As the greater Web3 economy grows, it is especially encouraging to see Web3 use cases beyond the standard crypto trading, gaming, or finance-driven applications. It’s clear that for Web3 to be fully integrated into society, there needs to be a multitude of use cases that fundamentally change and improve the way we do things today. Although crypto trading is interesting, it does not affect the majority of people because they are not looking for alternative forms of investment. While Play-to-Earn gaming is fascinating, it won’t appeal to most people who aren’t really involved in gaming of any kind.
Web3 needs to look at our current pain points and use its unique features to improve these processes. Fortunately, as Web3 evolves, more and more of these use cases are becoming apparent, and teams of researchers and companies are seizing the opportunity to build solutions. Let’s take a look at three very strong use cases that are already improving their respective industries, and on their way to completely revolutionizing the way we do things.
Supply chain
Blockchain’s ability to capture and protect a moment of truth and transparency has the potential to change our supply chains forever. This was a strong early use case and many different companies have been working to develop innovations around it. The core problem facing supply chains today is a lack of trust caused by a lack of transparency. Every decade our planet seems to get smaller as it becomes more and more interconnected. The Covid pandemic was a stark reminder of how interconnected and delicate it is, and how little it will take to disrupt the things we rely on. One positive aspect of this interconnected global supply chain is that we are becoming increasingly aware of those faraway places where the food and products we buy are actually grown, produced and shipped. And as our expectations of social responsibility for companies increase, there is greater pressure on them to check that workers involved in the supply chain are treated fairly; that the environment is treated with respect; and that the items have the authentic provenance, materials and quality that was promised. To this end, IBM has made significant progress in creating supply chain tools to achieve this. The company uses the foundations of blockchain to address several problems that cannot be solved traditionally. Supplier integrity is critical, and vetted suppliers can publish their immutable credentials on-chain so companies can easily onboard them without a completely independent review process. Along the supply chain, the different players can take action as they receive, process and ship products, with every step in the chain being recorded, so the supply chain owner can get near real-time feedback across the chain, something that is exponential. more difficult with a multi-layered, international supply chain.
trip
The travel industry faces similar challenges to a supply chain in terms of international collaboration and difficulty with visibility and verification. Unlike a chain, however, the travel industry is an incredibly complex web of companies that provide transportation, food, accommodation, tours and more. While some companies are large and well organized, there are many more family owned shops that are very local and not connected to each other except for a few websites or fellow travel companies that offer referrals. This level of disconnect makes it extremely difficult to seamlessly plan an entire vacation with the best providers. Either you have to rely on the few major organizations that can help plan the trip, accommodation, food and activities (which depends on what they can offer you), or you have to brave the unknown, traveling to a location and make plans. your journey once you get there. Neither option is ideal, but for the travel industry to be fully connected there must be an ever-expanding layer of connectivity that is actively recruiting more and more travel companies to join. Fortunately, exactly this type of layer is being developed. The Camino Network started as a collaboration between travel companies who saw the promise of what blockchain had to offer and worked together to build the necessary platform. This was made up of travel industry veterans, allowing the people who knew the problems best to develop solutions, while having a substantial network of companies eagerly waiting to join in and use the final product. After the development of the platform, the Camino Messenger becomes the key to reaching and connecting this great web through the Camino Network. This product is designed to streamline interactions between travel companies through APIs, bots and smart contracts. To ensure that communication is automated, the group has built a standard for messaging. Leveraging blockchain’s borderless financial transactions, it also offers both microtransactions and microservices between members. What does this all mean? In short, it means that travel organizations are connected in complete real-time and all refer to the exact same verified data of the traveler’s trip. The result is a vastly improved experience for travelers who enjoy the efficiencies of big companies while being able to choose from a wide range of large and small travel companies, allowing them to choose services and products to create their ideal trip. For travel organizations, this results in cost savings, increased turnover and companies can concentrate on providing travel services instead of being tied to administrative tasks.
Chain of supervision
The third use case is still in its infancy, but is promising. For advanced manufacturing, especially in highly regulated industries such as aerospace, it is critical that data can be captured and its authenticity guaranteed throughout the process. With the use of edge devices capturing massive amounts of data at every production step, and the use of AI to utilize this data and improve the production process and product quality, it is clear that this data must be of the highest quality and guaranteed unchanged have to stay. since its original inception. This “digital thread” of data is critical to the certification of these processes by regulatory agencies, and blockchain’s ability to maintain immutability is critical to validating the data a month, a year, a decade later. The promise of AI and advanced manufacturing techniques could transform the aerospace industry, but only if they can be certified for use. Applying blockchain elements along this digital thread will provide an important foundation to make this possible.
Looking forward
These Web3 use cases demonstrate that blockchain has transformative potential for our global economy. As more and more people use blockchain in their daily lives, more and more use cases will be discovered until Web3 is as common as Web2, improving our world in countless ways.