By Matt Maher, Founder of M7 Innovations
The early frenzy around NFTs, DAOs, and crypto experiments obscured the foundational technology that enabled them. While the hype cycle has cooled, the underlying infrastructure that is Blockchain is entering a more meaningful phase defined not by speculation, but by real operational deployment. As organizations revisit long-standing gaps in trust, traceability, and transaction efficiency, blockchain is emerging as a practical solution ready to address challenges that analog-era systems were never designed to handle.
Instant Settlement, Tokenized Deposits, and Real-World Assets
Speaking of fusty, let’s start with finance. Traditional banks still run on systems and methods that were built generations ago. Wires settle through intermediaries, ACH (Automated Clearing House) moves in batches, and cross-border transfers rely on networks that coordinate messages between banks, but do not move money themselves. Every institution keeps its own ledger, and none of them inherently agree with one another.
Blockchain addresses the structural limitation by serving as a shared, 24/7 settlement layer. Instead of each institution keeping its own version of a transaction and aligning after the fact, a blockchain allows the transfer, clearing, and settlement to occur in a single motion on a ledger visible to all participants. It collapses multi-day processes into seconds and gives financial assets the same qualities as digital documents: transferable, verifiable, and instantly settled.
This is the leading principle behind JPMorgan’s JPM Coin and BlackRock’s push to tokenize stocks, bonds, and real estate because a tokenized asset functions as a digital deed. Ownership is recorded on a shared ledger, and transfers finalize the moment the ledger updates. There is no cut-off window, no long clearing cycle, and no need for multiple intermediaries to confirm ownership. The efficiency gains compound: faster settlement reduces operational risk, frees up working capital, and allows institutions to reinvest or redeploy funds without delay.
Larry Fink’s 2025 letter to investors:
“Take the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). It’s the system that underpins trillions of dollars in global transactions every day, and it works much like a relay race: Banks hand off instructions one by one, meticulously checking details at each step. That relay approach made sense in the 1970s, an analog era when the markets were much smaller and daily transactions were much fewer. But today, relying on SWIFT feels like routing emails through the postal office.”
As more financial instruments move onto tokenized rails, blockchain stops being a speculative experiment and becomes the modern digital infrastructure for markets that still run on analog timelines. It fixes the one limitation the old system was never designed to solve: the ability for money and assets to move at the speed of software.
Authenticity and Counterfeit Defense
Transitioning from the archaic to the criminal, counterfeits have scaled too quickly for traditional enforcement. AI tools are fueling skilled operations to produce near-identical replicas. These forgeries have evolved beyond poorly printed logos or obvious fakes. They’re copying product imagery, rapidly rotating listings, and even spinning up fake storefronts faster than any brand can react. High-end fakes now carry convincing serial numbers, forged certificates, and packaging that looks indistinguishable from luxury brands’ real products, forcing an entire industry to collectively lose capital on warranty fraud and marketplace disputes. This has created a total erosion of trust between brand and client. Paper documentation is too easy to replicate and traditional databases can be edited, spoofed, or siloed between vendors.
The blockchain is closing the gap by giving each product a single, tamper-proof identity that cannot be rewritten. Aura, the consortium formed by LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier, anchors product data on a shared ledger. The manufacturer records the creation of a watch, bag, or piece of jewelry at the point of origin, and that entry then becomes the only legitimate source of truth for authenticity checks. Breitling applies the same principle to its digital passports. Each watch receives an on-chain certificate tied to its serial number, warranty state date, and ownership timeline. When a buyer scans the passport, the blockchain reveals whether the watch was ever produced, sold, or serviced by Breitling, creating an irrefutable, timestamped history. In turn, a counterfeit either returns no record or triggers a mismatch, and a convoluted past is the fastest way to identify fraud. Blockchain won’t make counterfeits disappear, but it can remove the uncertainty they depend on.
Supply Chain Integrity and ESG Proof
Supply chains, while critically important across almost every industry, still operate with glaring blind spots. Companies publish sustainability targets, yet many cannot verify where materials were sourced, which suppliers handled them, or whether certifications were altered on the way to a factory. As a result, regulators have become increasingly aggressive about investigating ESG claims (Environmental, Social, and Governance), and auditors want proof instead of flowery marketing language. Companies risk sizable fines, damaged credibility, and stalled partnerships when they cannot produce accurate traceability data.
Enter the Blockchain. Modern traceability systems rely on digital twins, audit logs, and controlled data capture at each handoff. Blockchain serves as this immutable layer that prevents missing data, opaque checkpoints and quiet edits posted later. Each transfer, transformation, or certification step is logged as part of a shared record that no single participant can alter after the fact.
Unilever’s work with SAP GreenToken follows this model. The platform assigns digital tokens to batches of palm oil, tracks mass-balance flows through mills and refiners, and records each transaction in an audit-safe system.
De Beers’ Tracr platform applies similar principles to their diamonds. Each stone has unique physical characteristics such as proportions, inclusions, fluorescence, and light performance, and these attributes are scanned to create a digital twin. When the diamond moves through cutting, polishing, certification, and retail onboarding, it is rescanned and matched against its original fingerprint. The Blockchain record captures the sequence of verification events, but the identity itself comes from the diamond’s physical signature. A stone with a broken or missing digital history is treated as unverifiable, which protects both brands and consumers.
As ESG regulation tightens, this level of traceability shifts from innovation to risk management. Blockchain becomes the hardened layer of the audit trail, turning authenticity into software rather than paperwork.
Closing Thoughts on the Future of Blockchain
From finance to fraud, supply chain to sustainability, Blockchain continues to accrue critical use cases in industries whose banality overshadows the billions of dollars this technology can save them. So, while Bitcoin may remain in the headlines, the Blockchain will be working tirelessly in the background, building the digital infrastructure to push our entire global economy into the modern age. The best part? The revolution will no longer be televised, and even if it were, the Blockchain would provide the irrefutable ledger to disallow any changing of the narrative or broadcast. In an age where truth and trust are dwindling, Blockchain has become the beacon of authenticity and verification.
About Matt Maher
Matthew Maher is a futurist and founder of M7 Innovations, a research and development firm focused on artificial intelligence, immersive media, and emerging technologies. He serves on the advisory boards of CHANEL and The Glimpse Group (NASDAQ: VRAR) and was named by Vogue as one of the Top 100 Innovators of 2024. Maher has delivered keynote presentations on innovation at CES, SXSW, and private client events around the world.
