- Toshendra Kumar Sharma
- November 01, 2019
Blockchain is one such technology that has the potential to unlock tremendous value in virtually any industry. Some of the early adopters of blockchain are startups, independent software vendors (ISVs), and consortia across global trade, collateral management, syndicated lending, and insurance as they have already built CorDapps and business networks on Corda. The Corda enterprise is credited with being secure and scalable and is known to support the requirements of complex organizations.
Let us now delve deeper into Corda and the top three use cases of Corda in today’s context.
What is Corda?
Corda is an open-source blockchain project designed for businesses. It can be used to build interoperable blockchain networks that help carry out transactions in a private and secure environment. It allows businesses to transact directly with each other through its smart contract technology. It allows businesses to maintain a shared ledger of transactions thus removing the need for involved parties to check their transactions after interacting with each other.
Benefits of Corda
Some of the important benefits offered by Corda are:
- Privacy- Transaction history on the Corda ledger is fully encrypted. Transaction data is not shared with everyone. It is shared only with necessary parties.
- Agile and flexible- Corda is an agile and flexible platform that helps meet business needs. It is easy for organizations to migrate to a Corda enterprise based on the business requirements that arise.
- Interoperability- Businesses must be able to transact directly, securely, and seamlessly. All versions of Corda are free and commercial which means that they can interoperate with each other on a Corda network.
- Open development- It comprises of a robust community of developers working on added features, functionality, and enhancements.
- Open design- Corda, as we know, is an open-source platform. Openness is a constant and notable feature of the R3 heritage as a collaborative group of firms constantly work to deliver blockchain suitable for any business.
Corda – Top 3 Use Cases
Let us now analyze the three use cases of Corda that standout.
1. Construction
Corda is used widely in the construction industry and the properties that make it a perfect fit for this industry are identity, privacy, and workflow properties. It is a common feature in the construction industry for contractors to delegate work to sub-contractors. These sub-contractors will then pass on this work to sub-subcontractors. But it is tedious to share that information with everyone. This is where Corda comes into the picture. In construction, Corda’s ability to finely tune how data is distributed through the network is vital to create blockchain solutions that are suitable for the existing industry players.
Let us understand some of the notable features of Corda that can be used to build a suitable solution.
- As each Corda node has a well-known identity, developers and contractors will have a record of the counterparties they are agreeing to jobs with and transferring funds to.
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Corda lets project participants have a consistent and shared view of the project’s progress.
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The state and contract structures of Corda helps define shared rules and shared data structures about the way in which these data structures will evolve over time. This will prevent disagreements and mistakes between project participants.
- Corda’s need-to-know data distribution prevents external parties from discovering details of the project, even if they are on the same network.
2. Healthcare
One other popular use case of Corda is in the healthcare domain. Nowadays, the healthcare domain is also witnessing increased blockchain innovation at the enterprise level. The need for a blockchain is felt in the healthcare industry as, sometimes, even the best healthcare systems are fragmented. Fragmentation leads to increased fraud, slow claims processing, and poor patient care. Let us now understand the areas where the Corda blockchain is best suited for solving the industry’s pain points.
- Health records exchange- Adopting Electronic Health Records (EHR) software is a top priority for any healthcare system. A Corda blockchain will help systems interact with one another and provide a complete patient profile without the need for an intermediary to provide validation. Each record will be tracked in a time-stamped, auditable, immutable ledger so that it cannot be altered by anyone. Using the Corda blockchain will help increase patient satisfaction as that is one of the important components of value-based care.
- Claims management- Submitting a medical claim to an insurance provider can be an annoying process as it involves redundant paperwork and delayed claims payout. These processes are very long-drawn and do not serve the purpose. This is where the smart contract feature of a blockchain comes to the rescue. Smart contract-based payments help reduce revenue cycle management costs and improve customer satisfaction. Claims can be updated and shared in real-time. Self-executing smart contracts help facilitate auto payouts based on parameters that have been mentioned in original healthcare policies.
3. Finance
The immutability and transparency of a Corda blockchain help empower financial institutions for gaining fast and secure access to up-to-date customer data. This results in increased operational efficiency, reduced labour-intensive data gathering, operational costs, and processing time, and increased trust between institutions. The advantages provided by Corda for financial institutions are:
- Transaction finality.
- Ability to scale.
- Privacy.
- Legally identified parties.
- Developer productivity and enterprise integration.
Conclusion
I hope you have now gained a fair idea about the Corda blockchain and its use cases. To know all about the Corda blockchain and become a Corda expert, check out Blockchain Council.