Enterprise blockchain adoption may grow as hybrid use cases evolve

While crypto markets remain volatile, enterprise blockchain adoption is continuing to grow as businesses find new use cases for the technology, according to Daniela Barbosa, general manager of blockchain and identity and Hyperledger executive director at The Linux Foundation.

One of the biggest demands over the past two years has been “hybrid use cases,” Barbosa said. Some businesses are using layer-1 blockchains and permissioned distributed networks to meet business needs, she noted.

Hyperledger is an open source platform, derived from The Linux Foundation, that aims to help traditional industries like finance to use and deploy blockchain technology. It works with almost 150 organizations including crypto-native firms, traditional financial institutions, technology companies and retail businesses. Some of the foundation’s members include JP Morgan, IBM, American Express, CVS Health, Cisco, Visa, ConsenSys, Walmart and T-Mobile.

Businesses find the technology valuable “because they’re building networks, sometimes with competitors or peers, and using a distributed ledger helps facilitate business processes they have,” Barbosa noted.

Businesses can perform instant settlements and transact with privacy by showing third parties that a transaction occurred while omitting the internal details. “Distributed ledgers allow companies and competitors to work together in a trusted environment and still have that privacy element as well,” Barbosa added.

And the technology doesn’t just help big companies, but smaller businesses, too, Barbosa noted.

Supply chains using blockchain technology can benefit anyone from farmers to major businesses, she added.

For example, Food Trust, IBM’s blockchain network that Walmart uses to track food, works in two ways: to help farms get food to market faster and provide traceability on the food, Barbosa said. “That way if there’s an issue with E. coli or egg supplies, that facilitation can be traced back [to the blockchain].”

Hyperledger’s blockchain-based food traceability system also helps Walmart track certificates of authenticity to the blockchain for food products like pork, and its traceability for mangoes went from being a seven-day process to completion in 2.2 seconds, according to the company’s case study.

Other big use cases are growing in the health care and digital identity spaces, Barbosa shared. “We’re seeing a lot of different use cases.”

But in order to gain mainstream adoption, there has to be more trust in the technology and less fear in using the terminology, Barbosa said.

“It’s very hard to get these companies to talk about the technology and that it’s blockchain enabling it because they want to talk about the business value without talking about the technology,” Barbosa said. “A lot of it has to do with how blockchain is perceived in the market, especially with public companies and stockholders, because it’s still associated very closely with crypto.”

But that’s OK, Barbosa thinks. “You go on a website and you never say, ‘It’s really great JavaScript.’ You don’t think that; you just think it’s a great website,” she joked.

Blockchain technology will eventually get to that point, too, where it’s not highlighted but something that enables enterprises under the hood, Barbosa added. Even today, there are instances of blockchain technology being baked quietly into operations for some big brands, like the ones mentioned above.

In general, the hesitancy to touch the crypto space is not limited to big players, but individuals as well. The industry has a long way to go before it’s fully embraced.

In the meantime, blockchain-based technological use cases will continue to bud and bring traditional players into the space, Barbosa said. “The enterprise space is moving slowly but methodically.”