During 2017, one indeed saw several big technology players rather making moves in the blockchain.
In addition to Microsoft and IBM, Oracle had also announced in October a newer form of cloud-based “ blockchain-as-a-service offering”, while SAP did open up very early access to its own version of various offerings in May. With such updates, it is rather safe to say that Fortune 500 companies are now indeed pairing with several providers to explore blockchain’s uses in their respective businesses. In fact,
such examples of the type of adoption and validity were expected to be seen in 2017.
Even government bodies are also actually collaborating on several potential benefits of the blockchain. Bold and daring entrepreneurs are rather thinking about how the tech can be made use of as the basis for new smartphones and apps.
What can be expected in 2018?
1. Asia and the Middle East do aggressively push blockchain:
Interest in blockchain does continue to be very high in Asia and the Middle East. It is in these areas that some of the accepted largest banking institutions are indeed going ahead with blockchain projects or service offerings, in particular in the area of payments.
For instance, banks in Japan and South Korea have just begun testing a blockchain technology that could actually achieve same-day international transfers and also cut costs by nearly 30 percent.
2. Cybersecurity will amplify blockchain adoption:
There is a spurt in ransomware attacks demanding cryptocurrencies, and blockchain and IoT cybersecurity will indeed emerge with defenses based on cryptocurrency technologies.
The emergence of blockchain cybersecurity tools proves to be a landmark as far as blockchain is concerned.
3. ICOs will take off:
There was a rather seismic jump in ICOs in 2017, and the ecosystem of these cryptocurrencies has expanded in a huge way. In fact, in the next year, the pace of ICOs will be growing significantly faster, and will also overtake venture capital funding.
4. Finance and insurance will go all in
The insurance and finance sectors are considered as two of the most likely to face deep, and threatening, disruption from blockchain technology.
Insurance will also emerge as a hot area as the claims processing and complex multi-party processes such as subrogation will show the business value of blockchain-based automation.
5. Automation, privatization is coming
Blockchain will be driving digital transformation of the enterprise specifically with automation, digitization of processes, tokenization of physical assets as well as activities and codification of complex contracts.
