This chapter's goal is to assess blockchain technology's potential, current condition, and how some aspects of this revolutionary creation could change how “business as usual” is done across various industries. This study unifies the theoretical background of a profusion of research articles published in highly regarded scientific journals over the past 10 years, as well as some findings, in order to streamline the review and cover the rapidly growing blockchain domain. The researcher suggests a thorough classification of blockchain-enabled applications covering a range of industries, including supply chain, business, health, IoT, privacy, data management, and others based on a structured, systematic review and thematic content analysis of the current literature. It also draws attention to important themes, patterns, and fresh study opportunities along with the defects in the previously disclosed information, namely the limits of the blockchain technology and how these constraints affect businesses as well as other sectors of the economy.
TopIntroduction
Bitcoin's mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, proposed the blockchain technology, a distributed peer-to-peer linked-structure, about a decade ago to address the issues of double spending and transaction order (Nakamoto, 2008). Bitcoin arranges transactions and collects them into blocks of a fixed size and a common timestamp. Each block in a blockchain includes a hash of the prior block, and it is the job of the network's nodes to ensure that the blocks are linked in chronological order. Since all transactions are recorded in this immutable ledger, it can be verified by any interested party.
Since apps and transactions that previously require centralized architectures or trusted third parties to verify them can now operate in a decentralized manner with the same level of confidence, blockchains have caused significant disruptions to established business operations. Transparency, resilience, auditability, and security are just some of the benefits you'll enjoy thanks to blockchain's built-in qualities. A blockchain is similar to a distributed database, except that the committed blocks are permanent and appear as a list in chronological order. It's easy to see how this would be perfect for the financial industry, as institutions like banks could work together under a single blockchain to expedite their clients' transactions. As a result, blockchain enables auditing of transactions, which provides an additional layer of transparency. Businesses are investing in this technology because they believe it will allow them to create decentralized architectures with reduced transaction costs and improved security and transparency (Bracamonte, 2017).
For this reason, blockchains are more than just a passing fad. The significance of blockchain is demonstrated by the fact that there are already more than 1900 different cryptocurrencies. Due to the diversity of bitcoin use cases, rapid expansion like this could soon lead to incompatibilities. blockchain technology is finding applications beyond cryptocurrency, with Smart Contracts playing a pivotal part in this expansion. Therefore, a SC is an agreement between parties in which the conditions are automatically enforced even while the parties do not trust each other. In this sense, SCs are blockchain-specific scripts that are executed and stored in the blockchain without requiring a central authority. More complicated processes and interactions are made possible by blockchain-based systems that support SCs, thus establishing a new paradigm with practically infinite uses.
Therefore, the importance of blockchain technology is rising. Nearly a third of C-suite executives report either contemplating or actively use blockchain technology (IBM, 2017). Researchers and developers are already familiar with the new technology's potential and are investigating its uses in a wide variety of fields. There are three distinct generations of blockchains, all defined by their target demographic. There is Blockchain 1.0, which includes applications allowing digital cryptocurrency transactions; Blockchain 2.0, which includes SCs and a set of applications extending beyond cryptocurrency transactions; and Blockchain 3.0, which includes applications in areas such as government, health, science, and the Internet of Things (Brandão et al. 2018).
The researcher claim that the state-of-the-art of blockchain-enabled applications has insufficient attention, despite the fact that there are many evaluations of blockchain technology. The breadth and depth of blockchains' potential uses are underexplored. There are certain assessments that zero in on the specific function of blockchain, such as the creation of distributed and data-heavy Internet of Things applications and the decentralized administration of massive amounts of data. Other analyses consider how the blockchain can facilitate trust and decentralization in service systems and P2P networks, as well as its possible security flaws. Additionally, several polls have concentrated on the blockchain's security and privacy features in relation to monetary transactions. The fundamental motivation for this study was the obvious deficiency in the existing literature of a comprehensive and systematic overview of the state-of-the-art blockchain-enabled apps already in use.