6 Industries that will be Surprisingly Disrupted by Blockchain
Are you ready yet?
While bitcoin has been dominating headlines since 2015, there is less buzz around blockchain — the fundamental technology underlying this virtual currency. In fact, cryptocurrency is just one of many applications built on blockchain. As a cutting-edge technology, blockchain has huge potential to revolutionize traditional areas. Here are the six industries that will surprisingly be disrupted by blockchain.
Digital Games
Cat lovers from global cryptocurrency community have been crazy about some virtual cats since November 2017. They are called CryptoKitties, allegedly the first digital game built on blockchain. These colorful, cutesy kitties can be traded globally with ETH. It is said that the most expensive CryptoKitty to date costs billions of dollars.
The reason why they are so popular is that every CryptoKitty is one-of-a-kind — each cat looks different from each other. Their appearance is determined by “genes” stored on smart contracts, which have over 4-billion variations.
Essentially，these digital cats are non-fungible tokens on blockchain. That means they share the same features with cryptocurrencies — collectible, traceable, and tamperproof. According to the website of this developing team, “CryptoKitties ownership will be tracked via a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.”
What makes these digital cats special is that any two Cryptokitties can breed together to create a descendant. The newborn will inherit some features from his or her parents. Sometimes, however, they will obtain brand new attributes. Besides breeding, CryptoKitties can also be produced by smart contract at the rate of one every 15 minutes for one year.
These adorable virtual kitties have gone viral since its release. According to the statistics on its website, about 105,000 users registered and $15 million were transacted within just 15 days after it was launched.
Politics
In addition to games, Blockchain can also be applied to serious issues, such as digital voting.
Government-owned Australia Post announced in 2016 that they planned to set foot in the business of running elections, and blockchain would be leveraged as their key solution to vicious manipulation and attacks on the voting system.
Digital voting based on blockchain can be seen as electronic transactions of cryptocurrencies. Voters cast ballots by spending “voting credits” on the candidates they support. Permission to vote would be secured through the use of secure digital access keys sent to each voter. Each vote would be stored and cryptographically represented within the blockchain. Counting the election would be as simple as compiling the results from the blockchain. At the same time, key encryption and digital signatures will protect voters’ identities.
Since the results are stored in a lot of nodes instead of a single system, it’s impossible to distort them on blockchain. In addition, the transparency and accessibility of public blockchain make sure the public is able to supervise the whole voting process.
Philanthropy
Charities and non-profit organizations are also dabbling in blockchain. It’s not surprising that people are losing faith in centralized charities because of lack of transparency, long processing period and frauds. Now these organizations believe that they can solve these problems by using blockchain and benefit from its security and traceability. Among them is a California-based NGO called BitGive.
Last October, BitGive launched its donating platform built on blockchain, GiveTrack. This platform allows donors to get rid of expensive transfer fees and acquire real-time updates about where their donations go and how they are spent. Digital encryption secures these donations during transactions. This organization has been collaborating with local charities in Brazil, the U.S. and Mexico to raise money for certain projects.
Unlike other blockchain-built donating platforms, GiveTrack relies on bitcoin as currencies rather than smart contracts or tokens, which makes the process more straightforward. Bitcoin holders can make contributions directly with bitcoin on GiveTrack, and those who receive the donations need to convert the virtual currencies to fiat money.
A number of NGOs already started to accept bitcoin as donations since 2013 in the U.S., like the American Red Cross, Save the Children, and Greenpeace USA. Blockchain might help charities regain trust from the public.
Energy
Sharing economy has been booming for a while, but it seems to go downhill and desperately needs new technology to revitalize itself. Blockchain might be the one.
In 2016, Transactive Grid, a startup founded in Brooklyn, created an energy-trade ecosystem built on blockchain. They tested this system on President Street in Brooklyn. This is said to be the first blockchain application in the energy industry. It allowed neighbors living next door to trade excess energy generated by the solar panels installed on rowhouse rooftops.
In the traditional energy industry, a few giants usually monopolize the whole industry for years. Decentralized platforms, such as Transactive Grid, might completely disrupt the area. By removing centralized authorities, this energy trading system will change the relationship between consumers and energy companies, enabling every ordinary resident with solar panels to make money by selling solar energy.
This platform also helps to reduce the amount of energy lost on the way of transportation from remote plants to local households. Besides, if natural disasters ruin power grid, the micro energy trading system within every community can function as an alternative and provide energy for local residents.
Transactive Grid has expanded this ecosystem to two neighborhoods in Brooklyn last year. They are currently working with local government and trying to legalize this blockchain-built, peer-to-peer energy trading system in New York state.
Cloud Storage
Another promising application of blockchain in sharing economy turns to be cloud storage. While internet users have become increasingly dependent upon it, the slow speed of downloading and expensive fees also bother them.
Storj, a Georgia-based startup, harnesses blockchain to address these issues, encouraging users to share excessive storage space of their own computers with strangers all over the world.
If users share idle storage space of their own computers on Storj, they can obtain the same amount of cloud storage space in return, and even get paid by sharing more space. If they don’t want to share the space on their computer, they can pay as little as $0.015 per GB per month to use the service. It’s much cheaper than iCloud or Dropbox.
It’s more secure to store personal files on Storj than centralized cloud store platform, because these files are encrypted, “shredded” into pieces and stored in different computers. Only owners have access to complete files. Also, since the service does not rely on one sole server, there is no need to worry about issues of slowdown.
Big data
Apart from Storj, Measurable Data Token($MDT), a blockchain-built application in big data, is also trying to reward their users who actively share their anonymous data.
Living in this digital era, we are generating a huge amount of data on a daily basis. On one hand, all kinds of companies are extensively and secretly collecting, mining and trading data to conduct marketing research, creating consumer reports, and ultimately, make profits. On the other hand, users, who provide these data, are unaware of the value of it, not to mention earning any profit from it. With the goals of changing the unfair situation in mind, the San Francisco-based startup is striving to build Measurable Platform, a blockchain-built, decentralized data exchange platform, and MDT denominates the value of data in this ecosystem.
In this platform, there are usually three parties involved in data trading — users, data providers and data buyers. When providers receive requests of specific data from data buyers, they will grab data from their products or services after they get permission from users. Meanwhile, providers will notify Measurable Platform about this deal, and it will accordingly construct smart contracts.
After data buyers send payments with MDT on this platform and confirm the report is valid, data provider and all users who have contributed their data will obtain a certain number of MDT as rewards.
Measurable Platform will create an impartial data sharing and rewarding system, where users are able to see how their data has been used and make money out of it. Smart contracts can also guarantee the efficiency and security of data trading.
Want to join this efficient data exchange system? Sign up on MDT’s website https://mdt.co , and you will get rewarded just by sharing your data!
