Blockchain Technology Beyond Cryptocurrency: A Systematic Review of Applications, Challenges, and Emerging Trends
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61424/nzt17x52Keywords:
Blockchain technology, decentralized systems, smart contracts, digital transformation, supply chain, cybersecurityAbstract
Blockchain technology has evolved beyond its original application in cryptocurrency to become an important digital infrastructure for secure, decentralized, and transparent information management across diverse sectors. This systematic review examines the applications, challenges, and emerging trends associated with blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency. The review synthesizes recent scholarly literature addressing blockchain adoption and implementation in healthcare, supply chain management, finance, education, government, identity management, energy, the Internet of Things, and other emerging digital environments. The findings indicate that blockchain can enhance data integrity, traceability, transparency, decentralized trust, transaction efficiency, and secure information sharing by enabling tamper-resistant and verifiable records without relying exclusively on centralized intermediaries. Applications are increasingly associated with electronic health records, pharmaceutical traceability, digital credentials, smart contracts, decentralized identity, public-sector services, logistics monitoring, and peer-to-peer energy systems. However, the literature also identifies persistent barriers, including scalability limitations, high computational and infrastructure requirements, interoperability problems, regulatory uncertainty, privacy concerns, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, governance challenges, and limited technical expertise. Emerging trends include the integration of blockchain with artificial intelligence, Internet of Things technologies, decentralized identity systems, tokenization, smart contracts, and energy-efficient consensus mechanisms. Overall, the review demonstrates that blockchain's future value lies less in cryptocurrency speculation and more in its potential to support trusted digital ecosystems and decentralized data infrastructures. Successful adoption will nevertheless depend on technological maturity, appropriate governance frameworks, interoperability standards, regulatory clarity, and context-specific implementation strategies.
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