The U.S. Postal Service has identified a number of ways that blockchain technology can improve its services and make it a more relevant player in global commerce, according to a report , “Blockchain Technology: Possibilities for the U.S. Postal Service.”
The postal services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) contracted with Swiss Economics to better understand blockchain and identify potential areas of interest for the Postal Service.
The postal service could use blockchain technology to improve the back-end of its financial products like money orders and international money transfers.
A blockchain-based financial platform could digitize and streamline the services to make them faster and cheaper for both the Postal Service and its customers.
The technology could also be useful in areas such as identity services, supply chain management, and device management. Blockchain Experiments Proliferate
The report noted that banks and government entities, such as the U.K. and Estonian governments and Australia Post, are already experimenting with how blockchain technology can keep better records and provide more efficient services.
In the last year, an entire ecosystem of new companies has emerged, offering hundreds of different blockchain applications.
The blockchain’ public ledger is similar to existing ledgers used by financial institutions, the difference being that there is no single third party maintaining the ledger and verifying the transaction. Instead, the network itself verifies the transactions through a decentralized consensus mechanism.In the blockchain ledger, blocks of data build upon each other, with the data in each block irrevocably linked to the blocks before it. Each “coin” on the blockchain is a string of data that identifies every transaction the coin was involved in, serving as a historical record. Non-Financial Uses Take Shape Because the blockchain was originally conceived as a financial exchange tool for bitcoin, much of the innovation has been in financial applications. However, a coin on […]
