The year 2021 was a year of great growth for the cryptocurrency sector and the “mass adoption” trend is expected to extend this year.
Public awareness of blockchain technology is on the rise and a new cohort of projects designed to fill more niche functions in society is likely to emerge in the coming months.
Three sectors that have the potential to see significant growth in 2022 are human resources (HR), employee payment solutions, and platforms serving the independent economy by offering corporate blockchain solutions.
Human resources could pivot to blockchain
Human resource management is ripe for blockchain integration due to the security and data storage solutions it offers. Blockchain would allow each employee to have a unique address where all pertinent information could be cryptographically stored.
HR is also in charge of recruiting and hiring new employees, an increasingly difficult task in today’s world, where the labor force participation rate stands at 61.9%, its lowest level since 1976.
In the case of blockchain-related jobs, the task is made even more difficult by the limited number of people with the knowledge and skills to work in the nascent sector.
Keep3rV1 is a protocol that focuses on connecting employers with workers, and the decentralized job board is specifically designed to connect blockchain projects with third-party developers who provide specialized services.
Although Keep3rV1 focuses specifically on blockchain developer jobs, if the model proves to be a success, the concept could easily be expanded to serve a broader audience of job seekers and employers.
Payroll also falls under the category of HR and projects like Request (REQ) support a decentralized payment system where anyone can request a payment and receive money through secure means.
This is an ideal setup for freelancers. Experimental platforms like Sablier Finance also offer workers the option of being paid for their work in real time rather than waiting for the end of a payroll period to receive their paycheck in a lump sum.
the sharing economy
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and creator/freelance marketplaces like Fiverr were the foundation of the sharing economy. According to 2021 estimates, 36% of the US workforce participated in the sharing economy as a primary or secondary source of income. The data also shows that 55% of gig economy workers also had a main freelance job.
Current projections indicate that by 2023, up to 52% of the US workforce will be actively working in the sharing economy or will have done so at some point in their career, making it a growing field that could benefit from the integration of blockchain technology.
One project that has already created its own job board for freelancers is Chronos.tech (TIME), a blockchain-based recruitment, human resources, and payment processing protocol whose LaborX platform is similar to that of websites like Fiverr, but performs all transactions using blockchain technology and smart contracts.
In addition to the Chronos.tech, LaborX, and PaymentX protocols, the ecosystem has also recently added decentralized finance (DeFi) functionality allowing TIME holders to stake their tokens on the protocol for a return.
Freelancers can stake TIME on the network to receive bonuses for completed tasks, while clients can stake for special rebates as a reward for holding the token.
Companies adopt blockchain solutions
Enterprise-level blockchain-based solutions are also expected to flourish in 2022.
Many of the top contenders offering enterprise solutions are layer one blockchain protocols, such as Ethereum and its Hyperledger framework, or layer two Bitcoin Lightning network scaling solution, which was recently integrated with Cash App.
Other strong contenders in the field of business solutions are Fantom and the Polygon network because they have lower transaction rates and faster processing capabilities.
One last protocol that is specifically focused on creating an enterprise-grade public network that allows individuals and businesses to create decentralized applications (DApps) is Hedera (HBAR).
According to the Hedera website, the project is owned and governed by some of the biggest organizations in the world, including IBM, Boeing, Google, LG, and Standard Bank.
The high-performance nature of Hedera’s hashgraph architecture makes it ideal for large enterprises that require a significant number of transactions to serve their global customer base.
These use cases include payment processing, fraud mitigation, the ability to tokenize assets, identity verification, secure data storage and transfer, and the ability to create a private, permissioned blockchain for internal use. .
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should do your own research when making a decision.