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We have witnessed the stellar rise of blockchain and its use in cryptocurrency, especially when Bitcoin hit its peak value. This led to the early adoption of blockchain in the financial sector. Soon after, businesses began to explore this new technology and discovered its untapped value.
The enterprise application of blockchain began to focus on using the power of its immutability and security while offering transparent processes and end-to-end traceability.
Today, blockchain is used in various applications and across domains such as healthcare, supply chain, real estate, energy, and other sectors. Given its unique setting, blockchain-based businesses are quickly making headlines and offering their customers highly efficient and unique experiences.
This blog will uncover what enterprise blockchain is all about and how you can leverage it to create new business models, streamline operations, and gain a competitive advantage.
Let’s begin!
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Before diving deeper into how blockchain is revolutionizing the traditional business network, we must first understand what enterprise blockchain is all about.
Enterprise blockchain is a secure and efficient form of permission blockchain designed specifically for businesses. Its ledger comprises encrypted and chronologically ordered entries that streamline business procedures.
This type of blockchain is perfect for corporations and businesses, as it limits visibility to a select user group. Traditional blockchain provides public access to all records via a public ledger. On the other hand, enterprise blockchain employs a private or restrictive ledger that makes data and other information stored within each block accessible only to defined parties and the business, ensuring complete control over enterprise processes.
Many large corporations, such as Facebook, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan, and others, are exploring this technology and its potential to optimize business procedures.
Blockchain on its own has features such as immutability of records, high security, and its open ledger that allows transactions or other processes to take place without requiring an intermediary or third-party involvement. Enterprise blockchain is a type of blockchain that controls access by providing a unique identity to each allowed user and takes the benefits of the blockchain to the next level.
Some of the features of enterprise blockchain include:
Only users with permission can access particular blocks on the blockchain. The network owner or enterprise chooses who gets access and the permissions for each account.
Like the traditional blockchain, each node holds a copy of the transaction history, which cannot be tampered with. If any alterations take place, they can easily be tracked, which makes each party accountable for its actions. Thus, it is ideal for financial transactions and other high-accountability processes.
Since enterprise blockchains are less decentralized than Bitcoin or other blockchains, the base layer can accommodate more information making it highly scalable.
Enterprise blockchain offers distributed ledgers that can be duplicated across multiple nodes, making it ideal for sharing across networks or organizations.
The additional layer of access enables blockchain to be highly secure, preventing fraud or hacks. The data is also stored with cryptography encryption and security technologies, offering highly advanced data protection and security.
Tokens are used in enterprise blockchain to record all transactions in the blockchain network. This helps with multiple offerings such as smart contracts, decentralization, verification, and more.
Given its unique features, there are several reasons to implement blockchain solutions within an enterprise. It can potentially revolutionize how businesses operate, providing a secure, efficient, and transparent process.
Some of the key benefits include:
Transparency is essential for building successful business relationships, and enterprise blockchain provides just that. Despite having a private network, all transactions conducted on the enterprise blockchain are visible to participants.
The most significant part - the data is tamper-proof, which helps build trust and confidence in the system.
The enterprise application of blockchain in financial records and transaction management helps companies save money and gain access to faster transactions. It removes the need for relying on third-party services or intermediaries, enabling businesses to process large amounts of transactions at the fraction amount of time it would take in a traditional process.
Blockchain technology can save companies millions of dollars since it removes the need for intermediaries or dependency on manual intervention. Blockchain-based businesses can save data management and security costs, given the inherent nature of the blockchain.
Plus, it can automate processes using Smart Ledger, Smart Contracts, and other features across its network. This helps make business processes faster and saves costs.
Now that we know the benefits and features of enterprise blockchain let us look at how blockchain is changing the business landscape. Some of the sectors that are finding uses for enterprise blockchain are:
Enterprise blockchain can increase transparency and visibility for supply chain management, making it easier for businesses to track several operations. It is easier to understand roadblocks in the supply chain, track replacements, manage warehousing, and increase trust for each party involved.
The use of enterprise blockchain in healthcare can greatly ease the current complexities that come with storing and managing patient records. Since these records often include highly sensitive and personal information, hospitals and medical professionals have to maintain high data security mechanisms to ensure that it is not hacked or misused.
However, this data often needs to be shared with other parties for medical insurance, clinical trials, or pharmaceutical needs. Blockchain can help make these processes transparent and highly secure, ensuring that there is no modification or outside access to patient records.
It can also improve data sharing, secure electronic health records (EHRs), improve patient consent management, and much more.
The usage of blockchain in financial transactions is already showcased thanks to the popularity of cryptocurrency. But with enterprise blockchain, financial institutions can leverage this technology for other usages, such as compliance management, cross-border settlements, use of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and more. DeFi can replace traditional banking processes and allow individuals to easily lend, pay, and trade with digital assets.
Similar to financial institutions, government institutions can benefit by using DeFi and other applications of the blockchain. DeFi is already enabling governments to create digital currencies that can be traded using smart contracts.
Additionally, enterprise blockchain can also help with KYC and personal identification processes. From passports to legal documents to regulatory filings, all this information and processes can easily be managed in the blockchain and be highly secure.
Do you want to adopt enterprise blockchain for your business? To help make this technology accessible to the industry, enterprise blockchain is offered via a Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) model. These enterprise blockchain platforms help accelerate and support the development of blockchain applications and are widely being adopted in industries.
Some of the top blockchain-based business platforms include:
One of the most popular blockchain networks, Ethereum is also an open-source Enterprise Blockchain platform to run smart contracts and build custom Blockchain applications. It is used in multiple business areas, especially Ethereum-based NFTs, and is known for its smart contracting functionality.
It is popularly used by companies like Coca-Cola, Taco Bell, Walmart, and Nike and offers permissionless and permission or private blockchain platforms.
Hyperledger is a popular open-source blockchain platform that uses the Linux Foundation. It is popular in the BaaS market and provides industry-grade features for enterprises to leverage and build blockchain applications.
It is prominently used by Intel, SAP, IBM, and other businesses.
Created by R3, an enterprise software firm, Corda is a highly secure and popular private blockchain network that offers enterprise-specific features such as privacy and scalability. It supports fast and secure transactions and is known for its smart contract capabilities.
Thus, it is prominently used by banking giants like HSBC and Bank of America.
XDC Network is a ready-to-use enterprise-grade hybrid blockchain network popularly used for finance and global trading. It combines the features of a private and public blockchain, making it ideal for use in a wide variety of business applications.
XDC is popularly used as a cryptocurrency wallet, and some of the popular digital currency wallets include Freewallet, XcelPay, and BitFi Wallet.
Using enterprise blockchain is helping usher in the next stage of innovation. Enterprise blockchain is a private or permission blockchain that allows businesses to gain the benefits of blockchain but without the open-access public ledger.
This enables different types of businesses to use the technology and gain benefits such as faster processes, accountability, flexibility, security, and immutability.
As the need for automation and cost savings increase, businesses need to adopt a technology that can handle present challenges and ensure that they stay relevant from a future perspective. As more enterprises adopt blockchain solutions, the technology will only open new paradigms for driving innovation and growth.
Plus, it can build trust and develop innovative new business models, which will help improve customer experiences and make them more efficient.
