Blockchain And The Killer Apps
What killer apps does blockchain have in store & are they here now?
Are We There Yet?
I think it’s too early to suggest we have the “Killer App” today. We can safely say that the prime focus of most development is in the fin tech space.
Haseeb Qureshi outlines Dark Web Payments, Remittances, Digital Gold and Tokenisation as the current breed of killer apps. https://goo.gl/qWeGBP
I agree that payments is the hot topic. Blockchain is a massive threat to a trillion dollar industry and banks want the promise of efficient payment processes just as much as the next ICO. Bitcoin, in its own right, causes headaches for people trying to classify it — is it a commodity, asset, currency, all the above? My personal take is that it is very much like gold as a store of value — and as we approach its 10 year anniversary, it believe it will become the digital gold standard of the internet.
However, as these current issues remain in flux, time has a way of relegating supposed killer apps into the “do you remember….” category.
That’s not to say the apps in our recent history weren’t important, just that they were a necessary learning both from technologically and socially, to get to the next level.
As Joe McMillan in “Halt and Catch Fire” says,
It’s the thing that gets you to the thing
Napster was one. Myspace was another. The Newton made some people gasp but it was the Palm Pilot that proved handhelds could work. Netscape was one, so was Alta Vista.
For some those who are old enough, these names will fill you with nostalgia. Because it’s a recent reminder of just how far we’ve come.
Let’s not forget what eBay and Amazon did for eCommerce. Without the proliferation into society, you wouldn’t be able to conceive of Shopify, founded in 2004 but the first APIs and apps didn’t come about until 2009/2010!
Killer Apps are not created in a vacuum.
As Andreas Antonopolous keeps saying:
Bitcoin is just the first application
Bitcoin remains special and truly lives up to its “gold” standard because it addressed payments, record keeping, consensus, and trust all at the same time to become a well conceived platform. Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency was just the first application to be written on the platform and we can just as easily lump any payment or token use-case into this category of application.
What we are yet to conceive, is the suite of Killer Apps that will be the Facebook and Skype equivalent of the BlockNet. I argue that this is not as easy to think about as it is to say.
A Dream of Killer Apps
Here are some of my imaginings….
>> LinkedIn will become irrelevant. I will have a combined software and hardware device that will BE my reputation. I carry it like my CV. I use it to sign my work and use it to get paid. The distinction between app/cryptocoincard/device/iot is blurred.
>> My sovereignty is now not just dual, but geo-virtual. I keep my dual nationality of UK and Australia for geographic travel. I am a citizen of Bitnation with recognised and notorised rights and property on the Bitnation blockchain. I can create my own corporations and sub-nations to house my digital intellectual property and assets. All powered by SmartContracts 2.0
>> Intel invents the Neural Randomiser Chip and permanently solves / prevents all future forks in Bitcoin Blockchain. Proof of Work Chips will now allow Apple and Google to create multi-processor mobile devices (they are no longer “just” phones), so that everyone can participate in some form of P.O.W. validation of the multi-trust networks that exist throughout the geo-virtual space.
>> My Clothes will become programmable. I wear my work suit and it has all I need to be identified and pass security. The cost and purchase of the suit is blockchain sourced and I can split the difference if I am employed, between me and my employer; or if I am self employed, the Government has programmed all Tax Rules into a ready-made BlockChain.Gov chip that enables me to legitimately allocate tax and deductables (eg for uniforms)
>> Public and Private Keys will be subsumed into more user-friendly names and spaces. I am capable of associating my name.com is to the repository of my choosing.
>> Accountants will have achieved the impossible and codified the entire accounting standards into a Blockchain chip that will render sub-smart-machine-code logic into a SmartContract operating system for all blockchains. This will allow “balances”, “running balances”, and other useful business terms to be defined. Assets, Liabilities, Revenues and Expenses can now be used to categorise transactions in the blockchain ‘database’
>> In 2020, the entire world agrees to use different words for the technology. We agree to use KeyChain instead of Wallet is one example.
>> Business Intelligence Reporting will be able to report directly off the blockchain. Users will be able to create taxonomies of terms to translate the block-code and pull “their” transactions into their own reports or apps — to get Edge Analysis that feeds into IOT telemetry. Eg. Monitor my token spend or receipts and trigger something when a balance is over / under an amount.
I could go on…. and none of these necessarily have anything to do with the current flurry of fin-tech development.
But please, let them be super user-friendly and super cool!
My hallucinations are just an example of transfers of value that I find important and inspiring, with the “thing” decentralising away from my personal rights to mundane processes being needlessly controlled in a central organisation.
In the coming years, I believe that once the ICO bubble bursts, we can have a far more frank discussion of the various TrustNet killer apps.
But I hear them coming in the distance…
Vlad Soriano
