How Can Blockchain Benefit Designers?
When people think about blockchains, they probably think about cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. However, blockchains are already working in a number of industries outside the financial realm including shipping, real estate, music, transportation–the list is constantly growing. So how can it be beneficial to designers?
One thing designers and artists are often worried about is the licensing and copyright of their creations. Recently, social media users have noticed their designs being ripped off of their accounts and sold on t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc.
Artists are pretty clever and have figured out cheeky ways to trick these bots, but getting merchandise like this removed can be a nightmare, especially for smaller creators. Blockchain could potentially help with this in the future.
Each piece of work that uses blockchain would receive a unique identifier. When changes are made to the work, a new identifier is created based on the prior unique identifier – linked together just like a regular chain. If artists and designers were to use blockchains it would essentially create a timestamp and establish provenance that any third-party can view. Because the unique identifier is based on prior identifiers, blockchains are extremely secure and would have the ability to show whenever a third-party (like a Twitter bot) uses or alters a design.
This method will not be perfect or solve every problem and it’s very likely new issues will come up, but it will have some benefits for licensing and copyrighting work on a global scale in the future.
