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Beyond Traditional Finance Enterprise adoption is being driven by consortiums like R3 , which has attracted over 100 financial institutions , and the Hyperledger Project , supported by more than 170 organisations including IBM and Intel .
These initiatives focus on permissioned networks , which ESMA notes “ have advantages over permissionless systems when it comes to governance issues , scale or the risk of illicit activities ”.
Government applications are expanding rapidly . For instance , Estonia ’ s e-Residency platform uses DLT to verify government database records and offer digital identity services globally .
Elsewhere , the Republic of Georgia has partnered with Bitfury for land registry management , while Sweden ’ s Lantmäteriet is testing blockchain-based property transactions .
In supply chain verification , Londonbased Everledger has recorded 980,000 diamonds on their blockchain , while Walmart uses DLT to track food safety and provenance .
The World Bank Group highlights that DLT applications extend to “ collateral registries , movable asset registries ,
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Distributed Ledger Technology : An Explainer with Jim Cunha
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digital identity platforms and storage of personal records including birth , marriage and death certificates ”. This breadth of application demonstrates the technology ’ s potential beyond its financial origins .
Technical Challenges and Market Evolution Despite DLT ’ s promise , scalability remains a significant hurdle .
The World Bank Group notes that “ current iterations of permissionless distributed ledgers face issues related to scalability of blockchains ”.
Bitcoin can only process 4-7 transactions per second , compared to Visa ’ s capacity of thousands per second . The limitation of block size to one megabyte has sparked controversy
112 March 2025