2021 was a breakout year for the cryptocurrency sector and this year is expected to see an extension of the “mass adoption” trend.
Public awareness of blockchain technology is on the rise and a new cohort of projects designed to fill more niche roles 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 that serve the gig economy by offering corporate blockchain solutions.
HR could pivot to blockchain
Human resource management is ripe for blockchain integration due to the security and data storage solutions on offer. Blockchain would allow each employee to have a unique address where all pertinent information could be stored cryptographically.
HR also deals with the recruitment and hiring of new employees, an increasingly difficult task in today's world where the labor force participation rate supports at 61.9%, its lowest level since 1976.
For blockchain related jobs, the task becomes even more challenging due to 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.
While Keep3rV1 focuses specifically on blockchain developer jobs, if the model proves successful, the concept could easily be expanded to serve a broader audience of job seekers and employers.
Payroll also falls under the category of human resources 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 to be paid for their work in real time instead of waiting for the end of a payroll period to receive their paycheck in a lump sum.
The gig economy
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and creator/independent marketplaces like Fiverr were the foundation of the gig economy. 2021 estimates show that 36% of the US workforce He participated in the collaborative economy, either as a primary or secondary source of income. The data also shows that 55% of temporary workers also had a separate main job.
current projections indicate that by 2023, up to 52% of the US workforce will be actively working in the gig economy or will have done so at some point in their career, making it a growing field that could benefit from integration of blockchain technology.
One project that has already established its own freelance job board is Chronos.tech (TIME), a blockchain-based platform. recruiting, human resources and payment processing protocol whose LaborX platform is similar to 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 also recently added decentralized finance (DeFi) functionality by 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 customers can stake for special cashback as a reward for having the token.
Related: Volcanoes, Bitcoin and Remittances: A Tongan Man Plans Financial Security
Corporations adopt blockchain solutions
Enterprise-grade blockchain-based solutions are also expected to flourish in 2022.
Many of the major competitors offering enterprise solutions are layer one blockchain protocols like Ethereum and its Hyperledger framework or Bitcoin's recently released layer two Lightning network scaling solution. integrated with the Cash app.
Other strong competitors in the field of business solutions include Fantom and the Polygon network because they have lower transaction fees and faster processing capabilities.
A final protocol that specifically focuses 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 world's leading organizations, 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, verify identity, secure data storage and transfer, and the ability to create a private, permissioned blockchain for internal use.
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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.
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