Use of cryptocurrencies in various business spheres: examples of successful integration
The use of cryptocurrencies in business offers many advantages due to the high speed of transaction processing and the absence of intermediaries, which simplifies the acquiring process and reduces costs.
Statistics confirm these words: according to Bitpay research for 2019, companies worldwide made transactions in crypto for more than $1 billion. Low costs, small fraud risks in payments, and other advantages of cryptocurrencies contribute to popularizing their use in real business. In the article, we will give examples of successful integration of crypto projects in various Web2-spheres.
Solana and DMCC
In October 2023, the Solana project team, one of the top five blockchain projects by capitalization (almost $40 billion), became an ecosystem partner of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the largest free economic zone in the UAE.
The DMCC is a multi-commodities exchange spread over 200 hectares and home to 20,000 businesses. Solana Foundation, in partnership with Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, will provide business development support to partner companies in the economic zone and expand its grant program.
Solana is one of the highest-performing blockchain networks in the crypto industry, with a throughput of up to 65,000 transactions per second — more than Visa and Mastercard. In addition, Solana ranks 5th among all blockchains regarding users, with more than 5.6 million in 2023, behind only Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin, and Arbitrum. Analysts at VanEck predict that Solana will become the third-largest crypto project in the industry by capitalization as early as 2024.
Polygon and AWS
Polygon is the current leading Tier 2 solution for scaling Ethereum in terms of capitalization and number of users and ecosystem partners. Polygon ranks 14th among all cryptocurrencies in capitalization, surpassing $7.3 billion. Polygon ranks second to Ethereum in terms of users by a slight margin: 15.24 million vs. 15.4 million.
In November 2023, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will connect the Polygon network to its Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) service to provide its customers with access to public and private blockchains and to facilitate the development of scalable Web3 applications and games. In addition, developers can use Polygon's AMB Access to issue their digital assets. In addition to Polygon, AWS has also partnered with Solana.
The Polygon team has managed to partner with many large and world-renowned companies, such as:
- Walt Disney,
- Starbucks,
- Google Cloud,
- Adidas,
- Samsung,
- Visa,
- Adobe,
- JPMorgan,
- Mercedes Benz, and many others.
Worldcoin and Telegram
Telegram is one of the most popular messengers in the world, with more than 800 million users worldwide. In December 2023, the Worldcoin project announced integration with Telegram messenger and other popular services such as Reddit, Shopify, Minecraft, and Mercado Libre. In addition, the World 2.0 protocol, responsible for user verification in the Worldcoin ecosystem, was already integrated into Discord and Talent Protocol.
Worldcoin is a blockchain project for digital identification founded by Sam Altman, the creator of the world's most popular chatbot, ChatGPT. Integrating the Worldcoin protocol will allow users to simplify the identification process in popular services: they will only need to confirm their personal data through a digital passport instead of going through identity verification anew each time.
Chainlink and SWIFT
Chainlink is a leading solution in the crypto industry that provides decentralized oracles for exchanging data between blockchains. The Chainlink protocol is ranked 13th in CoinMarketCap's ranking of all cryptocurrencies, with a capitalization of about $8 billion.
In June 2023, the Chainlink team partnered with SWIFT, an international bank transfer system, to connect traditional banks to blockchains. Citi, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group are among the well-known banks interested in this, but the list does not stop there. In SWIFT, such a step is explained by the fact that the use of blockchain will improve the efficiency of payments, reduce costs, and attract new investors by simplifying settlement processes.
Chainlink will act as a bridge between financial institutions and public and private blockchains using an interconnection protocol in this collaboration.
Finschia and Sega
Singapore-based Sega, one of the world's best-known video game and console makers, has begun working with blockchain project Finschia and plans to release Web3 games based on the network shortly.
In 2022, Sega already released the P2E game Sangokushi Taisen on the Oasis blockchain. However, the company then decided to stop releasing Web3 games. Still, it changed its mind again in October 2023, which was probably influenced by the growing interest of users in blockchain games and the crypto industry in general.
Finschia is a general-purpose public blockchain created by well-known messenger developer LINE Corp for everyday use. Even though the project is little known worldwide, even among experienced crypts, Finschia is among the top 200 cryptocurrencies by capitalization, which is approximately $210 million.
What's next?
Data from crypto-processing companies points to a growing demand for cryptocurrency payments. For example, CoinGate said in its report that it processed more than 1.29 million crypto payments in 2023, up 40% from a year earlier.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Tether have long been used for payments (directly or through third-party services), including by large companies:
- Amazon,
- Microsoft,
- Tesla,
- Twitch,
- Gucci,
- Shopify and others.
We are seeing more and more extensive and globally recognized companies integrating blockchain-based solutions, and this trend is likely to continue, fueling the growth and development of the crypto industry.
