As we all know that the financial-tech conversation in our country at the moment is largely revolving around cryptocurrencies, and at the helm of it is an underlying technology called blockchain. Leveraging the marvels of Web 3 and the revolutionary applications of blockchain, one can build businesses, software and protocols for users all around the globe.

With the optimal use of blockchain, it fuels a ‘by the people, for the people’ kind of an arrangement and positive ripple effect, wherein users would have not only security and accountability, but also the unprecedented power to both re-define and implement the rules.

This goes well in sync with the present-day aspiration and calls of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ or ‘Self-Reliant India’ – as the decentralised nature of blockchain opens up a world of possibilities not just in terms of empowering and reducing external dependencies for organisations or conglomerates, but also for the individual citizens – who are undoubtedly the building blocks of our shared economy.

One of the biggest advantages of blockchain protocols is enabling widespread stakeholder participation and community involvement for making decisions vis-à-vis upgrades, creating and validating transactions and proposals, and most importantly, in making processes highly decentralised, secure and trustless, right at their core.

Such superlative and futuristic traits of blockchain have helped a lot of enthusiasts and developers to build Dapps (decentralised applications) that empower a layman user to vote, govern and be a part of crucial decision-making processes.

Beyond money transfer/payments and voting, blockchain tech can be used to register and validate sales and loans, certify a supply chain, claim citizen privileges, prove ownership of digital assets, protect digital identity and copyrights, among many other ways across many sectors or domains.

As of date, apart from fintech and governance, some of the important sectors that are reaping benefits from the use of blockchain include logistics, transport, healthcare, real estate, arts and education. With myriad and ever-expanding use cases which autonomise users, blockchain obviously draws greater adoption as it exercises more user control and trust over a system.

As the technology further enables strong governance mechanisms across the globe, it can further help create accountable public institutions.

We Indians must realise that blockchain has unprecedented potential to improvise and optimise the existing models in various industries.

To cite an example, a lot of manufacturing companies are now revamping and porting their supply chain solutions onto public blockchains, thereby making them more resilient and transparent for sustainable development and growth.