“Blockchain can solve World’s toughest challenges,” says Stanford Blockchain Research

A look at the highlights and the projects from the Stanford blockchain research that goes beyond the hype surrounding blockchain and emphasizes on ‘use case’. Research estimates that 55% of social-good blockchain initiatives will show impact in early 2019.

“Potential to transform systems and leapfrog infrastructure can enable solutions that previously weren’t thought to be possible” read the Stanford research report after studying 193 organizations leveraging blockchain technology.

Research that aimed at going beyond the hype to study the true transformational potential of blockchain in the areas of Agriculture, Democracy and Governance, Digital Identity, Energy, Climate and Environment, Financial Inclusion, Health, Land Rights, Philanthropy, Aid and Donors, Education, Human Rights, and Water.

Cryptotapas followers may recollect that in a recent article, we noted that Blockchain’s biggest transformation potential lies in these areas. You can refer to the article on Blockchain and its impact on our future.

Research calls Estonian Government’s adoption the most advanced adoption of Blockchain in a Government sector with 99% of Government sectors services now available on e-services.

Health sector seems to be at the forefront of Blockchain adoption with almost twice the percentage of blockchain initiatives, compared to Financial Inclusion, focused on the Health sector.

Research looks at the projects that are working in the sectors examined. Below is a complete list of projects studied in this research by category.

Agriculture

Research highlights the major issues that face Agriculture industry including maintaining food safety compliance data on paper trails making it next to impossible to trace the origin of certain products.

Blockchain can bring tracking and transparency to the Agriculture industry while facilitating faster and cheaper settlements among all participants of Agriculture ecosystem.

Democracy and Governance

Blockchain can address security and logistic issues surrounding voting process and Government data exchange without compromising the safety of Citizen’s data.

Reducing costs and facilitating cross-verification can be significant improvements offered by Blockchain technology that existing systems fail to cater.

Research shows that “81% of projects are already achieving impact or on track to do so in 2018” through blockchain use in the Democracy and Governance space.

Digital Identity

There are over 2 billion people that are unbanked. The biggest issue for these individuals is to have a proper identity that can be used to avail services offered by Government and private agencies.

Providing a digital identity that cannot be tampered with using Blockchain technology can transform billions of lives. This will prove to be an effective and inexpensive solution to a global problem.

Digital identity will also help simplify make the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) for everyone.

Energy, Climate and Environment

Blockchain technology can significantly reduce the overhead costs in the energy sector that operate in highly regulated markets.

Blockchain technology has the potential to expand the services to new users via microgrids.

Research does caveat that the impact of Blockchain technology in the Energy, Climate and Environment sector will take longer than other initiatives, about 2-3 years but the impact would be far-reaching.

Financial Inclusion

With over 2 Billion unbanked individuals across the globe, Blockchain offers a massive potential to change the financial lives of the masses.

If you can get a phone, you should be able to avail financial services. Blockchain can eliminate or drastically reduce the infrastructure requirements by embedding digital identity aspects.

Health

Making exchange of health information across various players in the healthcare sector cheaper, safer and faster is a massive undertaking.

Providing health information in a timely fashion could mean saving lives. This has to happen without compromising privacy and security concerns. The blockchain is a great solution to address the issues of privacy and security.

Blockchain’s immutability and transparency features can also help with curb the counterfeit issues in the health sector.

Land Rights

Blockchain has potential to bring transparency and trust to the real estate transactions. When the information is recorded on Blockchain, it is almost impossible to delete or alter it. This makes it difficult to cheat people by selling the same real estate property twice.

Philanthropy and Aid

More people would be willing to give to charity if they were transparent. We have had cases where the world’s biggest charity organizations came under investigation because of embezzlement and fraud charges.

Blockchain can bring transparency to the Philanthropy sector and help drive more funds to the right causes at the right time with 100% transparency.

This research comes at the time when blockchain space needs a little boost. Overall, the research is optimistic about the Blockchain’s use and potential impact on the various industries and sectors across the globe.

While some industries will take longer than others, research reiterates the fact that Blockchain will undoubtedly change many facets of our lives, for the better.

Thank you for reading this article.