Every year encourages tech enthusiasts to use their expertise and innovate something unique. In 2021, we saw the burgeoning success of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, NFTs, Metaverse, and Web3. Ever since the start of 2022, we have witnessed the same trends taking over the industrial and financial space.
Since its inception, the Bitcoin blockchain has never been hacked, never gone offline, or suffered any form of downtime. The trust placed on Bitcoin per the security it brandishes has made it remain at the top of the crypto assets ranking, and is billed to remain so for much longer. While blockchain technology is itself more than a decade old, the revolutionary features of the tech have stirred a number of use cases affecting many industries today. There are numerous https://www.xcritical.in/blog/blockchain-trends-of-2022/ in 2021, and to appropriately give blockchain growth projections, the current and future trends must be put in proper perspective. In fact, as of this writing, more than 40 blockchain projects are built using Cosmos technology. Multiple of which rank among the top 20 projects by market cap (Luna Terra, Terra USD, and Cronos).
Blockchain will likely become increasingly used in retail as more people realize its benefits. It has the potential to help retailers track products throughout their entire supply chain. Some people have called them “digital collectibles” because, unlike most digital files, they can’t simply be duplicated and copied. In short, it brings the economic principle of scarcity into play for the first time in the domain of digital assets.
Challenge 1 – Blockchain Safety is Still a Topic of Concern for Businesses!
Chris Bendtsen is a Senior Analyst at CB Insights, where he researches emerging technologies, startups, and investment trends, with a focus on fintech, blockchain, crypto, and Web3. Asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional investors may find decentralized finance an effective way to manage partnerships, custodianships, and vendor relationships with greater flexibility and at lower cost. Corporations in other industries are beginning to manage their financial operations with blockchain, too, setting up tokens and NFTs that are closely related to their industries. Singapore tends to attract significant capital and many large investors due to its favorable and transparent regulatory environment. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s primary financial oversight body, handles most of the regulation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
By all accounts, the technology has proven fruitful in inspiring initiatives that accelerate data visibility across our value chain. To alleviate some of this burden, the US Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services https://www.xcritical.in/ is working to develop a blockchain solution to make the process of distributing grants and tracking the flow of money simpler. The project essentially turns grant payments into digital tokens that represent actual money.
For example, in some regulatory regimes, asset owners and developers can market their products to retail investors as well as to institutions. In short, tokenization brings a new level of liquidity and transparency to domains such as real estate and portfolio management. At BCG, we have been close observers of the international financial technology sector for many years. We have worked with many players in this field, including payment companies, asset managers, crypto exchanges, and high-tech startups. We hope to raise awareness among financial services leaders of the challenges and opportunities that blockchain offers.
- In the previous year, Venezuela became the first country to launch its national cryptocurrency dubbed as ‘Petro’ (Petromoneda) which is backed by the lands oil and mineral reserves.
- It currently operates digital sales and marketing platforms, utilizes customer data analytics, and automates much of its production lines.
- Because they are self-verifying and self-executing, the programmed outcomes are difficult to alter.
- Further, data integrity and privacy becomes crucial for all blockchain networks as businesses and users transition to more blockchain-centric workflows.
- Examples of robo-advisors with cryptocurrency offerings include Makara, in the US, and Empirica, available only to institutional investors, hedge funds, wealth management firms, and similar enterprises.
We recently partnered with the German government to use blockchain as a means of federating driver’s licenses and simplifying the purchase process. Self-sovereign identity allows German citizens to verify their licenses frequently with ride-sharing or insurance companies with minimal friction and maximal security, while providing sellers an easy way to reduce identity fraud. In the not-so-distant future, we expect buying a car could be as easy as scanning a QR code. Fischer says each of these initiatives has been geared toward raising the profile of blockchain within the department and demonstrating that it has use cases beyond cryptocurrency. For one thing, Fischer says he’s not aware of any other mature blockchain payment projects in the federal government, so his team must design and develop supporting processes like access control and security standards. The company is looking to extend its use of blockchain to ease financial transactions.
Although blockchain technology has a lot of potential of changing the way the world functions, mass implementation of the same can turn out to be risky. Moreover, as per the prediction of various blockchain experts and enthusiasts, the year 2021 will officially witness blockchain-based property lease contracts with the help of smart contracts. Today, this revolutionary technology has been adopted in various sectors across the globe.
Tech Trends 2023
Further, blockchain developers are advancing novel cryptography and blockchain security methods to improve data safety and reliability. There is also a growing interest in blockchain networks tailored for enterprise applications, including private blockchains. Lastly, startups are developing decentralized applications (dApps) for a range of use cases on blockchain networks. Blockchain primarily finds applications for financial transactions and as investment vehicles.
Additionally, dApps have no downtimes as they leverage decentralized computing and ensure a secure development ecosystem with open-source licensing. Lastly, blockchain-powered decentralized applications are crucial to accelerating Web3 integration. The startup’s platform leverages visual programming and a template-driven workflow to accelerate production.
Dapps run on decentralized networks, which means they offer greater transparency and security for users. Many of these apps are likely to run on blockchain networks which means they could provide better protection than standard mobile apps. Besides, there is the potential that they could become more widely used in the future.
In the past, low-capital investors often used robo-advisors as an alternative to index funds. This could make them a great fit for cryptocurrencies, whose coins are often divided into fractional parts with shared ownership. Examples of robo-advisors with cryptocurrency offerings include Makara, in the US, and Empirica, available only to institutional investors, hedge funds, wealth management firms, and similar enterprises. The DeFi business ecosystem consists of multiple layers of activity, each of which has attracted offerings from many companies. Among them are Uniswap, Compound, and MakerDAO, all based on the Ethereum platform but focused, respectively, on trading tokens, lending and borrowing, and managing currency.
While some countries like China have banned their national cryptocurrency, many other countries appear warmer towards this technology. NFTs are tokens that, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, are fungible, meaning they are interchangeable with other instances of the same token. 2021 saw El Salvador become among the first nations to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, meaning it can be accepted across the country to pay for goods and services, and businesses can use it to pay their employees. According to many commentators, during 2022, we will see a number of other countries follow suit. After all, this is an asset class where “memecoins” like Dogecoin, created as a joke, can rise in value by over 1000% in under a year. Two UK hospitals are also trialing an expansion of a blockchain system currently used to track the distribution of chemotherapy drugs, to also track Covid-19 vaccine distribution.