The Most Innovative Blockchain Use Cases Transforming The Digital Landscape
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Though still far from being designated as a fully-evolved technology, blockchain has quickly gained prominence for facilitating many novel use cases across multiple applications and industries.
Built on the foundations of cryptography, blockchain guarantees data immutability, thus solving the problems of data tampering and fraud. Over the last decade, blockchain technology has found its way into several industries like gaming, healthcare, eCommerce, and fintech, among many others.
However, the recent meteoric growth of cryptocurrencies opened the floodgates of innovation. In the last couple of years, hundreds of functional, innovative blockchain use cases have emerged, each unique in its way and designed to bridge the gap between the evolving technology and real-world applications. From DeFi to the metaverse, these promising next-generation blockchain projects play a crucial role in helping the general population understand the concept of digital currencies, contributing immensely to the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.
That said, here are four of the most innovative blockchain use cases that will shape the next wave of decentralization.
Digital Escrow Services For Web 3.0
Trust between two parties plays a key role when it comes to financial transactions. In the traditional finance (TradFi) sector, banks and other intermediary organizations maintain the “trust” between parties. However, in the case of decentralized finance (DeFi), there is no centralized authority to play this role.
Smartlink addresses this challenge by offering end-to-end “Trust-as-a-Service” solutions designed for Web 3.0. Powered by the Tezos blockchain, Smartlink delivers an array of escrow smart contracts that facilitate the purchase and sale of goods and services without any centralized authority. Through its autonomous escrow smart contract modules, Smartlink addresses the risks of losing money to scams and online frauds.
To ensure that each escrow smart contract module supports real-world use cases, Smartlink has partnered with the CEA Research Center. Together, both teams are building frameworks for both digital and physical products. As of date, Smartlink has rolled out the Smartlink Escrow V 1— Digital Products smart contract module for digital products, allowing users to escrow XTZ tokens, NFTs, and synthetic assets, and perform OTC trades via one-on-one transactions. Additional features for digital products and escrow modules for physical products are set to be rolled out in the future.
Smartlink’s diverse range of non-custodial escrow services will help buyers and sellers avoid unnecessary fees, given that all escrow smart contracts are designed to self-execute and release the funds as soon as all predefined terms are met.
An Innovative Approach To Public Fundraising
Fundraising is an essential component of almost every business model, whether from private investors, public markets, or financial institutions. However, raising funds without relying on venture capital firms or angel investors isn’t an easy feat to accomplish.
Solv Protocol aims to simplify this process through its financial NFTs and IVO (Initial Voucher Offering) model. By design, Solv is a decentralized marketplace that allows users to create, trade, and manage financial NFTs. The platform recently launched the Initial Voucher Offering model to take the idea of public fundraising to a new level.
The platform’s ERC-3525 tokens include the descriptive attributes of the ERC-721 tokens with the liquidity feature of ERC-20 tokens, thus allowing them to be used as “vouchers” for other digital assets. Simply put, users can generate ERC-3525 tokens to implement traditional financial systems like fixed-term deposits, vesting, convertible bonds, and several other similar options. Furthermore, users can fractionalize these “vouchers” to meet specific needs.
Solv Protocol now faciliates the splitting and merging of financial NFTs, which was previously impossible, thus unlocking the gate to a diverse range of new use cases for its “vouchers” while disrupting traditional crowdfunding models.
Bridging Real-World Assets With DeFi
Even though the DeFi ecosystem has grown manifold in the last couple of years, a serious absence of liquidity in the DeFi ecosystem can arise during periods of congestion. At this point, DeFi is gradually becoming the playground for deep-pocketed individuals. However, Centrifuge aims to bring real-world impact with its DeFi services.
Founded in 2017, Centrifuge is a protocol that allows users to tokenize their real-world assets in a DeFi format before posting them as collateral to attain financing via its accompanying asset-backed lending dApp, Tinlake. At the same time, it enables DeFi investors with a stable source of income that has no relation with the volatility of the crypto market.
Centrifuge eliminates banks and other intermediaries to unlock economic opportunities for everyone. Automated smart contracts manage all collateralized assets and on-chain borrowing on the platform. By using NFTs as digital representation of real-world assets like invoices, real estate, and royalties, Centrifuge brings the monetary value from the real world, adding more liquidity to the DeFi ecosystem.
Until now, the multi-trillion-dollar real-world asset market has remained far from the reach of decentralization. But with Centrifuge bridging the gap, both lenders and borrowers will benefit abundantly, ushering in a new era where everyone has equal access to financial opportunities.
Lowering Entry Barriers With Learn2Earn Model
Metaverse is one of the most trending topics on the internet these days. From Mark Zuckerberg to Web3 proponents, everyone wants a piece of the metaverse. To that extent, a promising new project, Bit.Country, aims to be the platform that enables users to create their own metaverses and games while providing several earning opportunities.
The Bit.Country team has also developed the Metaverse.Network, a metaverse version of Ethereum, but with lower gas fees using Substrate developed on the Polkadot ecosystem. The platform is building the foundation for metaverse owners to grow exponentially while letting their members take ownership and earn through a variety of opportunities while directly contributing to the advancement of individual metaverses.
When it comes to innovation, the Bit.Country team believes that educating the general population is the only way to help them achieve success. The founders of Bit.Country are already known for launching several Learn2Earn-themed courses to help everyone benefit from the Web3 movement, including initiatives like Substrate Runtime Developer Academy and the world’s first Metaverse Career Academy.
The Bit.Country team plans to deploy all protocols of Thunder.University on to the Metaverse.Network, thus bringing in their proven Learn2Earn model, enabling participants to rapidly learn new technologies and monetize their skills as quickly as possible.
