5 Blockchain Projects Helping Push Global Distributed Ledger Technology Adoption

These are the 5 Projects That Truly Promote Blockchain Adoption

When it comes to new technologies, their quality is often judged by the amount of adoption that they face. The project is only worth if people are willing to use it. When we take a look at the blockchain technology, it has been around for years now, but only recently it started receiving the attention it deserves.

The blockchain technology flourished in the last two years the most, ever since people started noticing that its applications and potential use cases include far more than cryptocurrencies. Even this took a while because cryptos are based on the blockchain tech, and many of them failed before they could ever reach proper attention. However, this doesn't mean that they will never improve and make an astounding comeback.

So, with that in mind, we are now going to review some of the biggest blockchain projects. These are the ones that are expected to reach greatness, and lead the modern world to a new, blockchain-based period in our technological advancement.

Top 5 Blockchain Projects Of Today

1. OmiseGo

OmiseGo is a blockchain project launched by Omise, one of the biggest and most popular payment providers. The project's mission is to eliminate the need for bank accounts, which can only happen if there is an alternative method of making payments. With the ability to store their money on the blockchain, people won't need banks with their fees and long and complicated processes, and this is what OmiseGo wants to accomplish.

The project would allow users to access their money via smartphones and ATMs, while Omise's global exchange will allow trading of all currencies, whether fiat, crypto, or even bonus points. The fees would still exist, but they would be minimal, and far lower than those imposed by the banks. For example, VISA's fees are at around 1% – 1.5%, while OmiseGo, or OMG, would only charge 0.5% to 1%.

The design of OMG shows that it will be the implementation of Ethereum's second layer called Plasma. Plasma can achieve several millions of transactions each second, and it was built specifically for such a purpose since it didn't even exist when OMG was conceived.

The team behind the OMG Network wanted to ensure liquidity from the start, which is why they bought several exchanges. The goal is to increase interest in staking, which would lead to block validation and provide rewards in form of fees in return. This is how the process will remain decentralized, and why it has a fair chance to succeed in the future.

2. NANO

NANO is one of the so-called DAG (Directed Acylic Graph) currencies, which are an even cheaper category of the blockchain tech. Their main feature is that each user can validate its own transactions. That means that there is no need for rewards, and thus no need for fees.

As a result, NANO is a fee-less currency. It has an architecture that allows each of its users to have their own block, with their own balance on it. The balance receives an update after each transaction, and each transaction is verified by the user's own computing power, and it only requires 0.112 W per transaction. This is extremely eco-friendly, especially when compared to BTC transactions, that require 950 kW each.

NANO is also used a lot in poor countries like Venezuela, which is struggling with hyperinflation. Due to the fact that their fiat currency loses value on a daily basis, the citizens of this country are already well-acquainted with cryptos. Even though NANO is much cheaper and easier to handle, Bitcoin still leads as the most popular crypto in Venezuela. However, NANO community continues to grow, and that situation might change at some point in the future.

3. SocialGood Project

The blockchain technology came as a way to help the society, and to this day, it did not forget that goal. However, new and better projects dedicated to this goal appear all the time, and SocialGood is one of the best ones right now. It incentivizes holding onto the purchased coins, and the system rewards users by giving cash back whenever they buy something from merchants within its ecosystem. Holding on to your coins for longer periods of time will increase the rate of cashback, and so the longer you have the coins, the more you earn when you spend them.

It started as a spin-off project of Ayumi Trust Group, a fintech firm from 2005. It has been registered with Japanese FSA, it currently targets one of the largest wealthy-class platforms in Japan, and it often collaborates with some of the biggest businesses in the world, including carmakers like the BMW.

The project follows the ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) principles, and it is becoming increasingly popular in the investment industry. It is completely decentralized, and it allows various businesses to list their own services and to participate in the project's ecosystem.

4. IOTA

IOTA is a project that many of you have probably already heard of. It focuses on uniting the IoT (Internet of Things) devices with a common protocol. These are the devices such as Amazon Alexa, smart homes, autonomous cars, and alike. Currently, there are over 1.2 billion IoT devices on the market, and some estimations claim that this number will reach 31 billion by 2020.

However, all of them will be depending on a single project to unite them and connect them all with each other, and IOTA is one of the best candidates for this position. IOTA is actually another one of the DAG currencies, which we mentioned earlier. It has no fees, and it is created to improve the IoT market.

It is part of the IOTA Foundation, which is in turn part of The Trusted IoT Alliance. IOTA can revolutionize the way we use modern technology, especially the self-driving cars. Through IOTA, all updates to IoT devices' systems will arrive over-the-air, which will eliminate the need for manual software updates.

IOTA has already partnered with several carmakers in an attempt to help them bring self-driving cars to perfection. Future plans also include its use for creating and backing the entire smart cities. There are multiple projects that are already making plans on how to make them and organize them, and most of them see IOTA as the perfect partner for these plans.

5. POWR

Finally, we arrive at the last project on this list, which is POWR. POWR is a project that revolves around the energy market. The awareness regarding the pollution has spiked really hard in the last decade, and especially in the last few years. The consumer demand increases as more and more people start to turn towards clean energy, and one of the new problems that have emerged include the non-optimal distribution of this energy.

This is where the blockchain technology comes in, as it has a potential to solve the issue. Through blockchain, the middleman can be completely eliminated, and this is something that can be applied to the energy market as well. The producers of energy will be able to sell the energy directly to their consumers, which would mean lower energy prices. Not to mention that this would all be clean energy, like solar or wind energy. That way, there would be no middleman that would get rich by increasing the prices of power and damage you, while the producers get the bare minimum.

POWR came as a method of distributing this energy in a fair and proper way, and it has been doing just that ever since 2016. It is used in North America, Thailand, Japan, and even in Australia. The energy market is getting really big, and it continues to grow constantly, thanks to the blockchain tech. IBM's Vice President, Stephen Callahan, even commented on this, stating that blockchain does for energy and utility industry the same thing that the internet itself did for communication.

Conclusion

Obviously, the use of the blockchain technology reaches far beyond the support of cryptocurrencies alone. The tech has already found numerous use cases, and new ones are being invented almost on a daily basis. These are only a few examples of what this technology can achieve, and that is why it is important for its development to continue and grow.

The increase in awareness is the key since it will lead to more adoption. And, while there are a lot of scams out there, there are just as many real projects that can make the world a better place. So, while it is important to proceed with support for this technology, it is also important to do so with caution.