My Favorite Blockchain Application
Like a lot of other Crypto evangelists, I keynote, or sit on panels, at a lot of Crypto related events. Not surprisingly, I get asked the same questions over and over again, many of which I don’t know the answer to. Examples include:
Question: What are the U.S. regulators going to do?
My Answer: I don’t know what the regulators are going to do, but they have two choices. They can roll out the red tape, or they can roll out the red carpet, and they roll out the red tape at their peril, because the genie’s left the bottle.
Question: What’s going to make crypto go mainstream?
My Answer: I don’t know what’s going to make crypto go mainstream, but I know what made YouTube go mainstream, Lazy Sunday, an Andy Samberg SNL Video. The day Lazy Sunday was uploaded to YouTube, in January, 2006 (by the brother of a YouTube founder),YouTube became the fastest growing website in the history of the world. It was lightning in a bottle. No one could have predicted it. And with all the brilliant people working in Crypto today, I have no doubt that Crypto’s Lazy Sunday moment is fast approaching.
One question I get asked a lot that I do know the answer to is “what’s my favorite blockchain application”. It’s my favorite because, when it’s live, it will solve the biggest problem in my life today.
My Biggest Problem Today: My Divorce
After 20+ years of marriage, I’m getting divorced. The relationship hadn’t been good for a long time
My divorce is not amicable (“amicable divorce” is an oxymoron). Divorce is time consuming , emotionally draining, and expensive (some people say because it’s worth it). In short, divorce is a universally horrific experience.
Now I consider myself a romantic. How great would it be to be involved in a relationship comparable to the great love stories throughout history. That said, I’m not sure I’ll ever get married again. But I am sure about one thing. If I do get married again, it will be on the blockchain.
You Can Declare Your Love On The Blockchain
This is the easy part. Websites like EternityWall.it let you embed a message on the blockchain:
There’s no shortage of love declarations on the blockchain. Love is the second most used term on the EternityWall.
Smart Contracts Can Define How The Marriage Will Function
While prenups have been around for a long time, only 5% of divorces have a prenup. There are many reasons for the low occurrence of prenups. 62% of people in a recent survey said that the request for a prenup sends a negative signal. Who wants to do that? While people think prenups have to be expensive, services like LegalZoom offer them for as little as $995.
Ultimately, the social stigma and expense of a prenup makes it difficult to put into place. But those are silly excuses. I have car insurance in case I’m in an accident. I have home insurance to protect my property. Why didn’t I get marriage insurance as well?
Now I’m not the first person to think of this. the first marriage on the blockchain was in 2014.
There are now sites specifically for marriage smart contracts:
You can write smart contracts guaranteeing one date night a week
You can write smart contracts saying you get one night out a week with the boys/girls
You can write smart contracts limiting how much your spouse can spend on clothes, or haircuts, or alcohol. The smart contract can close or lock your credit card if someone overspends
Smart Contracts Can Divide The Assets Once One of the Parties Terminates The Marriage
Smart contracts can cover the usual things like how you split the assets you bring in to the marriage as well as the assets acquired during the marriage. It can also cover how debts are handled. All the things I’m spending significant time and money on, via divorce court, could all be simply handled via smart contracts.
You could have the smart contract split the assets 50%/50%, except in the case of adultery, in which case, the one cheated on could get a larger share of the assets.
But smart contracts can obviously do so much more.
Smart Contracts Can Terminate The Marriage
A recent survey indicated that only 17% of married people are happily married. Yet we stay together for various reasons, including the massive friction (time, money, emotional drain…) of getting divorced. So by putting the marriage on the blockchain, and simplifying the divorce process, we should see more divorce, which is a good thing.
But another reason so many unhappy people stay married, is simply inertia. Divorce is seen as a bad thing. Most people say “I’m sorry” when I tell them I’m getting divorced. So many people stay unhappily married for years.
In my next marriage on the blockchain, I’d want to make sure I’m happy. We can now do that electronically, as companies like Hitachi have developed “happiness sensors” to accurately sense happiness. I’d want to make sure I’m happily married, and if I’m not, or if my spouse isn’t happily married, I’d want the smart contract to terminate the marriage.
The amazing thing about smart contracts, is the infinite number of possibilities they enable. So I could go on and on about all the things I’d like my marriage on the blockchain to include, but I’ll stop here, as I recognize nothing I’m writing here is ever going to end up on a list of the romantic things ever said.
I hope I’ll get married again. But if I do get married again, and end up getting divorced again (after all, 67% of second marriages end up in divorce), my next divorce won’t take three years, it’ll take three seconds.
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