So here we are in 2018. Last year, we saw a tremendous explosion of blockchain based startups that manage to absorb millions of Dollar through the ICO scheme, for better or worse. And from what i see, it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. New blockchain startup with new ICO keeps coming to my inbox every day. And soon, we will see more traditional companies jump into the game, like Kodak, Telegram or some says even Atari.
Then, when we see these startups, we can see that they try to implement blockchain technology, or other technology with a similar concept, for almost every problem and every use case possible. Is almost, for every “traditional” startup, there is or are their counterpart in Blockchain universe. You name it, from groceries, video sharing, apartment or property share, buy or sell, to massaging and social media, is all there.
As for quite sometimes, I begin to see the pattern. So I started to write down the possible use case of Blockchain technology.
And in the meantime, my friend and I are developing a small workshop to help people asses whenever their problem can be solved with the Blockchain technology. And one of the tools is a simple assessment canvas which we hope can help people, organization or existing business can do it in the simple and easy way. No, this will not a copy of Adi Chikara’s Blockchain canvas because the approach and the perspective are different. We will share this later when its finish.
Apparently, the two objective met at some point. The use case pattern will be used on our canvas, and the canvas development forces me to learn more about the use case. But for today, let’s talk about the use case I found. And I found quite a lot. Here is the list
- Marketplace for everything (talent, data, music, video, goods etc)
- Storage for data (on the blockchain itself) and files (on shared storage)
- Resource sharing (computing, storage, properties etc)
- Business process automation
- Digital identity
- Share ownership mechanism (properties, business, vehicle etc)
- Voting and consensus system
- Medium to store and transfer value
- Investment (blockchain based fund)
- Automated forceable agreement with smart contract
- Virtual currency — obviously :)
- Reward system (discount payment inside services, reward for stacking etc)
- Direct connection between party (messaging, transaction etc)
These are the basic use case. In reality, some of them are mix and match to create a new product or services. So, the actual use case are endless.
I will probably make this subject a series, but for now, let’s see some example of the case by studying couples of Blockchain startups just to make it clear for us.
Golem
What it is : blockchain base global supercomputer
Blockchain use case : cloud storage + share resource + direct transaction
Golem is a global, open source, decentralized supercomputer that anyone can access. It is made up of the combined power of users’ machines, from PCs to entire data centers. The system is capable of computing a wide variety of tasks, from CGI rendering, through machine learning to scientific computing.
Civic
What it is : Digital identity
Blockchain use case : Data storage
Civic is a identity provider. I think is run on top of Ethereum platform. Think of it like Google, Facebook or Twitter account that you can use to sign up and sign in to other different services. All without the weight and data share we usually have to “pay” when using traditional services.
Atlant
What it is : share properties ownership using smart contract
Blockchain use case : share ownership + marketplace + direct transaction
Atlant is quite different. With the power of blockchain and smart contract, their goals is to tokenized the property ownership. One property can be owned by several people by releasing a token for it, more like a small ICO but for a property. The owners then, can sold the token inside the Atlant platform, or buy another one. Is a very interesting concept.
What do you think?
Is there any other blockchain use case that i haven’t mention? Or maybe you find another one?
And that’s it. As always, I might have wrong about this, because I’m only a human :) All the truth is belong to Allah. If you have different opinion or point of view, i always open for discussion.
Thanks for reading :)
