How Blockchain Is Transforming the Development Process

Blockchain has become a buzz word in the world of cryptocurrency. However, the idea of blockchain has moved far beyond crypto trading platforms. Nowadays, software engineers implement blockchain technology in various fields from medicine to logistics and many more.

More and more startups start using blockchain as the core technology to develop their products. In this article, we uncover how businesses embed blockchain technologies in their software development process.

Blockchain in Global Markets

Blockchain technology is expected to grow massively by 2025 reaching $39 billion dollars. Although the financial sector is one of the biggest investors in technology, it makes a difference in other spheres as well.

Here are just several examples of how blockchain changes businesses:

• Finance services

In banking & finance, specialists can use blockchain for trading cryptocurrencies. There are many examples of crypto trading you can find online such as famous Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and others.

The use of smart contracts eliminates the necessity for intermediates, making them fair and more reliable. It can be successfully implemented in trading processes and settlements in various spheres whether you sell a house, buy shares on a stock market, or perform global payments.

• Insurance services

Insurance processes are quite complicated. They involve much paperwork which makes them prone to unfair use or fraudulent claims. To avoid errors, insurance providers can implement a system of blockchain contracts that provide transparent and secure procedures.

• Smart houses and cities

Combining blockchain with Internet-of-Things (IoT) makes smart connections safer. When a house system is set and managed digitally, there is always a risk of hacking.

The system breach consequences can be even more grave when it comes to IoT connections in cities or governmental institutions. Blockchain allows connecting all the IoT devices in one safe and secure system.

• Healthcare and IDs

Blockchain is a transparent system and any member can track all the transactions, with the help of smart contracts people can encode and transfer data to certain individuals. This technology can help patients share their personal health records with doctors individually in a confidential and safe way.

Above all, personal data like IDs or driving licenses can be encrypted with blockchain technology, making them harder to falsify or steal.

• Entertainment

Blockchain can help artists to protect their ownership rights and monetize their products by establishing decentralized systems that track music and movie rights. This way media consumers will pay fees right to the musicians and film-makers rather than media pirates.

• Elections

Nowadays, governments prefer holding elections in a traditional paper way. However, this system isn’t safe and can be easily cheated. Blockchain technology can improve the election system, making it more reliable and convenient for voters.

By conducting elections online, governments ensure that no extra papers were added to the ballot boxes. Moreover, blockchain can help to reduce expenditure as governments won’t need to hire people, arrange polling stations, or print ballot papers.

Why Use Blockchain for Software Development?

Blockchain has been successfully implemented in various software development projects. Here’re some reasons why:

• If you need to establish secure digital relationships with your customers or distribute an open system of unamendable records.

Apps based on blockchain technology can be used for long-term and transparent records. For example, property, land, music rights record, or any other legal terms record.

• When you want to avoid the service of any intermediaries.

For example, if your company wants to avoid aggregator platforms for booking or e-commerce to connect your services directly to your customers and perform money transactions via blockchain.

• For transaction records between several partners.

Blockchain technology can help to build complex secure transaction patterns between multiple customers across any industry.

• When past data is important.

With blockchain, you can easily track back the records performed by each participant in the system. The data can’t be accidentally erased or changed. This way you can keep a clear historical trail of your data while having your records up-to-date.

What Facilitates Blockchain Implementation

Smart Contracts

The system of smart contracts has made blockchain more applicable to various industries. Smart contracts can perform different actions once certain conditions are fulfilled.

For example, with smart contracts blockchain members can show data to predefined members or make agreements on certain conditions.

Distributed Databases

The idea of decentralization in blockchain was successfully implemented in databases. By using blockchain software engineers managed to develop decentralized distributed databases. The technology is quickly gaining its popularity over traditional databases.

Let’s have a closer look at how blockchain enhanced databases and what is a distributed database system.

A distributed database system (DDBMS) represents a set of database files that are physically located in various computer networks or different sites. DDBMS synchronizes data from different parts and ensures that it gets updated and deleted in other locations accordingly.

The comparison of DDBMS vs traditional databases:

dApps

Decentralized apps (dApps) are the programs that have blockchain or peer-to-peer networks in their core. It means that instead of receiving data from one central computer, dApps have a distributed approach. This makes dApps more stable and minimizes their downtime and number of errors.

While dApps have blockchain technology in their core, the front-end of these apps doesn’t differ much from traditional apps. The main benefits of dApps are the following, they can:

• Replicate data. By replicating data dApps ensure its safety. The replicated data is stored on each computer connected to the blockchain system. Therefore, if any computer disconnects from the system or loses the data, it stays on the remaining computers.
• Check requirements. Before performing any transaction the system verifies its requirements. Each system participant has to check the requirements and validate each transaction, otherwise it won’t be fulfilled. This way all the participants agree on each transaction, which ensures their security and makes the process fair.
• Records transactions. As every transaction is written in a sequential log and linked to the previous transactions, the data sequence becomes highly secure and almost impossible to modify.
• Encrypt transactions with public-key. Public-key cryptography is an additional layer of security when all the data is encrypted with mathematical algorithms. Any person can encrypt his data with these algorithms but only the receiver can decrypt it with a private key.

All these dApps features make these apps incredibly safe and stable, pushing the boundaries for emerging technologies further.

Conclusion

Blockchain is a new rapidly developing technology. It’s already proved its high utility for many digital solutions like dApps or distributed databases. There is a lot more to expect from blockchain in the future.

A blockchain decentralized system can enhance various technologies, such as IoT, making them more secure and stable. Many specialists predict a dramatic increase in blockchain investments as this technology forms the basis for the implementation of IoT systems in our homes, industries, and cities.