THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO THE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY THAN CRYPTO CURRENCY

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the technology has massive implications for almost all aspects of our lives. Nothing has shown such wide sweeping promise since the internet or the latest generation of AI. Today we’ll be looking at some of the actual project that take advantage of blockchain technology. Also from here on I want you to completely forget about Bitcoin, forget about Bitcoin, blockchain is so much more than that.
So this technology has been called many things, the next stage of the internet, a trusted system of value and the most important technology ever invented. Let’s put some perspective on this. But first things first if you don’t know what blockchain actually is, all you need to know is the following and I’m going to try and avoid the technical terms here. Blockchain is a decentralized transparent and verifiable system, where value such as ownership titles, medical records and crypto currency can be exchanged. This value is stored in something called a digital block. The blocks are linked together in such a way that the unique digital identity of the next block is linked to the identity of the previous block, hence blockchain. Blockchain is shared on a peer to peer network, where a continuously updated ledger keeps track of who owns what. These ledgers are secured by mathematics. The entire system is distributed among a network of computers rather than resting with a single provider, this means that data can’t be tempered with without anyone knowing. And finally, there are many different blockchain used for many different applications

Image Credits: blockgeeks.com

So to recap:
• Blockchain is a distributed system
• Used to Exchange Value
• Can’t be tampered with

SMART CONTRACTS
An important concept to know for this blog is the idea of smart contracts. Blockchain enables a new class of apps called smart contracts. Smart contracts basically replace what people would do within any agreement. For example, say you have two parties, party A and party B that agree on some terms in a smart contract, these terms are written into code. When the conditions have been satisfied, the contract is automatically executed, no lawyers, no companies that releases held funds, no disputes, no middle man needed. It’s all automatic, done exactly as both parties had defined in the agreement. You can take this idea further and link smart contracts together to create and entire company that does things automatically. This is called a decentralized autonomous organization (automatic company). The result eliminates waste, reduces risk of fraud and opens a whole new world of automatic systems

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Alright, so now that we’re are afresh with the underlying technology, let’s look at the impacts this is already having on the world.

THE CREATIVE VIDEO COMMUNITY

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Currently we have YouTube and twitch, but I’ll be focusing on YouTube here. YouTube like most other companies is interested in profits, and that’s fine there is nothing wrong with it, but the way YouTube is being managed leads to some incentives that results in a negative outcome for content creators and users. But the two major ones are as follow.

1. Demonetization: YouTube has to run a fine balance between satisfying the creators, the people who populate the site’s content and the advertisers, those who pay YouTube for having people watch the creator’s content. Lately, YouTube has been cracking down content that it finds might damage an advertiser’s brand image. This has led to frustration from the content creators as their revenue streams can vanish overnight, seemingly without explanation

2. Advertising: A lot of people find advertising distracting and a bit intrusive as advertisers can track your online behavior. Well advertising is part of what you have to deal with with online media, or is it? There must be a better way.

A few blockchain startups such as Steemit are looking to create a better system first up, we have viewly. They’re providing direct support for creators through a vote based tipping system through the blockchain. This cuts out the middle man. Another bonus is that Steemit is ad free because the payments are made instantly, automatically through a smart contract. The payments are carried out in crypto currency tokens which can be converted into any kind of currency that one wishes. Viewly another startup, states that their long term goal is to develop into a fully-fledged decentralized autonomous organization.

Viuly, not to get confused with Viewly and flixxo are both similar and run on the ethereum blockchain but in these cases, viewers also get paid to watch. Lino is another such project which just successfully raised $20 Million in funding. Lino states that they hope to free creators from the suffocating group of YouTube sharing agreement, terms and conditions, and pay people for watching content. Basically if your content is in high demand you get rewarded, simple as that. No more gate keepers for any viewpoints they don’t agree with.
So this is all good and interesting to see. Initially I think there is going to be a tussle for which platform to use but eventually, user adoption will force an equilibrium and the best system will come out on top. Also seeing that the ethereum blockchain couldn’t even run crypto kidis without slowing down. I’ll say we are still away from an ethereum blockchain YouTube competitor. But regardless, I think these Ideas are a better way of doing things and would likely be the future of user based online creation.
Okay, so let’s zoom out a little bit and take a wider look at the impact the blockchain is having. So let’s take a look at the wide aspects here

GOVERNMENTS

a. DUBAI

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Dubai has set its sides on becoming the world’s first blockchain powered state. In 2016 representatives of 30 government departments formed a committee dedicated to investigating the opportunities across health records, shipping, business registration and more. It’s estimated that the blockchain will amount to 1.5 billion dollars savings per year, much of this enhanced productivity, will stem from moving to a paperless government. Put blockchain document processing and we’re moving around 100 million paper transactions a year

b. UNITED KINGDOM

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The UK government is also working on blockchain technology for pension payments

c. SOUTH KOREA

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Samsung is creating blockchain solutions for the South Korean government which will be put to use in public safety and transport applications

d. ESTONIA

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The Estonian government has partnered with Ericson on a blockchain initiative to create a new data centre where all public records are stored on a blockchain

HEALTHCARE

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The company Gem is a startup working with the centre for disease control. They’re going to put disease outbreak data onto the blockchain, which is hoped to increase the effectiveness of disaster relief and response. A company called Simply Vital Health has a couple of blockchain related projects going on. One of them tracks the progress of patients after they leave the hospital and another one provides decentralized blockchain patience records. MIT is spearheading a project called MEDREC. It’s a blockchain project designed to manage authentication. , confidentiality and data sharing of medical records and is already up and running in Israel.

CYBERSECURITY

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Guardtime is a company creating keyless signature systems using the blockchain. It is currently already being used to secure the health records of 1 Million Estonian citizens. Guardtime is also working with Ericson

MANUFACTUING AND INDUSTRIAL

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Reliance industries, has said that it is developing a blockchain based supply chain logistics platform along with its own crypto currency, Jio Coin. TransActiv Grid is an interesting project based on Brooklyn that allows members to locally produce and sell energy. The goal is to reduce the cost in energy distribution. Storj.io is distributed and encrypted cloud storage which allows members to share and use hard drive space.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

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Barclays bank has launched a number of blockchain initiatives involving tracking financial transactions and combating fraud. Barclays states, “Our belief is that the blockchain is a fundamental part of the new operating system for the planet.”

REAL ESTATE

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Ubiquity is a startup that is creating a blockchain driven system for tracking the completed legal process which usually creates friction and expense in the real estate transfer

TRANSPORT

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Arcade city is an application, which aims to beat Uber at their own game, basically bringing ride sharing to the blockchain

RETAIL

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OpenBazaar is a company that is attempting to build a decentralized market, where goods and services can be traded with no middle man

So that is just a fraction of what is going on in the blockchain space. It’s becoming clear that a shift is taking space. Some big players can see that this is a viable option in the future and are getting onboard so that they don’t miss out. For example, IBM alone is working on 400 different blockchain projects with 63 Clients

Cutting out the middle man goes a lot further in developing nations, for example, blockchain is starting to take on the task of bridging the poverty gap around the world. With blockchain, as long as you have access to a smart phone, you’ll have access money. Additionally, blockchain is a decentralized system, which means that you don’t get to transfer money the way you would with a typical financial institution. The former usually deters businesses from reaching certain regions of the world and serving opportunities for developing countries. For example, last year the total amount of cost to send money to sub Saharan Africa was over 30 billion dollars, this is according to the bureau of economic analysis. So 30 billion dollars in frictional loses just by having middle men. A platform called BitPesa directly aims to solve this problem through blockchain technology and I’m sure there will be many other projects on the way. So this alone, leaving all other things equal that is the same amount of money flying from well off nations to poor nations as is today, many tens of billions of dollars can be generated using just blockchain.

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This rounds up the end of this blog. Let me know your views in the comments below......Please follow for more educative tech contents. See you later in the next blog. Thanks for your time

Reference:
• www.bea.gov
• Youtube.com
• www.coindesk.com
• Cover Photo - fee.org