The financial industry is quickly becoming a hotbed for the rise of blockchain technology in the digital sphere today. Understanding what is an enterprise blockchain is essential as businesses across industries leverage it for improved efficiency and security.
Blockchain technology is facilitating the decentralization and peer-to-peer exchange of financial transactions worldwide. The main aim of these technologies is to enable fast global payments.
Smart Contracts evolved with blockchain technology, and its applications started spreading across industries. Blockchain has major potential but is mostly used in the financial system to help with cross-border payments and data security management. Top crypto exchanges make it easy for businesses to store and transfer data securely.
According to a report by Juniper Research, blockchain could be highly cost-effective for banks. Cross-border settlement transactions could save up to US $27 billion, with a maximum reduction of more than 11% by 2030.
So get ready for the best insights and your go-to information for all the important factors regarding the enterprise blockchain. This piece will delve deeper into what is an enterprise blockchain, the different types available, and how they help other businesses.
What Is An Enterprise Blockchain?
An enterprise blockchain is a permissioned blockchain that is useful for improving commercial processes such as tracking supply chains, making and receiving international payments, and securely exchanging digital information within a company and with external partners.
The record is a ledger, ordered chronologically, with encrypted entries (blocks) that become a single data store for the presence of a distributed network.
A key feature of what is an enterprise blockchain lies in its permissioned access, where only vetted users can participate. This is consistent with corporate desire, as businesses can protect sensitive information with the more specific proprietary blockchain networks, unlike the broader public blockchain networks such as Bitcoin.
Enterprise blockchains protect a transaction history and guarantee data integrity with cryptography. Enterprise blockchain technology is already being adopted by many leading global corporations, including Intel, Facebook, IBM, Walmart, and JPMorgan, leveraging it to boost efficiency and security.
Features of an Enterprise Blockchain
Combining these features results in several qualities that we consider reliable and secure from enterprise blockchains. These include:
Immutability: With verified records stored within the enterprise blockchain, no user can modify or tamper these records, making data integrity a given.
Security: The system is advanced with cryptographic encryption and other security measures. It is heavily protected from hacking and fraudulent activities.
Token-Driven Transactions: In all blockchain network transactions and interactions, the token secures the value exchange. Together, these work to offer a strong foundation for enterprise blockchain applications.
Accountability: Each node inside the network with a copy of the history is identified uniquely and held accountable.
Permissioned Access: Blockchain is trusted only by authorized users. Control over who can participate is granted at the discretion of the network owner(s), and access is also given at their leisure.
Scalability: The philosophy of enterprise blockchains is that we can handle more transactions efficiently. This adaptability is made possible partly through their lower degree of decentralization than Bitcoin.
Distributed Architecture: In the decentralized blockchain world, multiple nodes replicate the blockchain ledger and, hence, share information in the decentralized network.
Key Types Of Enterprise Blockchain and Their Applications
To answer this question, what is an enterprise blockchain it is also important to know the main types of enterprise blockchains. Enterprise blockchains are categorized into three distinct types, each with varying decentralization and security features. The kind of blockchain a business selects depends on its specific needs and operational requirements.
We categorize the enterprise blockchains into three distinct types, each with a higher or lower decentralization and added security features. What kind of blockchain you select depends on a business’s specific needs and operations. Below are the three primary types:
1. Private Blockchain
Closed networks that only allow access to users with specific authorizations based on a central entity are how private blockchains are run. However, these blockchains depend on a single node for transaction verification and are vulnerable to attack if the node itself is compromised. Although they are available as a private blockchain, the call has much to prove.
Since transaction verification speeds improve with the limitation of the number of participants in the network, scalability also increases. Private blockchain networks enable businesses to carry out operations securely without the risk of revealing their sensitive information to the public.
2. Hybrid Blockchain
Hybrid blockchains combine the features of private and public blockchains without any loss but with advantages. This type of blockchain enables businesses to make some inner blockchain areas private and others public.
Hybrid blockchains provide data integrity through data modification that requires the approval of other nodes. They also offer better security, as consensus is distributed over all nodes in the network, making unauthorized changes more difficult.
3. Consortium Blockchain
Public and consortium blockchains are quite similar, decentralized, and peer-to-peer. No single entity has control over the system, so the idea is that each network participant has a local copy of the distributed ledger, and every transaction is added to every ledger.
Unlike a fully private blockchain, a consortium blockchain is governed by a group, not a single organization. This group (sometimes composed of several organizations working together to implement a security, reliability, and efficiency communication platform) provides access to the network to each other.
The Importance of Enterprise Blockchain for Businesses
The benefits of enterprise blockchain technology have made it one of the best business tools. Here are the key reasons why companies are adopting enterprise blockchain solutions:
1. Enhances Transparency
Enterprise blockchain works as a distributed ledger to ensure transaction consistency on all the network’s nodes. It means the data is available to everyone, enhancing transparency and drastically reducing the time needed for verification processes.
2. Improves Efficiency
Enterprise blockchain solutions simplify data handling and eliminate multiple operations. The technology removes much of the need for intermediaries in many processes, and transactions can be executed faster and more efficiently. Enterprise blockchain also guarantees data accuracy across the entire system, as opposed to across smaller groups of a central computing platform.
3. Offers Superior Security
Blockchain technology records data in a secure public record, creating pages of encrypted, immutable records that refer back to previous transactions. This makes data tampering nearly impossible. In addition, information is stored on a decentralized network of computers so that it can only be modified with the consent of all participants, adding extra security to the mix.
4. Enables Automation
By using smart contracts, businesses can outsource agreement verification automatically. Self-executing contracts remove human intervention and require as little involvement as possible from third parties. Thanks to smart contracts, companies can make payments once certain conditions are met, increasing operations efficiency.
Top Blockchain Solutions Platforms for Enterprise
When businesses use blockchain technology or discover its application in innovative ways, a blockchain platform is the key foundation to building a unique blockchain application.
In short, these platforms help enterprise blockchain developers/service providers design enterprise blockchain solutions that meet industry-specific needs.
Thus, companies have many choices when developing a blockchain platform, as they have to choose a solution that suits their particular aims. We explore below some of the most renowned blockchain platforms, which can confidently be taken as offering reliable and scalable solutions for enterprise applications.
1. Ethereum
Ethereum is an open-source, universal blockchain platform for enterprise operations. It supports smooth operation, contract automation, and faster data exchange between various industries in payments.
Businesses can adopt two types of Ethereum networks: permissioned, Private Ethereum, and permissionless, Mainnet Ethereum. Non-lead corporations like Coca-Cola, Taco Bell, Walmart, and Nike utilize Ethereum to make operations easier and more efficient.
2. Ripple
Ripple, a renowned financial services business, offers enterprise blockchain solutions for faster, more transparent, and cheaper transactions. It helps customers buy crypto assets, make rapid payments, manage treasury, and find new revenue streams.
Ripple’s cross-border payment technology lets institutions pay globally without pre-funding destination marketplaces. This solution accelerates payment delivery, expands market reach, tracks real-time payments, and allows on-demand payments.
Ripple’s Liquidity Hub streamlines business digital asset buying, selling, and holding. The technology collects liquidity pools, optimizes pricing, and lets organizations manage digital assets via an API.
3. IBM Blockchain
With an enterprise-ready, fully integrated platform, IBM Blockchain simplifies multi-institutional business network development, governance, and management.
The platform’s main benefits are optimizing multi-party workflows, using trustworthy and permissioned data, and improving value chain performance with blockchain-based apps.
Improved shared procedures, accountability, dispute reduction, and reconciliation automation can boost efficiency for firms.
IBM Blockchain may enhance brand confidence and sales through smart contracts that validate product authenticity. Asset tokenization lets organizations explore new markets.
4. Quorum
Quorum, an open-source blockchain platform, is suited for the performance-driven, configurable applications businesses need. Its flexibility in industries such as real estate, supply chain management, and digital currency makes it the perfect choice for investment.
Quorum lets developers bridge the gap between traditional applications and the rich features found in blockchain tech by allowing organizations to run on either a private permissioned network or the public Ethereum Mainnet. This will enable them to create tailored blockchain applications to suit enterprise requirements.
5. Corda
Corda is an open-source, consortium-based blockchain platform known for its functionality in supporting Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) applications. It is a permissioned network that provides secure, high-speed transactions.
Corda accomplishes this by leveraging asynchronous byzantine fault tolerance (ABFT) to provide secure process agreements between private networks. Its smart contract feature makes exchanging contracts and digital documents easy. HSBC and Bank of America are notable adopters of Corda.
6. Hyperledger
A modular blockchain platform, Hyperledger provides an open-source framework to build strong business-grade ecosystems. It eliminates inefficiencies, builds trust, works on enhancing workflows, and provides transparency.
Hyperledger guarantees security and reliability with peer-to-peer transactions while minimizing intermediary costs. Hyperledger is used by large corporations like Intel and SAP Ariba to optimize their operations.
Key Industries Adopting Enterprise Blockchain Technology
As you got the detailed briefing on what is an enterprise blockchain, here are some notable industries in which you can use it. However, numerous sectors are adopting enterprise blockchain because the features are being used uniquely, and industry-specific problems are being addressed meaningfully.
1. Supply Chain and Logistics
In supply chain management, blockchain adds transparency and traceability to the iteration from creation to end consumer. It helps to verify product authenticity and improve logistics, helping make supply chains more efficient and trustworthy.
2. Healthcare
Healthcare organizations use blockchain to manage patient data securely and efficiently. With this technology, healthcare providers can confidently share their data seamlessly and securely, providing more skilled patient care and a stronger basis for medical research.
3. Finance and Banking
Blockchain technology is used in finance and banking to facilitate secure and efficient transactions, trade finance, and fraud prevention. This technology speeds up and simplifies financial operations, and it is also a reliable and safe platform for recording and verifying financial activities.
