Understand blockchain’s key features that are making businesses switch to the technology in 2024

It is a fact that many companies are placing digital transformation initiatives as their top priority in 2024. Actually, PwC suggests that nearly 61% of companies globally have put these initiatives on the top of their lists. While still on this, one dominant technology that cannot be ignored is blockchain technology. Actually, a survey by Synechron on top fintech showed that approximately 94% of companies have already made plans to incorporate blockchain in the future.

Well, a report by MarketsandMarkets explained that the global market of blockchain was approximately $7.4 billion in 2022 and was expected to rise to $94 billion by the end of 2027. In fact, it’s expected to grow at a CAGR of a whopping 66.2%. A report by Gartner actually suggests that the technology will generate a business value of roughly $3.1 trillion by 2030. This is crazy, right?

Blockchain in the industries

Someone would be really curious as to why blockchain technology is really growing that fast. Actually, this tech is getting into all kinds of industries including the financial industry, manufacturing, agriculture, distribution, and many more services in the public sector.

Looking at the financial sector, you can see that cryptocurrencies are gaining much recognition by various financial institutions. Actually, 30% of the whole blockchain market is made up of the financial sector. This is because of the many major advantages that crypto brings to this sector.

Take, for example, Bitcoin, the pioneering crypto. Many businesses have warmed up to Bitcoin because of the transaction speed, privacy it offers, transparency, security and cross-border transaction abilities. Now, where it could take you almost a whole week to make a transaction across international borders, you can make your transactions within minutes, if not seconds. As if that’s not enough, they are extremely hard to tamper with. That’s why people are really working well with crypto and blockchain technology.

Well, enough about the market. Let’s get to know what sets blockchain apart. What makes it such a valuable technological advancement? What are the security features in the tech that made the global market surge by 95.4% between 2020 and 2021? And why are experts predicting that the global market might grow at a CAGR of 87.7% between 2023 and 2030? What really makes blockchain secure?

Decentralization

Well, blockchain does not operate like the traditional systems that are controlled by a single entity. For this tech, authority, and decision-making responsibilities are delegated to a distributed network. Here, it doesn’t matter whether you trust the other person or not. Actually, you don’t need to know or trust each other.

A copy of data in the system is distributed to everyone in the network in the form of a distributed ledger and if one member’s ledger is tampered with, a majority of the members will reject it. By having a decentralized nature, there can be no point in a single failure like centralized systems.

Transparency

The design of blockchain is made with transparency as a building block. You see, all transactions and data alteration is documented in a block sequence that runs chronologically. Now, these blocks are then connected to each other using cryptographic hashes, making a ledger that is both transparent and immutable.

The best thing about this trust is that anyone on the system can be able to track any data that is flowing. For example, the product supply industry uses blockchain to track items from when they come from the supplier to when they are given to the consumer. Every step is recorded on the blockchain, making it easy to monitor whatever is happening to the products.

Actually, public networks use public ledgers to make sure that everyone in the blockchain can see any transaction happening. Well, this has made it easy to encourage accountability and trust among users.

Security

This is perhaps the most important aspect of blockchain that makes it so accepted among various sectors in the global economy. Come on, let’s speak facts. Cybercrime has become a global menace in recent years. Actually, 2023 saw a big increase in cybercrime with more than 343 million victims suffering, both individuals and businesses. In fact, as shown data breaches by 72% between 2021 and 2023. With such stats, businesses are looking for more secure ways to transact their things.

And that’s where blockchain technology comes in. The system has been created in such a way that it is almost impossible for bad actors to get through it. The systems are created to be both immutable and transparent using cryptographic keys and consensus mechanisms. Well, this is not to say that now the networks are 100% cybercrime proof, but you can be sure they have dealt with a huge percentage of the attacks.