An increasing number of businesses are interested in investing in blockchain technology. The technology is attracting the attention of global business executives due to its huge real-world applications. In addition, blockchain applications are more scalable and secure compared to traditional apps. Enterprise blockchain will greatly benefit businesses due to the continual expansion of digital ecosystems.
According to statistics, global spending on blockchain is anticipated to reach $19 billion by 2024. Now, most businesses are taking active steps to enter and benefit from the blockchain industry. But since its inception, many changes have taken place, and there’s no sign of things slowing down any time soon. If you’re interested in this technology, you need to stay on top of the trending topics.
In this blog post, you’ll see the top four business blockchain trends for 2022 and their long-term benefits.
What is blockchain technology?
Blockchain technology is a distributed and decentralized ledger that stores cryptographic records of transactions and records of digital assets. It’s the technology behind cryptocurrencies and is considered to be trustless and highly secure. You can’t modify records on a blockchain or interfere with the records as they require the consensus of all participants in the chain.
This makes the technology excellent for many industries that require a greater level of trust, confidentiality, and security, like healthcare and payment industries. Learn more on the trending topics within the blockchain arena in 2022 below.
Metaverse
In case you are wondering, the metaverse is a network of virtual apps that help facilitate social connection and interaction. Big techs like Meta, Microsoft, and Epic Games have had businesses globally moving to develop immersive 3D virtual experiences that allow people to connect with others and live a virtual life.
As far as technology is concerned right now, there is no better place to develop a secure and expansive metaverse than on blockchain technology. Due to its decentralized structure, blockchain development can provide secure and frictionless access to the metaverse, free from cybersecurity and fraud issues and inadequate user authentication.
In addition to privacy and security, blockchain also ties the metaverse to the crypto economy, making it an attractive investment for businesses in 2022 and beyond. Some of the benefits of Metaverse include:
- Higher engagement: A virtual world closely mimics the real world can help significantly boost customer engagement and experience, spurring content and brand offering consumption.
- New economic streams: Metaverse offers a chance for your business to create and sell helpful virtual content that’s more engaging than on other social platforms. Besides, technologies like Facebook Meta will have their own economic system.
- Better communication: Metaverse can allow people to communicate and engage like they are in the same room, even when they’re geographically apart.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
For the past two years, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been one of the hottest developments in blockchain technology. These are tokens issued on the blockchain as one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable tokens. This allows them to use the concept of scarcity of assets to build their value. In addition to art and digital valuables, NFTs provide a multitude of additional use cases in the blockchain.
Musicians are tokenizing their songs and selling directly to their fans, sports brands and athletes are also tokenizing merchandise and sporting moments. Artists and brands can get automatic royalty payments, record labels, managers, and other players in the specific niche. Similarly, businesses can create NFTs and marketplaces to trade them.
NFTs have also found a huge following in the fashion and gaming industries. It’s also an invaluable technology for tracking and verifying goods in the supply chain.
Digital Identity
Looking at the above two trends, it’s obvious that establishing a digital identity is now important if you want to maintain anonymity in the decentralized space. The transition to digital identities is imminent, whether or not this will be through creating avatars or any other means. And because of the growing push toward the use of digital identities, all players in the blockchain world will need to step up.
This is mainly for providers in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) system and other required services that require identity verification. With the entry of NFTs and metaverse into the market, the issue of digital identities will continue transactions.
This also raises the issue of more regulation within the space. Most governments are curious to know how digital identities play in the crypto world and how that can affect the laid money transaction regulations.
An established digital identity system will lead to more regulation in Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) measures in the DeFi world. In areas like automotive supply chain management, digital identity can be used in blockchain car sharing services through smart contracts. This works by allowing authentication of a transaction through digital identity and proof of payment.
Eco-Friendly blockchain
Among the most criticized aspect of blockchain technology is the high energy consumption rate required by popular protocols. All protocols that rely on Proof of Work (PoW) require validators that perform huge computational tasks. This is, of course, tied to the impact the same has on the environment.
But the newer protocols are more focused on eliminating the energy consumption issue by using Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH) consensus. For example, Cardano uses PoS while Solana relies on PoH. This has seen protocols like Ethereum moving from PoW to PoS to try and make its algorithm more eco-friendly. The trend is likely to be seen more in 2022 and beyond. This will likely make blockchain even a more attractive solution for many businesses.
Final thoughts
Blockchain technology has evolved quickly from cryptocurrency technology, and most people are accustomed to the enterprise tech disrupting the business landscape. The above are only some trending topics revolving around it and those we’ll see in 2022 and beyond. These include increased adoption of Metaverse, growing use of NFTs, and going for greener blockchain protocols.
Implementing blockchain in your business can create more scalable apps and processes for a more optimized workflow. Your business can gain all the benefits of blockchain technology. All you need is to consult the experts to get started.