The world is understanding better that blockchain technology is being used in many different areas in many different industries as well as cryptocurrencies.
In 2021, blockchain technology is expected to be used more widely in industries for various purposes all over the world, beyond cryptocurrency. Especially after the pandemic, the use of blockchain technology in supply chain, logistics and financial services has increased. It seems that blockchain technology will be used much more throughout 2021.
Supply chain optimization
There are many barriers in the supply chain industry, especially in the area of goods flow and logistics. These industries are known for their paper-heavy processes and face many challenges in daily operations.
Optimizing supply chains doesn't just mean cost-effective transport of goods or raw materials from A to B. Digitization, transparency and distributed storage of data have also become important parts of supply chain optimization.
Long distances, multiple parties, large volumes of documents, data, and mutual trust can be best matched digitally with blockchains. A distributed ledger technology offers an ideal environment for recording and storing large volumes of data and accessing every detail to a predefined target group.
In my opinion, the integration of distributed ledger technology into supply chain management is one of the hottest blockchain trends this year.
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)
Central Bank-backed digital currencies were also a hot topic in 2020. While China wants to play a world-wide role in CBDCs, Europe and the UK seem to have taken a very cautious approach to this issue so far.
Blockchain as a Service
The deployment model as a service plays a key role in the rapid adoption of technology trends, including cloud computing, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). With companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft all offering or developing tools and platforms that allow businesses to take advantage of technology without upfront investment in infrastructure and skills, blockchain is likely to be the next service model.
BaaS, a cloud-based service that allows users to develop their own digital products on the blockchain, saw great importance in 2020 and is used by many startups and businesses. I think there may be digital products, smart contracts, dApps (decentralized applications) or other services that can operate without the installation requirements of blockchain-based infrastructure.
The rise of NFTs
NFTs have increased their popularity enormously lately. Non-Fungible Tokens, i.e. unchangeable tokens, are digital assets that are essentially in a blockchain and can therefore be said to have value due to their uniqueness. These assets can be pictures, music, source code or contracts.
These products, known by some as "digital collections," simply cannot be duplicated and copied, introducing the economic scarcity principle for the first time in the field of digital assets. If Bitcoin tokens are like blockchain verified dollar bills, we can call NFTs blockchain verified artworks.
Although interest in blockchain technology initially increased with the rise of cryptocurrencies, nowadays the potential of the technology has attracted the attention of many industries and institutions are increasingly investing in distributed ledger technology.We will see the developments together day by day.
Good info