A blockchain future we can get behind

Everyday application of the technology, in the year 2050.

It’s 7.00 am, Wednesday, 15th March 2050. The alarm rings. I snooze it once… or six times, then with a start — I realise I’m late. I rush downstairs and frantically pour some cereal in a bowl while I grab my phone and order an Uberall. One of their electric vehicles immediately responds, a mere five minutes away from my place. Offered price: 50 Mangrovias for my ride to campus… Not the best deal, but there’s no time to hunt for bargains right now. I book the EV and transfer, reluctantly, the requested mangrovias to the vehicle’s wallet address. I throw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, noticing with a quick glance the EV already in my driveway. Thank goodness. I’m out of the door before I can finish lacing my shoes, and, as I enter, the automatic voice of my chauffeur announces that my original ETA has been unfortunately changed: a car accident will cause a 15 minutes delay. Great… As I grumble under my breath, my phone rings and I imagine it’s Andy, who’s been waiting for me at the library for over an hour now. Thankfully, it’s just a notification of my reimbursed 5 Mangrovias for the delay.

Not the best way to start a day, but 2050 is looking pretty cool: I benefitted from the transportation service, was compensated for the unpleasant delay, and no organization received any of my personal data.

Here’s who else benefitted from those 50 Mangrovias (our fictional cryptocurrency of the future):

• 25 went to the Uberall, our fictional EV manufacturer of the future who takes care of its fleet’s maintenance, including cleaning it up for the next passenger
• 10 to the software company who wrote the smart contract codes and the nodes that validated the related transactions
• 10 are given to the utilities company providing the electricity for the EV

But back to 2019. What difference do you see between the 2050 I described and the way services are offered today?

Essentially, the world is readying itself for the transition between platform-based economies (present-day Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, and other corporate giants) to ecosystem-based economies, and all this could be powered by the evolution of blockchain technology. Despite originally being conceived way back in 2008, it is only now that blockchain has evolved enough for people to finally understand the difference between a cryptocurrency, and actual application of the technology.

Blockchain’s most groundbreaking feature is that it helps in building trustworthy relationships between parties that don’t know each other. The main shift is in control and ownership. In a platform-based economy, there is an organization who owns the platform and decides the rules for others to benefit from the services delivered by it. Usually, the more people use this platform, the higher the value of the platforms’ services (a case of network effects in action), thereby increasing the number of people who want to be on the platform itself, in a virtuous cycle that consequently expands the power and wealth of the platform owner.

When we use these huge platforms, in order to do so, we generally pay them in the form of our trust: we transfer our personal data (Facebook), give out our credit card information (PayPal), include them into intimate spheres of our life (Tinder), let them know where we’re going (Uber)… the list goes on (it really does). We’ve factored these platforms into our daily activities as a crucial component, so much so that they’re constantly listening to us and analysing all the personal information we give them in order to improve their services in the name of making us happy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really grateful for the existence of these companies. Their services are incredibly convenient and are usually offered for free (not counting your data as the price you pay). But this is where the matter of trust becomes a real issue, as we’ve so frequently seen, from Facebook to Yahoo, with such incidents tarnishing the general perception of these social platforms and generating more public outcry each time.

The main advantage of the technology’s application is best illustrated in cases when there is a requirement for a set of services without a centralized seat of power (i.e. no single organization owning and controlling the platform). Fundamental in the transition to an ecosystem-based economy, blockchain would allow for different entities, even individuals, to play their part in delivering such services, each of them exerting equal influence over the configuration of the underlying rules but none of them having absolute say in the type or manner of relationships built in the network.

The possible use cases for application are countless. If we get it right, 2050 might look pretty cool indeed.