1.

List and explain 5 applications of Blockchain technology:

Finance and Banking:
○ Financial Institutions and bank no longer look blockchain
technology as a threat to traditional business models, but they
actively look for opportunities in this area by doing research on
innovative blockchain applications.
○ Distributed Ledger Technology, Smart Contracts, Consensus
Mechanism, Community Validation, decentralized currency
commands, etc features like this makes the use of Blockchain in
Banking and Finances inevitable in the future.
Insurance:
○ Traditional insurance policies are processed on paper which means
payments and claims are prone to errors and often require human
supervision.
○ Using smart contracts on a blockchain can provide greater
transparency for customers and insurance providers. Recording all
claims on a blockchain would keep customers from making
duplicate claims for the same event.
Real Estate:
○ Real estate transactions require a ton of paperwork to verify
financial information and ownership and then transfer deeds and
titles to new owners.
○ Using blockchain technology to record real estate transactions can
provide a more secure and accessible means of verifying and
transferring ownership. A proper record of history of ownership
can also be easily maintained.
Securing Personal Information:
○ Keeping your personal records like photos, certificates and other
private information on a centralized system is less secure than
storing it on a public blockchain network.
○ The data stored on the blockchain remains temper-proof and secure
forever.
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens):
○ Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are commonly thought of as ways to
own the rights to digital art. Since the blockchain prevents data
from existing in two places, putting an NFT on the blockchain
guarantees that only a single copy of a piece of digital art exists.
 2. State and explain different aspects of healthcare where Blockchain
technology can be used.
I. Blockchain is an emerging new technology that can be used to provide
solutions to many real world problems including healthcare, which is
considered as one of the basic human rights. Following are some aspects in
healthcare where Blockchain technology can be utilized:
A. Medical Data Security:
-Keeping our important medical data safe and secure is the most popular
blockchain healthcare application at the moment, which isn’t surprising.
-Security is a major issue in the healthcare industry.
Blockchain’s ability to keep an incorruptible, decentralized and
transparent log of all patient data makes it ideal to ensure complete
security of medical data.

B. Blockchain Medical Records:

-The time consuming process of obtaining access to a patient’s medical
records exhausts staff resources and delays patient car. Blockchain based
medical records offer a cure for these ills.
-The decentralized nature of the technology creates one ecosystem of
patient data that can be efficiently referenced by doctors, hospitals,
pharmacists and anyone else involved in treatment.

C. Blockchain and Medical Supply Chain Management:

-How much do we really know about our medicine? Can we be sure it
hasn’t been tampered with? Is it coming from a legitimate supplier?
These questions are the primary concerns of the medical supply chain
-Blockchain has serious implications for pharmaceutical supply chain
management, and its decentralization virtually guarantees full
transparency in the shipping process.

D. Genetic Research:
-Blockchain is a perfect fit for this growing industry as it can safely
house billions of genetic data points.
-It’s even become a marketplace where people can sell their encrypted
genetic information to create a wider database, giving scientists access
to valuable data faster than ever before.
3. Discuss the challenges in using Blockchain as a Solution in the
Healthcare domain:
Despite the many benefits blockchain offers when applied in the real world, the
blockchain-built health system faces several challenges. Some of them are
listed below:
1. Lack of speed:
Speed is very less in Blockchain. The processing speed takes a long,
especially if the network is very large. The confirmations take too long
and as a result information sharing becomes slow.
2. Absence of Central Healthcare:
-Most healthcare systems are distributed. Many hospitals are in multiple
places. So maintaining a blockchain is a very hectic task.
-Without a streamlined system, it would be impossible to maintain all
the medical records together to adopt blockchain as a technology.
3. Expensive:
-Blockchain is still a costly technology. For mining, users require costly
hardware and software.
-It involves costly high-end GPUs, also blockchain using hardware
consumes a lot more power(electricity) as compared to other
technologies, all this makes using blockchain expensive
4. Lack of Government Involvement:
-Most Hospitals are Government owned. So there is the involvement of
the Government to implement rules. Some Governments are adamant to
adopt the latest technologies.
-Therefore Blockchain cannot be implemented in Government owned
Hospitals because it is a highly decentralized, distributed ledger.
5. Preference to Paper records:
-Many users and doctors prefer paper records. They prefer to keep the
medical records in a file system. Some medicine shops are not 100%
paperless.
-Most medicine shops use prescriptions to keep records of their
medicines. Patients also keep the paper works for their handy purpose.
So adapting to a total paperless blockchain network is a challenging
task.
4. How Blockchain Technology Can Accelerate the Potential of IoT?
The blockchain has enormous potential to accelerate the IoT functioning
efficiently. Some of the areas where blockchain can be useful for IOT are listed
below:
I. Decentralization of networks:
-Since the current IoT or internet of things technology is highly
centralized so that all the devices in the network are highly dependent on
the centralized node which makes it less efficient and huge
maintainability cost.
-So instead of this we can use the Blockchain network which is highly
decentralized in nature and by using this the devices no more to
dependent on any other node in the decentralized network.
II. Temper Proof:
-The distributed ledger in a blockchain system is tamper-proof and this
removes the need for trust among the involved parties and provide the
needed security to the devices or platforms.
-This will enhance the user experience and reduces the complexity, so
that no single organization has control over the vast amount of data
generated by IoT devices.
III. Trust and Assurance:
-By providing a way to enable trust among the stakeholders, blockchain
can allow IoT companies to reduce their costs by eliminating the
processing overheads related to IoT gateways (e.g. traditional protocol,
hardware, or communication overhead costs).
IV. Autonomy:
By the integration of iot and the blockchain networks, the devices will
be able to communicate without the need of large number of servers.
V. Transparency:
-Blockchain provides transparency, by allowing anyone who is
authorised to access the network to track the transactions that happened
in the past.
-This can provide a reliable way to identify a specific source of any data
leakages and take quick remedial action and it could enable trusted
messaging between the devices of the Iot network. In this model of Iot
and blockchain
5. Explain how Blockchain technology can be utilized in E-Voting:
-Right now voting happens either on paper or EVM (electronic voting
machines) which are special computers running proprietary software. Voting on
paper costs a lot of money and wastage and electronic voting has security
issues.
-In recent years we have seen countries move away from digital voting and
adopting paper again because they fear that electronic votes can be tampered
with and influenced by hackers.
-In our country as well, we have seen politicians fight over “EVM hack”
things. But, in place of paper ballots or EVMs, we could use blockchains to
cast and store votes.
-Such a system would be very transparent and everyone could verify the voting
count for themselves and it would make tampering with it very difficult.
-The Swiss company Agora is already working on such a system and it is going
to be completely open-source.
-But there are many challenges. First, you have to be able to verify voters
without compromising their privacy. Secondly, if you allow people to vote with
their own computers or phones, you have to take care of the situation that those
devices might be infected with malware designed to tamper with the voting
process.
 6. What are the Blockchain Use Cases in Government and the Public
Sector?
Current government systems are inherently insecure and costly, while
blockchain networks offer more secure, agile, and cost-effective structures. That's why
many governments and other organization are seeking to move from traditional to
blockchain-based technologies. Some of the areas where the technology can be
utilized are listed below:
I. Validation of educational and professional qualifications:
Keeping academic and professional attainment data on an encrypted identity
wallet empowers individuals to control access to their data. It also enables
schools, universities, and employers to validate “attestations” for courses and
work achieved.
II. Vaccination Tracking:
-Recording vaccination data on the blockchain enables schools, insurance, and
medical providers to validate vaccinations quickly.
-This process automatically triggers corresponding micropayments and
delegates access to benefits based on medical status.
III. Tracking of Student Loans and grants:
-Smart contracts can be programmed to manage loan and grant applications,
dispense loans, and track compliance with the terms and conditions.
-This automated performance tracking enables real-time data and increased
transparency, compliance, and security.
IV. Collection of Payroll taxes:
-Smart contracts can streamline the tax collection process by matching tax data
with income transactions and calculating tax and social security deductions.
-A blockchain-based system automatically transfers net salary and tax
payments to their respective recipients. Coordinated automation brings
efficiency, speed, and security to tax collection.
V. E-Voting:
-A blockchain-based e-voting system will remove all the cons of a paper based
voting system like the wastage of paper and ink, and the need of establishing
various voting booths.
-As blockchain technology is tamperproof, immutable and transparent, the
security issues of EVMs can also be rectified.
7. Enlist top 5 use cases of Blockchain in energy and Utilities.

I. Peer-to-peer Energy Trading:

-Peer-to-peer energy (P2P) trading allows consumers to buy and sell
excess energy amongst themselves. And thanks to distributed ledger
technology, blockchain is enabling this by removing intermediaries,
allowing for a truly peer-to-peer exchange.
-This cuts down the cost of excess solar energy being escorted back to
the grid and gives consumers more control to purchase energy from their
neighbours at a cheaper price than their provider.
II. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs)
-Through the use of a cryptographically secure immutable digital ledger,
providers can mitigate fraud and trace and validate REC transactions
instantly and automatically.
-This means that they can avoid any double-selling of energy credits as
duplicate transactions are flagged up as invalid.
III. Automatic Settlement of Trades:
-Automatic settlement of trades is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous
ways that all types of energy and utilities providers can benefit from
blockchain technology. Thanks to its ability to remove the middlemen,
and the use of smar contracts providers can automatically record and
settle transactions.
IV. Microgrids:
-Microgrids play a leading role reducing transmission losses and
deferring expensive network upgrades.
-The nature of microgrid’s distributed generation offers efficient energy
management, continuity of supply, as well as a reliable back-up power to
safeguard against outages.
V. Smart Meters:
-Smart meters allow for a more accurate recording of the energy that
consumers’ use since power usage is determined at regular intervals
throughout the day. This information is then sent back to the utility
sector, traditionally via several intermediaries.
-Thanks to blockchain allowing for disintermediation, the information
can be stored on a distributed ledger and automatically accessed by the
utility company. This saves on costs and streamlines efficiencies by
removing the need for many changes of hands.