8 Key Use Cases of Blockchain in Business

How Blockchain Is Transforming Traditional Industries with Real-World Applications

Blockchain is no longer just a buzzword confined to the world of cryptocurrencies. It has steadily evolved into a mature technology with real-world business applications, playing a growing role in the digital transformation strategies of companies across industries.

Once viewed as a niche innovation, blockchain is now being adopted by both large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to improve operational efficiency, enhance trust, and modernize legacy systems. Its core features - immutability, decentralization, transparency, and cryptographic security - make it a powerful tool for addressing some of the most persistent challenges in traditional business environments.

From enhancing supply chain traceability to automating compliance, blockchain is providing tangible value across sectors like finance, manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare. Below, we explore eight concrete use cases of blockchain technology that can deliver measurable benefits to traditional companies.

1. Stablecoin Payments and The Transformation of Finance

According to the EY CB Institutional Survey, stablecoins are attracting significant interest among institutions. As many as 84% of surveyed institutions either already use stablecoins or express interest in using them.

Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of fiat currencies, such as the US dollar. Unlike bitcoin, their exchange rate does not fluctuate much, which makes them an attractive means of payment for companies and institutions.

With their help, it is possible to make international transfers in minutes, 24/7, without the need to involve intermediary banks. Companies using stablecoins - such as USDC, USDT or PayPal USD - can transfer funds between partners, branches or suppliers simply, quickly and cheaply. Visa and Mastercard are already testing cross-border settlements using them.

Stablecoins can also be an element of automatic settlements in smart contracts. This means that, for example, when a delivery condition is met, the system automatically pays the contractor - without the need for manual approval of invoices or involvement of the accounting department.

For companies, these are real benefits:

• shorter settlement time,
• less exchange rate risk (payment with stablecoin USD does not require currency conversion),
• no intermediaries = lower fees.

2. Supply Chain and Logistics

Provenance tracking is a natural fit for blockchain. In complex supply chains (food, pharmaceuticals, luxury goods), a blockchain ledger can record each handoff of a product, creating an immutable record of origin, handling, and ownership.

This transparency helps companies and regulators quickly verify authenticity and safety. A well-known example is Walmart’s food supply chain project: by tracking produce on IBM’s Food Trust blockchain, Walmart cut the time to trace a package of mangoes from 7 days to 2.2 seconds.

This near-instant traceability enables faster recalls during contamination issues and reduces waste, directly improving food safety and saving costs.

3. Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) is a cryptographic mechanism to confirm that something is true - without revealing details.

With ZKP:

• a customer can prove that he or she is at least 18 years old without showing his or her date of birth,
• a company can prove to the regulator that it has met its capital requirement without showing its entire balance sheet,
• the system can confirm the identity of an employee without revealing his HR data.

For companies, this means a revolution in the areas of compliance, privacy and verification automation.

Degen House is a technology partner specializing in building secure, scalable, and privacy-focused blockchain solutions. With deep expertise in zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and privacy-preserving technologies, we have partnered with some of the most advanced projects in the Web3 space, including Starknet, Scroll, Aleph Zero, Partisia Blockchain, and Vlayer.

4. Tokenization of Real World Assets (RWA)

The tokenization of RWA represents a paradigm shift in the approach to creating assets designed for our digital age. This is confirmed by key financial players entering the brand market, along with set-aside innovators. All this is confirmed by the interest of global investors and growing volumes. The market for tokenized assets will grow alongside traditional finance, reducing their interest in the digital economy and decentralized finance.

Tokenized assets also increase liquidity for investors – a tokenized private equity fund share could potentially be traded on secondary markets instead of remaining locked in for years. Industry-wide, momentum is growing: more than $200M of tokenized bonds and equities are already live on public blockchains, and exchanges from Switzerland to Singapore have begun listing tokenized securities.

5. Identity Verification: Digital identity

With blockchain-based identity (often called self-sovereign identity), individuals and companies can hold verifiable digital credentials (IDs, certificates, licenses) in an encrypted wallet, and only share them with others as needed. The blockchain stores proofs of these credentials (not the sensitive data itself) to allow instant verification of authenticity. This means an individual could prove “I am over 21” or “I am a certified CPA” to a service without exposing all details of their ID. According to IBM, with blockchain, identity information can be made auditable, traceable and verifiable in seconds, while users retain control over what data to share.

6. Durable Medium in Banking and Finance

Banks and financial institutions must provide customers with access to documents in a way that is durable, auditable and compliant with regulations (e.g., MIFID II).

Instead of using local servers, companies can publish documents on the blockchain (or hashes of them), guaranteeing immutability, accessibility and transparency.

Benefits:

• regulatory compliance,
• automatic proof of delivery,
• no cost of maintaining your own archiving infrastructure.

Alior Bank in Poland has deployed public Ethereum blockchain to provide a persistent medium for documents, guaranteeing their inalterability and durability. The bank aimed to provide a reliable persistent medium in the form of documents visible in the ledger blockchain and to move to a paperless system. Nextrope provided an API-based service in a SaaS model, enabling Alior Bank to publish transactions on the public Ethereum network, providing a transparent and resilient persistent medium. The implementation was the first of its kind in the Polish banking sector.

7. Custom Loyalty Programs

As blockchain technology continues to mature, so too do the opportunities for businesses to rethink how they connect with customers. Tokenized loyalty programs bring together transparency, ownership, interoperability, and personalization—creating a next-generation loyalty experience that is more valuable for both brands and their audiences.

Instead of offering generic discounts, companies can issue loyalty tokens that unlock customized benefits tailored to individual customer preferences. These tokens could grant early access to new product releases, VIP event invitations, or exclusive offers—helping brands create more meaningful, personalized engagement.

Using advanced blockchain standards like ERC-1155, which supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens in a single smart contract, businesses can introduce multi-level loyalty systems. Each token type could represent a different status tier or benefit level, enabling more nuanced and flexible program structures.

One of the key advantages of tokenized rewards is customer ownership. Tokens can be stored in digital wallets and, unless restricted by the issuer (using compliance-focused standards like ERC-1400 or ERC-3643), may be freely transferred or traded. This creates a more open, user-centric loyalty system where value isn’t locked into a single account or platform.

In more advanced setups, loyalty tokens can be integrated into Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystems. This allows customers to stake tokens to earn yields, swap them for other digital assets, or even use them in decentralized applications (dApps). This brings liquidity and real utility to what was once a static points system.

(Research Report Tokenization Standards: The Missing Link for Institutional Adoption, Nethermind & PwC Germany, March 2025)

8. ARCHIV3 - Blockchain as a Decentralized Database for Archiving

ARCHIV3, launched by Bank Pekao S.A. and Degen House, is a unique combination of blockchain technology and digital cultural heritage. The goal was to permanently secure selected works of art from the bank's collection through modern archiving methods.

How ARCHIV3 works:

• the works of art were scanned in high resolution,
• digital copies were stored on the IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) network - a decentralized data storage system,
• a NFT (non-fungible token) was created for each artwork, which contains metadata and a reference to the file's location on the IPFS,
• the tokens were stored on the Aleph Zero blockchain, ensuring full invertibility, transparency and decentralized archiving.

This ensures that each copy of a work not only has a digital counterpart, but also a guarantee of integrity: it is impossible to substitute a file without changing its IPFS address and hash value. The NFT acts as a digital certificate of authenticity and the blockchain as an immutable ledger of the works' history.

This innovative solution:

• protects cultural heritage using decentralized technologies,
• enables future generations to verify the authenticity of records,
• provides inspiration for public institutions, archives and museums looking for new forms of securing digital assets.

ARCHIV3 is an excellent example of the use of blockchain beyond finance - for educational, cultural and social purposes. It demonstrates that the technology can support responsible management of digital memory in the long term.

Summary

Blockchain and tokenization are no longer experimental concepts on the fringe – they are here and now, delivering tangible value in business settings. From speeding up global payments and securing supply chains to automating compliance and transforming asset management, these technologies are enabling more efficient, transparent, and inclusive business processes. The ARCHIV3 case study illustrates that even conservative organizations can innovate by applying blockchain in creative ways aligned with their strategy. For executives, the key takeaway is that tokenization and enterprise blockchain solutions can unlock new opportunities, whether it’s accessing new investor pools, building customer trust through transparency, or creating novel products that differentiate your brand. In a world where data integrity, security, and agility are paramount, tokenization offers a practical tool to represent and transfer value with confidence.

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