Thread by @oliverjumpertz

What are **some** possible applications of Blockchain technology?

Are there only cryptocurrencies? Are there more possible applications? Let's take a look at three possible applications outside of finance here to give you a general idea of what is possible.

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0️⃣ Foreword

A blockchain can be used to solve a lot of problems. Cryptocurrencies are only one possible way of applying the technology but there is way more to it.

We can take a look at some possible applications and what they each provide to users.

1️⃣ Social Networks

The current generation of social networks is centralized. Whether we talk about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever else. They all own your account, your content, your followers, and everything else.

If one of them ever decides that you are not a "good member of the community", you're gone. When your content "violates the (community) guidelines", it's gone.

Sometimes such actions may be justified, but sometimes those actions are questionable.

In the end, there is nothing you can do about it other than to try and talk to them. More than often, this doesn't lead to the desired result.

You can, however, create a social network that is backed by a public blockchain. All your content and followers are simply an entry within the blocks of the chain.

When someone decides to follow you, it's an entry within the blockchain. If the same person wants to unfollow ...

... you again, it's also an entry. Your content? Persisted on the blockchain. All comments? Persisted. Likes? Persisted.

The only issue that still needs to be solved is more of a legal thing. Many countries require social networks to do some form of content moderation.

On a public blockchain, this is difficult to do. There somehow needs to be a mechanism to at least add new entries that delete "bad content" of other users.

It's however not an unsolvable problem and a pretty interesting one to tackle.

2️⃣ Music Royalties Tracking

Whether you like it or not. Every time you play a song, the artist of this song actually deserves to be paid some money. It's their work you enjoy.

In today's world, labels put a lot of work into enforcing their rights to be paid ...

... money each and every time a song of one of their artists is played. The sad thing about it is that those labels usually get a lot, if not the majority, of that money with only a fraction finding its way to the original creator. Artists simply don't have the power to ...

... do what their labels can do for them.

If we, however, put music on a blockchain and track its usage through the same chain, we could reliably tell how often a song was played, and then collect money based on the usage of that song.

This money would directly flow to the artist instead of their labels. Overall a way fairer system than the current one, eliminating the need for a middleman.

3️⃣ Your Personal Data Vault

You don't own your data. Whenever you give someone some of your data, they replicate it on one of their systems. Every service provider can do everything with it they'd like to. Yes, there are data protection laws, but let's be realistic here, ...

... how transparent do you think is it for regulators to look at the internals of each company and find out whether they are compliant with the law? My honest opinion: It's nearly impossible to check that reliably.

But what if you could put all your data into an encrypted vault that is stored on a blockchain? And what if you could grant AND revoke access to parts of your data whenever you feel like it?

That's actually possible with blockchain technology.

This type of application gives you full power over your data. When you don't feel like service provider A should use your data anymore, you can simply revoke access to it. When you sign up at service provider B, you can give them partial access to your data.

Another benefit of this particular application is that it can also possibly empower users to get paid for certain usage of their data. Sure, let those companies build ML models with your data, but not without paying you for it.

4️⃣ Conclusion

We only talked about three possible applications in this thread but there are so many more. It currently seems as if the range of application of a blockchain is only limited by our creativity and imagination.

What would you say, do you have a great idea you want to share? Feel free to!