An EOSIO blockchain, such as EOS, Telos, BOS, and few others, is by far not only about cryptocurrency. Rather the opposite, its use for cryptocurrency is rather secondary to what it can offer to a business.
A few examples where a business would benefit from a blockchain:
- Fungible community token. A token may or may not bear a material value, and it can serve as loyalty points, or in-game currency, or some kind of rewards for activity. It can also be a play money for all kinds of business games and simulations.
- Non-fungible tokens for rights management. An NFT is linked to some unique virtual or material entity, and it has an owner. It could be a material object, such as real estate or jewelry, or it could entitle the owner to the right of using some resource on some defined conditions. Any kind of rental, sharing, event tickets fit easily into this category.
- Proof of event, timestamping, location stamping. The blockchain can record cryptographically protected, tamper-proof evidence of something happening in a given time and place. The evidence would be signed by an authorized private key. This private key could be stored in an NFC chip at the location, or authorized personnel can give out digital signatures. The evidence can include a photo or video, GPS coordinates, exact time stamp, a fingerprint, environmental conditions, and all kinds of measurements. It can all be hashed, securely stored, and recorded on the blockchain.
- Access rights. The blockchain can store a list of public keys or other account attributes that are authorized to access some private data. For example, tracking changes in MS Active Directory is not an easy task, and may require third-party software. Also administrators may disable the auditing. A blockchain is tracking everything by definition. Whatever is changing in user permissions, everyone can see who and when has made a change. And this record cannot be deleted.
Businesses are reluctant to deal with cryptocurrency, but you can obviously see the use cases that are not related to cryptocurrency whatsoever. The system administrator would need to buy some EOS or TLOS once in a while to buy RAM and create user accounts, but this task is localized, and can easily be outsourced. Also an enterprise can spin up its own EOSIO blockchain. Also an enterprise can buy resources from a business-oriented blockchain, such as Europechain or Worbli.
