How blockchain is causing a tech evolution

by Lumai Mubanga

When the Internet gained ground and experienced exponential growth and adoption, many countries started experiencing immense benefits from innovation. For the first time, many countries experienced unprecedented communication efficiency when emails, VOIP, Chat rooms and many other innovations took root. One area though of service delivery though that needed to evolve to survive was the postal system. Will blockchain have the same effect on some services?

While some service providers may need to completely overhaul their operations to remain relevant, some service providers outside the financial space have taken advantage of the technology to evolve and provide services outside their initial portfolios.

Facebook and Cryptocurrency

Facebook is not known as a financial service provider, but an advertising platform. However, it has taken advantage of the prevailing innovations to evolve in its service provision portfolio. To this end, Facebook launched its first-ever cryptocurrency known as the Libra. This cryptocurrency is designed to allow Facebook users across the world to make financial transaction online. This is a clear example of service evolution. Of course, Facebook has taken advantage of its billion users to launch a product that its loyal customers will embrace. Could there be anything less that Facebook could do to evolve and leverage on its customer base? However, due to regulatory pressure, Facebook may not launch its own cryptocurrency and may use existing ones. Still, this evolution is a step forward. The main concerns that Libra may promote transactions that will bypass banks, thereby making the banks lose out on their customer base and revenue.

Google and Google coin

Like its counterpart Facebook, the tech giant Google is well known for its advertising business. Mid last year, reports emerged that Google and Amazon were on their way to introduce their own cryptocurrencies. With Google pay already taking centre stages in online payments for in-app and tap-to-pay purchases, Google’s evolution to crypto space is a well thought out strategy.

Why the evolution

These tech giants have advantages to take this evolution head-on. For instance, they have already built trust for millions of their customers. In addition, their wider customer base and brand loyalty can easily help accelerate the drive toward crypto adoption. Further, these companies have a lot of information about their customers. As such, they stand a better chance to offer completive and customer-oriented services that will easily resonate with them. Besides, the range of services they will offer now and in the near future will like to grow over time and evolve even further.

Thus, it could be clearly seen that blockchain has come to stay with more possibilities of affecting more evolutions to more and more existing and startup companies.

More importantly, evolutions in service provisions remain the only safe haven for companies to remain relevant and profitable. With so much at stake, just like the postal services had to evolve, more and more companies are likely to take that route.