Blockchain Beyond Finance

What you'll learn

• When Blockchain Actually Helps
• Supply Chain Tracking: The Walmart-IBM Story
• Luxury Authentication and the AURA Consortium
• Digital Identity and Self-Sovereign Identity
• Real Estate, Voting, and Other Applications
• DePIN: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks
• Reality Check: When Not to Use Blockchain
• For Deeper Reading

Key terms

IBM Food Trust

Walmart-IBM blockchain initiative for food supply chain tracking. Pilot started 2016 with mango shipments; moved to production deployment in 2018 on Hyperledger Fabric. Reduced mango trace from approximately 7 days to 2.2 seconds.

Hyperledger Fabric

A permissioned blockchain framework hosted by the Linux Foundation. Used for the IBM Food Trust and many other enterprise blockchain deployments where participants are known organizations rather than open public participants.

AURA Blockchain Consortium

Luxury goods authentication blockchain founded by LVMH in 2019 with ConsenSys and Microsoft Azure. Members include LVMH, Prada, Cartier (Richemont), OTB, and Mercedes-Benz.

Self-sovereign identity (SSI)

A model where individuals control their own identity credentials in personal wallets and share only what is needed for each interaction, rather than relying on centralized identity databases.

Decentralized Identifier (DID)

A W3C standard for blockchain-based identifiers that allow individuals to control their own identity without depending on a central authority.

DePIN

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks — projects that use crypto tokens to bootstrap real-world infrastructure (wireless networks, mapping, computing). The sector reached an estimated $50B+ market size in 2024 with 13M+ devices contributing daily.

Helium

Decentralized wireless network for IoT and 5G coverage. Reported approximately $24 million in network revenue in 2024. HIP-138 consolidates rewards across the network's subnetworks.

Hivemapper

Decentralized mapping network where drivers contribute road imagery via dashcams, earning HONEY tokens. Reported approximately $18 million in revenue in 2024. MIP-19 raised Map Credit prices in January 2025.

DIMO

Connected vehicle data network with 50,000+ vehicles tracked as of 2024. Vehicle owners earn tokens for sharing data with their permission; companies pay for data access.

Tokenization (real-world)

Representing ownership of physical assets — like real estate, art, or commodities — as digital tokens on a blockchain, enabling fractional ownership and faster settlement. Covered in more depth in the Future module.

Permissioned blockchain

A blockchain where participation is restricted to approved parties, in contrast to public blockchains like Ethereum where anyone can participate. Most successful enterprise blockchain deployments use permissioned designs.