The Blockchain is revolutionising the technology industry, it is being seen as the new way to trust over the internet, it is used in cryptocurrencies, but what else can it be applied to?
The Blockchain is a unique technology, it is widely used in the cryptocurrency world and it is used as a medium to build trust between users of the currencies, but recently entrepreneurs and technology experts have been looking at other applications of the Blockchain that go beyond cryptocurrencies, here I'll take a look at some of the uses.
Smart Contracts
If you've heard of Ethereum then you've probably heard of smart contracts. These contracts are legally binding and it works by means of programmable variables and statements that can release funds as a 3rd party executor, rather than trusting a centralised authority.
For example, if two people wanted to exchange $100 at a time in the future, they can create a smart contract and define their conditions in the contract, once the conditions in the contract are met the funds can then be released and sent to the appropriate party to complete the contract. By managing contracts in this way we can make businesses more efficient.
“Smart contracts solve the problem of intermediary trust between parties to an agreement, whether that is between people transferring assets like gold, or executing decisions between two parties in a betting contract,” explained Vitalik Buterin, a founder of Ethereum.”
Online Identities
A different application for the Blockchain is online identities, an organisation called Bitnation is offering victims of the refugee crisis emergency digital identities and a Bitcoin based credit card which can be used to receive funds from family and friends without the use of banks. With this the refugees can prove their existence and identity through the use of family relations and have everything recorded on a distributed public ledger.
Blockchain technologies make tracking and managing digital identities both secure and efficient, resulting in seamless sign-on and reduced fraud, it offers a solution to many digital identity issues, where identity can be uniquely authenticated in an irrefutable, immutable, and secure manner.
Digital Voting
There are a lot of controversies surrounding the traditional voting systems, we are in the digital age so why are we still manually counting votes, it is a system that is open to manipulation and tampering. In 2014 Liberal Alliance in Denmark became the first organisation to use the Blockchain to vote, voters could check to see that their vote had been successfully cast while remaining anonymous.
A team accredited to observe the 2013 municipal elections in Estonia - the only country to run Internet voting on a wide scale - revealed that they observed election officials downloading key software over insecure Internet connections, typing PINs and passwords in view of cameras, and preparing election software on vulnerable PCs. Norway also cancelled trials of e-voting systems in local and national elections, concluding that voters’ fears about their votes becoming public could undermine democratic processes. (Source: estoniaevoting.org).
Blockchain technologies could be the answer to the problems that we see in voting systems worldwide, they could provide an honest representation of who should be in power and could change our government structures.
Conclusion
This is just a coupe of the use cases of the Blockchain technology here you can find 84 potential uses for the technology. The Blockchain can reach far beyond cryptocurrencies and research into the applications of it will start changing the way that we interact and trust online. Regardless of which application comes first on a global scale. The bottom line is, Blockchain is here to stay and is transforming how our society functions.
If you have found an interesting way the Blockchain is being used let me know in the comments below and if you liked this post please upvote.