You may have come across many people who won’t agree with the underlying potentials of blockchain and tell you not to invest in the hype. My advice: do not heed them.

The business who won’t embrace the decentralized world of the future may soon become the businesses of the past.

In this blog, we will be discussing five unique ways blockchain will benefit your company in less than 10-12 years from now. So let’s begin with the fundamentals:

What exactly Blockchain is?

To put simply, it’s an ever-growing database of various sort of data. Also, it has a few quite innovative properties:

Once stored in the database, the data neither can be modified nor deleted. Every single record on a blockchain is permanently stored for eternity.

No single entity, individual or organization can have access to maintain the database; numerous individuals do, and everyone on the network gets a copy of the database themselves.

Due to its unique properties and potentials, the blockchain technology can be used in various industries, ranging from the fintech industry and banking to the healthcare industry.

Now, we will breeze through five different ways Blockchain can transform your company.

1) Contracts

Blockchain influence the way organizations initiate business with one another. Doing business means making transactions with other parties to facilitate something that might not be possible doing solo. In such arrangements, an involved organization need to ensure that they can bank upon each other.

in 2017, this trust was delivered by a set of contract, or pages, listing all the compliance of engagement. When a party fails to stick to the agreements mentioned in the contract, it can be imposed by using law. However, this can result in money and time drainage.

Using the blockchain technology, many of such arrangements can be turned into smart contracts. Unlike traditional contracts, smart contracts are made of software code and carried out by the blockchain network. The most attracting feature is that these smart contracts cannot be altered or modified once deployed. This ensures that neither participant involved in a deal walks away without completing his part.

Written in software code on the blockchain network, smart contracts are in-alterable, once triggered.

For instance, you want to sell your music to someone by transferring an audio file. How can you know the buyer will for sure pay after getting possession of it? Likewise, the buyer can also be skeptical as well, thinking you will not send the audio file after receiving the payment. Here, a smart contract ensures that once the buyer has sent the money, the audio file will be automatically delivered to him. Once deployed, no entity can hinder or stop this from being executed. Thus, both parties can trust the code and, eventually trust each other.

2) Payments

‘If you think that nobody gives a damn about you, just try missing a few payments.”

If your business processes involve payment transaction all over the world, blockchains can prove to be the game-changer. One of the unbelievable promises that blockchain do is that it will take place of money someday. Obviously, it would take years, if not decades, to happen something like that. However, we can still use blockchains to send and receive money anywhere in the world within minutes, not in days.

One of the primary benefits of decentralizing money is that payments can be made directly between parties. This will remove the dependency of any intermediaries, like banks that slow down the process. Given this, cross-border payments would be another process that will adopt blockchain.

3) Cloud Storage

Either you’re an SME or an established one, chances are you would be having company data stored in the cloud. As per a recent report by cloud services provider BCSG, an expanding number of SMEs are looking forward to cloud computing. At present, nearly 64% of small businesses have an average of at least three cloud services in place. As expected, this number is likely to increase and reach 73% in the next three years.

Blockchains are playing a crucial role in decentralizing cloud services because they enable strangers to co-operate with each other. Instead of going to store your files on an individual centralized server, you can save them on several devices across the globe.

Let’s understand how:

The files that you will upload will be partitioned into numerous tiny chunks, each of these file chunks will be safely stored on several devices connected to the network. Then, which specific chunk is being stored on which particular device will be recorded on the blockchain. When you want to retrieve that file, the system will gather it for you. This way, your precious data will be stored in decentralized storage rather than on the cloud storage. While centralized cloud services store your data in several backups, the decentralized storage will be storing your data on numerous devices. Thus, increasing dependability.

Also, in centralized cloud systems, the potential and strength of the system depends on how robust and secure a company’s server are. Using decentralized networks, there won’t be only one device having the complete file. This makes almost impossible for hackers to get into the system and obtain data.