Let's see some of the popular use cases for permissioned blockchains. It will help us to understand what enterprises can use permissioned blockchains for and what use cases are valid for permissioned blockchains.
Everledger is a digital registry for diamonds powered by blockchain. It's an example of supply chain management on blockchain. Blockchain was used because, in blockchain, records are immutable. Everledger uses more than 40 features, including color and clarity, to create a diamond's ID. When this information is placed on blockchain, this information becomes a certificate chronicling the jewel's ownership, from mine to ring. Everledger has digitized more than a million diamonds and partnered with firms including Barclays. Participants in the blockchain network, such as merchants, banks, and insurers, can verify if a diamond is legitimate. Everledger is built on the Hyperledger Fabric platform. In the future, they are also planning to add other precious goods to their blockchain.
Let's take an example scenerio and see how blockchain helps in this use case. Alice purchases a diamond, insures it, and registers it on the Everledger blockchain. Next, she loses the diamond and reports it as stolen. The insurance company then compensates her for the loss. Finally, Bob the thief attempts to sell the stolen diamond to Eve the jeweller. She requests verification from Everledger and finds out that it's a stolen diamond. The insurance company is notified about the stolen diamond and they take possession of it.
Walmart's food tracking use case is a combination of blockchain and IoT to make a food product's history transparent and traceable to it's origin. It's an example of supply chain management on blockchain. Walmart's food tracking supply chain management is built on top of the Hyperledger Fabric platform.
A lot of people die every year due to food poisoning. As soon as someone falls sick or dies due to food poisoning the authorities try to track the source of the food and make sure that all the food items from the source that are distributed is suspended from selling and is called back. This saves lives of a lot of people. But the issue is that as every participation in the supply chain have their own ways and processes storing and retrieving information therefore it takes weeks for the authorities to track the source prevent everyone in the chain from selling the food items. Blockchain in combination with the IoT might just be able to solve this problem.
With every party in the supply chain storing and retrieving information, blockchain can fasten the process of finding the source of a food item. The following list shows additional benefits blockchain can add:
- Consumers can see exactly where a food product was harvested.
- Due to panic over food poisoning, people tend to throw away clean food, which increases the amount of food wasted. Blockchain can pinpoint the tainted food, therefore preventing food waste.
- Each step in the supply chain is visible to everybody. Fraudulent food entering the market can be avoided.
- Blockchain can act as evidence that a tainted food items was shipped from a particular producer. Due to this, producers will take care and adhere to safe practices because, if they don't, they will be caught with the evidence.
- Finally every food item gets a story associated with it. This enables users to learn about the food item's history.
IoT technology, such as sensors and RFID tags, enables real-time data to be written on the blockchain as food products pass along the supply chain.
Let's see an example of what the blockchain records in this case, and who the participants are. The participants are farms from where the food originates, factories where they are packed and processed, cargo companies who ship the food, Walmart stores, and so on. The data recorded on the blockchain is farm origin data, the batch number, factory and processing data, expiration dates, storage temperatures, and shipping details.
BenBen is a team of research and development engineers dedicated to building innovative products to improve government technology in Ghana. They developed a digital land registry solution using blockchain for Ghana citizens.
In Ghana, banks don't accept land as a collateral when giving loans. That's because in Ghana, a paper registry system is unenforceable in court. This is preventing millions of people from getting loans.
BenBen provides a top-of-stack land registry and verification platform for financial institutions. This platform captures transactions and verifies the data. BenBen works with financial institutions to update current registries, enable smart transactions, and distribute private keys for clients, to allow automated and trusted property transactions between all parties.
Dubai's housing rental use case is a blockchain application that let's individual expats lease an apartment or renew their housing tenancy contract online within minutes. In Dubai, if an individual wants to take an apartment for rent, then they have to provide KYC documents, cheques as a contract-term guarantee, and create an Ejari (a government contract to legalize the otherwise unpleasant relationship between landlords and tenants in Dubai). In Dubai, most real estate companies rent apartments only if you want to stay for a longer period of time (for instance, at least a year) and to make sure you obey the contract, they ask you to provide postdated cheques as a guarantee, as in Dubai, a cheque bounce is considered a criminal offence. As the process of renting an apartment and renewing the tenancy contract is a cumbersome process for both tenants and real estate companies, Dubai Smart Government (DSG) (a technology arm of Smart Dubai, a city-wide initiative to transform Dubai technologically) launched a mission to make this whole process easier and quicker using blockchain.
This housing rental application was built using Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, and initially seven entities participated in the network. DSG, General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs Dubai (DNRD), wasl, Dubai Land Department, The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Emirates National Bank of Dubai (NBD), and Emirates Islamic (EI) bank were the entities who shared their data on blockchain to make the tenancy contract creation and renewing easier.
Earlier, DSG and the Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) launched DubaiID, which allowed Dubai residents a unified access to all eServices provided by government agencies through one login, and interaction with them via the internet. In this blockchain use case, the tenant had to log in to the real estate's portal using DubaiID; in this case, wasl's tenant must have a DubaiID to login. Once logged in, SDG will write the Emirates ID number into blockchain, and DNRD shares visa and passport information on the blockchain for that tenant. Then, wasl's portal redirects users to submit digital cheques using an Emirates NBD or EI bank account. Once digital cheques are submitted, a request is made to DLD via blockchain to renew or create an Ejari. Finally, once Ejari processing is done, DEWA is notified to activate the water and electricity supply. So basically, the first pilot was for individuals who wanted to lease or renew a wasl apartment and had a bank account with Emirates NBD or EI. Soon, more banks and real estate companies will be added to the network to provide this service for more people in Dubai. In this process, it was ensured that a piece of information can only be seen by the concerned parties.
This use case fits in well as a blockchain use case because a signed immutable ledger was required to store KYC, cheques, and Ejaris and the latter can be proved if the customer or any entity tries to commit fraud. For example, when Emirates NBD issues cheques, if they do it without blockchain and simply make point-to-point API calls, then there is a very good possibility of intentional and unintentional disagreement between ENBD, the tenant, and wasl regarding the existence of a digital cheque or its current status. Therefore, blockchain can be the final tool for reference if any dispute occurs.
Project Ubin is a digital cash-on-ledger project run in partnership between Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and R3, with the participation of Bank of America (BOA) Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, DBS bank, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, J.P. Morgan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Groupb (MUFG), OCBC bank, Singapore Exchange (SGX), and United Overseas Bank (UOB), as well as BCS Information Systems as a technology provider.
The aim of Project Ubin is building a digitalized form of the SGD (Singapore's national currency) on a distributed ledger to bring many benefits to Singapore's financial ecosystem. The benefits would be the same as that of any other cryptocurrencies.
Currently, this application is built using Quorum, but in future it may move to Corda as R3 is one of the partners.
MAS is Singapore's central bank and financial regulatory authority. MAS acts as a settlement agent, operator, and overseer of payment, clearing, and settlement systems in Singapore that focus on safety and efficiency.