Imagine vRAM
EOS, home of the dApps, is well positioned to be the first widely adopted blockchain, having the potential to transform numerous industries. Yet, the cost and limited supply of network resources are making it difficult for developers to build and scale decentralized applications. vRAM, an alternative solution for developers building dApps on EOS, opens the doors to a new wave of data-intensive decentralized applications. Below is a list of several ways we anticipate vRAM will help empower developers to build dApps on EOS with real-world utility. Now is the time for scalable dApps to materialize. There are no more excuses.
Airdrops
The most popular method used by dApps to distribute tokens thus far has been the airdrop in which new projects distribute their tokens to existing EOS holders. Additionally, existing projects often use airdrops to incentivize engagement and reward their users for completing certain tasks. In order to successfully execute an airdrop, developers need to store account balance information on EOS RAM. RAM today costs around $150K per GB making this process unaffordable for many dApps.
Social Media
With growing concern around centralized social media platforms and their misuse of user data, decentralized alternatives continue to gain more attention. However, creating a decentralized social media site is extremely data-intensive, since all metadata from user profiles and posts — such as likes, shares and comments — need to be stored in a way that’s accessible to the smart contract managing the application. Freed from having to store gigabytes of information on-chain by using vRAM, developers can now create applications with features that rival and maybe even exceed those housed on centralized platforms. Content creators can monetize their work directly through micropayments, while ordinary users can be rewarded for the quality of their posts and the frequency of their engagement. Most importantly, decentralized social media sites allow users to own their data directly by means of a private key, ensuring that value accumulating for the network trickles down to the average user instead of being held exclusively by the centralized party.
Smart Securities
Security tokens, or smart securities, are fully-compliant representations of ownership in traditional asset classes such as real estate, equities and bonds. Trading these regulated assets demands compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) legislation. Currently, KYC processes are manual, off-chain and time-consuming. These smart securities, which are traded on international digital asset marketplaces, can be programmed with smart contracts to contain compliance information and ownership history, allowing regulatory agencies to validate their integrity. Automating these processes means turning law into code and storing all the relevant information on-chain. The data set containing information about all market participants as well as the regulatory data pertaining to each smart security can be large, incurring significant costs to the developer who needs to store it on-chain.
Augmented Universes
Augmented reality devices create a digital layer on top of the real world. Combining this with blockchain-enabled digital value means that soon we will be owning digital real estate, much like we own our condos and apartments, and trade these AR assets on global markets. For example, popular augmented reality game Pokemon Go could allow users to purchase the right to establish a Pokemon Gym at given locations. Anyone wishing to battle and train their Pokemon at another player’s gym would be required to share their proceeds with the owner of the digital property. However, storing the ownership and location information of every digital asset in existence introduces resource constraints that present a significant barrier to growing an augmented universe…until now.
Ridesharing
Uber and similar ride-sharing platforms take between 25%–30% of driver revenue in exchange for connecting them to available riders and storing their location data on its servers. A decentralized version of this would enable drivers to match directly with riders when requested, without the middle-man taking a cut of the fees. To enable this “direct to consumer” ridesharing, decentralized apps will need access to tools that maximize their capacity for handling massive amounts of location data and profile information.
Gaming
Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), such as Fortnite and World of Warcraft, can be enhanced by vibrant player economies trading in non-fungible tokens running on the blockchain. These tokens can represent in-game items such as weapons, ‘skins’ and accessories. Players earn these tokens by successfully completing challenges and gaining experience points, and can choose to trade them for other virtual items or sell them for digital currencies. Currently, MMORPGs require immense data memory, making them unviable on the EOS Mainnet.
Prediction Markets
While EOS has seen the rapid expansion of gambling dApps, the next wave of dApps is about to emerge and has the potential to include prediction market platforms. These platforms could be used to foresee the outcome of the next election or sports game as well as allow users to utilize the wisdom of the crowds to gauge the likelihood of future events. Once access to sufficient memory and other network resources become available prediction markets may not need their own blockchain; rather they will be able to utilize a base protocol such as EOS as a settlement layer making them faster and more affordable to build.
As vRAM and the DAPP Network evolve, the scope of possibilities for dApp developers will continue to expand. Can you think of other data-intensive applications that could now be end-to-end decentralized thanks to vRAM? Use the hashtag #ImaginevRAM and share your ideas with the community!
