**1. Introduction**

The automation of our industries and the relationships of the different agents in the value chain will allow us to eliminate many repetitive manual processes with little added value that reduce the competitiveness of the industry [1]. Even the automation of tendering and contracting processes can improve our competitiveness.

Technologies, such as artificial intelligence, flexible robotics, IoT, or augmented reality will allow us to advance in the digitalization and optimization of our processes, but the great barrier to implement a fully automated production systems and especially relationships is precisely the lack of trust and security [2].

Trust is the basis of a new research line that in recent months has had an increasing impact on industrial forums and conferences: blockchain technology. Blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions and digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties. Each transaction is consensuated, mathematically linked and stored by the network of participants, thereby achieving

#### *Computer Security Threats*

its immutability. Blockchain allows us to operate our procedures and relationships in the digital environment in a much more safe and reliable way [3].

The next few years will see a profound transformation of industrial processes, increasing the synchronization between different agents in the value chain, as well as extreme automation of decision-making, all thanks to the reliability offered by blockchain. It is even hoped that in the future, it will be able to transform its own business models, just as in recent decades the Internet has done, which has so far been the most disruptive technology in history.

In this chapter, we will explain the different use cases and scenarios that we consider to have greater potential in the future of Industry 4.0, starting first with generic industrial cases and then analyzing the specific cases of the energy industry. This selection has been made based on the experience of more than a dozen blockchain projects in the domain of Industry 4.0.

Next, we will describe the four main generic values that we have discovered after different proofs of concept with several companies. Finally, we will discuss future lines of research linked to a new concept such as the machine economy and report the final conclusions of the chapter.
