Social Impact of Blockchain: The Good and The Bad

Blockchain has many advantages. Yet, there are a few limitations that this technology possesses.

Blockchain technology is spreading across multiple industries like a wildfire. Healthcare, fintech, crypto, energy, app development, cybersecurity, and more industries have found plenty of efficient ways to utilize features of blockchain technology for their benefit. With features like immutability, traceability, and decentralization, among others, blockchain technology is empowering small and large businesses to be technologically smarter. But with that, innovators have also discovered ways of using blockchain for social good.

Furthermore, in this blog, we are throwing some light on the blockchain for social impact. We will try to find and discuss some facts that can guide us on how blockchain technology companies are impacting societies in any way- good or bad. So, if you find this blog interesting, stay with us until the end.

Blockchain technology for social impact - The good part

Before proceeding with the negative side of the social impact of blockchain development, let’s discuss a few key points and facts displaying the goodness of this amazing technology.

Features of the blockchain technology

To understand the actual impact of blockchain trends, let’s understand a few crucial features of blockchain applications in short. Later, we will discuss how these features are empowering blockchain for social good tasks.

• Connectivity- Blockchain is a faster data storage server compared to cloud networks that are traditional. Thus, it also enables a smooth and faster transferring of the data from one point to another. From the connectivity perspective, blockchain is the reason behind expanding virtual services into more markets and onboarding societies for tasks such as remote education, digital payments, and more.
• Immutability- This feature of blockchain plays a crucial role in building trust over the technology. Any entry done on the blockchain server can not be altered or deleted. To change the behavior of a result or process, new entries will have to come into existence and with each entry, timestamp, user stamp, and such other information are provided. From the perspective of security, immutability makes cyber threats weaker.
• Scope to innovate- Blockchain has seen many developments since its inception. For instance, crypto mining has helped many in improving their financial backgrounds and also made the investment process easier for common investors. With the growing development of Proof-of-Stake consensus, mining is also becoming more and more accessible to people.

Use cases of blockchain for social impact

Now, to understand how the future of blockchain will impact societies for good, let’s have a look into some of the real use cases.

1. Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra partnership

One of the best examples for the blockchain for social impact, Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra partnership came into existence to eliminate “The Child Hunger” problem in India. Combined with IoT and AI, blockchain allowed collaboration between both organizations to create a seamless “Million Meals” network. Now, this innovative technology by Accenture Labs helped Akshaya Patra in producing more meals while also increasing the number of meals served to children in India.

2. Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) have become a sensation today across the world. With blockchain, NFTs have come out as a medium for creators to keep their content safe from being misused, stolen, and more. NFTs are always unique and can not be copied, modified, or replaced.

For sellers, they can convert their art pieces into these tokens and sell them. NFTs also allow craters to enable features so that every time their art is sold from one person to another, they get a percentage as the commission. With the help of blockchain, NFTs got a secured server that made their existence possible and it is now helping art creators in getting the worth that they deserve.

Problems with the blockchain technology

Now, to understand the blockchain for social impacts which are negative, let’s look at the problems that the technology brings with it.

• Excess energy consumption

Blockchain is a demanding technology that requires huge amounts of computing power. And to support that demand, hardware consuming a lot of electricity is used. Blockchain’s hardware also requires a huge amount of cooling power apart from the electricity, and as it’s a database server, it needs a continuous flow of electricity as well. Also, as the size of data stored on the blockchain server grows, the requirement of computing power and other hardware increases in parallel as well.

• Hard to regulate

Another major issue with blockchain is that the technology is hard to regulate. Criminals often use cryptos such as Bitcoins to make transactions across blockchain servers as users are provided with unanimous user IDs that are very hard to trace. Moreover, the server’s decentralized nature makes it difficult for governments to control, access, or track culprits.

To conclude - Blockchain is trying to overcome its problems

Even though the technology is still developing, and has some negative aspects, the blockchain technology future clearly looks more promising. For instance, as the demand for high computing power is a problem today, to solve that, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) has already been invented. The technology is supporting cryptos such as ADT, SOL, ATOM, and more. On top of that, it is also making crypto mining more accessible even for enthusiasts who do not have access to heavy hardware and computing resources.

In the end, hopefully, this blog helped you in understanding why blockchain is good or bad for society today and in the future. There are plenty more blogs as well based on topics such as AI, business trends, and app development trends among others that you can read for more in-depth information from the technology world. We will soon see you with a new blog. Until then, Goodbye!