From bits to business—Blockchain technology has real utility

Several years back, you could be forgiven for thinking that blockchain technology was nothing more than a fad. After all, few were actually using it for anything more than gambling on the price of tokens and coins.

However, things have changed in the last few years, and the usefulness of blockchain technology that entrepreneurs recognized then is manifesting in real business applications now.

The utility of blockchain technology for business will be a focal point at this year’s London Blockchain Conference. Let’s dive into some case studies.

Sentinel Node is revolutionizing cybersecurity

One of the best examples of how blockchain technology can be utilized for businesses to revolutionize processes is Sentinel Node by Certihash. Built in partnership with IBM (NASDAQ: IBM), it uses blockchain technology to time-stamp snapshots of computer files and networks, detecting any entrances, changes, and alternations within seconds.

Better yet, Sentinel Node holds network administrators accountable, too. It uses the immutable ledger to detail which admins responded to alerts and what they did to mitigate the situation.

Smart tools like Sentinel Node are becoming necessary since the cost of data breaches rose to $4.45 million for businesses in 2023. Tools of this kind perfectly showcase what blockchain technology can be used for beyond the simple transfer of money: they can introduce transparency and total oversight to every element of a business.

Centi is the Swiss Franc stablecoin doing micropayments at scale

Due to its fixed supply and the volatility this causes, few people actually use BTC or ETH for payments these days. The key problem is simple enough: nobody wants to pay in something that fluctuates in value, and it’s almost impossible to denominate debt in volatile currencies, making commerce in a fixed-supply currency tricky.

Stablecoins may be part of the solution to getting people to use digital currencies for payments. Initiatives like Centi, a stablecoin backed by the Swiss Franc, showcase how powerful stablecoins that work on scalable blockchains can be.

Just recently, Centi showcased one million micropayments in 24 hours: payments of just one cent per pop. Could denomination in national currencies people inherently know and trust be the key to triggering the micropayments revolution? Time will tell, but they’re certainly a step in the right direction.

What are the use cases for micropayments? Tipping creators, accessing and unlocking content without subscribing, and paying to send peer-to-peer emails and messages have been proposed, tried, and tested. We’re in the first innings of the micropayments revolution, and projects like Centi make it much more likely to succeed.

The Trace platform is tracking food from farm to table

One of the best business use cases for blockchain is the traceability it enables. Putting the whole world on chain would enable unimaginable transparency and the ability for businesses to check and track anything from how much of a given item it has in stock to where an item is in the supply chain.

Currently, the world’s databases are a fragmented mess, making it difficult to build a complete picture. Trace, a platform built by IBM and Gate2Chain, aims to change that. It facilitates the creation and tracking of ‘Digital Twins’ across supply chains, making it possible to follow and figure out where anything is at any given time.

Our primary objective is to solve everyday problems for real-world businesses and simplify the integration of blockchain technologies into business processes. – Jessica Jaume, Gate2Chain

Applications like Trace can solve many problems businesses face in the era of globalization: better business intelligence, more efficient supply chains, the reduction in counterfeit goods and outright theft, to name a few. Any problem caused by a lack of clear information about what’s happening in a supply chain can be greatly reduced or even solved thanks to blockchain-powered tools like this.

Learn more at the London Blockchain Conference 2024

The London Blockchain Conference 2024 is exclusively focused on the utility of blockchain technology. Far from being a digital currency conference, it’s about how businesses, governments, and individuals can benefit from blockchain’s game-changing tools.

Panels and discussions will highlight how blockchain apps revolutionize supply chains, healthcare, luxury goods, finance and banking, mining and commodities, and many other industries. It’s all about transparency and traceability on a global scale.

Secure your tickets to the world’s premier utility blockchain conference, which will be held at Excel London from May 21 to 23, 2024.

Watch: Big tech’s role in blockchain adoption