. The latter can list directly on Brave’s blockchain-based browser rather than through a middleman like Instagram, Facebook, or Google. Users who use Brave see fewer but more targeted advertisements free of malware, while advertisers can benefit from better data on their spending. Another option is the lead generation platform Snovio, which allows users to sell their data for SNOV tokens.
Additionally, blockchain can benefit DNS and internet identity, too. It’s hard to establish your true identity on the internet. Your data is stored on company servers for the apps you access with little interoperability. Serto and other companies believe that in the future, you might be able to carry your identity easier around the internet.
For example, IBM Verify Credentials came as a response to that need, being a smart identity management tool enabled by blockchain. The decentralized feature authorizes several reliable organizations to issue credentials to users. They can use them to prove their identities to other organizations, thus simplifying the verification process and increasing personal privacy.
Social Media
A world where you’re paid for creating art on social media sounds too utopic, right? Well, it’s not the case with some applications. Karma has a beautiful idea: incentivizing users with tokens in return for positive content, which would likely be an effective step towards a better world. More companies have been reimagining social media for a while now and wish that one day users will be paid for the content they create while keeping their anonymity.
Twitter is enabling tipping with Bitcoin, and NFT artists can partner with TikTok to create art inspired by the content on the platform. The Indian video platform, Chingari, has launched an NFT marketplace for content creators. In 2021, a decentralized social network called BitClout was launched, allowing users to create their coins that can be bought and sold by another network member.
These examples might make you wonder how you can receive tips on Twitter. You can sign up on Strike and create a username to receive Bitcoin from any Lightning network. Remember that you must be 18 to enable the Tipping feature.
And if you want to tip others with Bitcoin, it’s recommended to use common sense before starting to tap your touch screen enthusiastically. If you’re following many people, check Bitcoin price before you tip them because you don’t want to lose precious money over some videos. If you already own Bitcoin, maybe you’d like to see how the price has fluctuated over the last three months and decide whether you hold your digital assets to make some profit or give it away as a sign of appreciation. Either way, it’s best to know the worth of your gratitude, especially when you possess volatile assets like BTC, Ether, and so on.
Textile
Blockchain technology has many applications in the textile industry, especially in supply chain management. It enables manufacturers to track orders and the origin of their products and monitor their locations from the delivery point to the destination.
An increasing number of businesses are looking into blockchain technology to improve their operations. This is because the textile industry faces eternal challenges or challenges that come with industries’ evolution and changing consumer behavior:
– A lack of supply chain transparency
– Inefficiently managed stages of the supply chain
– Unforeseen events and natural disasters, leading to loss of cash flow, materials, and reputation.
How can blockchain help benefit all these? Well, through digital asset registries, orders are more easily recorded and immutable, allowing transparency and security and preventing data attacks or deletion.
Human Resources
HR professionals could simplify vetting processes and move hiring processes forward faster, should criminal and employment records be stored in a blockchain ledger. This is because conducting background checks is time-consuming and too manual for the digital era.
Furthermore, the blockchain would make data unfalsifiable. Chronobank is an example of a financial institution that aims to make it easier for people to find work on the fly and be compensated for their efforts by using cryptocurrency and blockchain.
To gamify and incentivize employees, eXo Rewards uses cryptocurrency and a blockchain wallet. Colleagues can send tokens of appreciation to one another and buy products from a company marketplace. Employee engagement becomes an essential part of people management once a person is hired, and blockchain could play a role in that.
Photography
In the digital era, where stealing an image is two clicks away, it’s hard for photographers to be rewarded for their work and get paid royalties. Therefore, developers came up with a solution: YouPic is working on a “decentralized photography platform”. There, photographers can upload and license images, and it only takes an account to do that. Brokers and their commissions are no longer involved, and clients can pay directly for the pictures.
Another interesting example is that of Photochain, which looks to give photographers complete control over their work’s copyright, price, and licensing. Their platform uses blockchain technology to store copyright and licensing data for stock images from the science and medical industries.