Blockchain Beyond Cryptocurrencies: Security and Transparency for Business

While the financial world is debating Bitcoin and Ethereum, a quiet revolution is transforming traditional industries like logistics , healthcare , and government . Blockchain , often described as a “shared and unbreakable digital ledger,” is proving to be much more than a foundation for digital currencies: it is an enabling technology for building trust in complex ecosystems . Here’s how.

Index

• Traceability and Anti-counterfeiting
• Digital Identities and Fraud-Proof Documents
• Smart Contracts: Automation That Creates Trust

Traceability and Anti-counterfeiting

Imagine a world where every avocado in the supermarket tells its own story: from the field in Mexico to the produce section, including transport temperature and organic certifications. With blockchain, this is already a reality.

Are you wondering what all this means? Well, every transaction or step in the supply chain is recorded in an encrypted block , linked to the previous one. Once written, the data cannot be altered without the consensus of the network.

What are the benefits? For example, Walmart reduced the time to trace the origin of a mango from 7 days to 2.2 seconds, using Hyperledger Fabric. Result: +40% efficiency in the recall of contaminated products. LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Dior), on the other hand, launched AURA, a blockchain platform that certifies the authenticity of bags and watches, countering a $4.5 billion fake market.

Why is it convenient for companies ?

Automatic Compliance : IoT sensors and blockchain generate real-time audit reports, reducing legal risks (e.g. GDPR, FDA regulations).

Customer Loyalty : Millennial and Gen Z consumers pay 12% more for traceable products (as this study shows).

Digital Identities and Fraud-Proof Documents

In 2023, 63% of data breaches involved identity theft. Blockchain offers a solution: decentralized identities controlled directly by users.

Application examples :

Health Passports : Estonia Uses X-Road Blockchain to Store Medical Records. Patients Decide Who Accesses the Data, Via Private Keys.

Degrees : MIT issues verifiable degrees on Blockcerts, eliminating CV fraud (34% of employers detected CV fraud in 2022).

KYC in Banking : HSBC automated anti-money laundering checks with a shared blockchain between banks, cutting time from 10 days to 24 hours.

Competitive advantages :

Selective privacy : Zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify information (e.g. “I am of legal age”) without revealing sensitive data (e.g. date of birth).

Operational savings : Aon estimates that blockchain digital identity cuts document management costs for PAs by 30%.

Smart Contracts: Automation That Creates Trust

What if an insurance contract was automatically activated when an earthquake struck, without any paper claims? Smart contracts—blockchain-based, self-executing clauses—are making this possible.

Logistics : Maersk uses smart contracts on TradeLens to pay suppliers only when IoT sensors confirm delivery of goods.

Insurance : AXA (parametric insurance) reimburses flight delays within 3 minutes if FlightStats data meets predefined conditions.

Royalties : Startup Audius distributes music royalties in real time to artists, tracking streams on the blockchain.

Impact on business:

Cost Cutting : According to PwC, smart contracts reduce legal and administrative expenses in complex contracts by 35%.

End of disputes : Clauses are executed only if external data (oracles) validate them, eliminating subjective interpretations.

Conclusion

Blockchain is not a magic wand, but a tool to reimagine trust in multi-actor systems. While in 2024 55% of enterprise blockchain applications concerned traceability and contracts, the challenge for companies is cultural: to collaborate with competitors and regulators in shared ecosystems. Those who succeed will transform transparency from a cost to a competitive asset.