Interesting Applications of the Blockchain
In an earlier post, I discussed why the blockchain is important and you should get familiar with it.
More and more articles are starting to pop up, each mentioning some startup or project applying blockchain technology to address an issue. Below are three that caught my eye this week:
How One Startup Will Use Blockchain Tech to Disrupt Online Gaming
Play, a Chinese/international startup team that plans to disrupt the incumbent online game industry using blockchain tech to remove trust, has recently 'gone public' as a decentralized autonomous company (DAC) on crowdfunding platform DACx.com.
In its prospectus, Play claims it offers a third-party verifiable mechanism to ensure true randomness and fairness for gamers by placing the games' logic on a blockchain. This would remove the need for trust in centralized institutions, it says.
I like the idea of using the blockchain to verify randomness. Implemented correctly, this approach not only provides untainted randomness but allows people to go back and explore previous "rolls of the die" and see how random they were. (If you're interested in random numbers and how one determines if a series of numbers are truly random, take a look at the NIST Guide to Statistical Tests. Also, James McCaffrey, over at MSDN Magazine, has a great article on Implementing the National Institute of Standards and Technology Tests of Randomness Using C#.)
I'm currently looking for the company's prospectus to see if there's more details and if I truly understand what it is they're doing with a blockchain.
Is blockchain the key to the Internet of Things? IBM and Samsung think it might just be
If the Internet of Things (IoT) is to be the quantum leap in computing that many people are predicting, then to start with it needs to prove that it is feasible to link up billions of devices on networks around the world - without running into cost and privacy concerns.
One development that could make this possible is the 'blockchain' system pioneered by Bitcoin.
...
According to IBM, the aim is for the technology to serve as ledgers, or record-keepers, for many billions of transactions which the IoT will generate.
This has the feel of a marketing puff piece but I have no doubt that somewhere within IBM and Samsung there are truly people playing with the IoT and the blockchain.
Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin Micropayments Might Prevent Content Piracy
Content creators are experiencing a growing problem today that just won’t go away: piracy. Once they put their content online, it’s suddenly susceptible to theft, leading to a loss in potential revenue.
...
Streamium allows for content creators to stream live videos and have viewers pay for content by the second. The platform connects the two people together in-browser, creates the payment channel needed for the microtransaction and pushes the content to the blockchain when it’s ready.
The article actually mentions three companies or business interests, with Streamium being just one of them. The phrase "...pushes the content to the blockchain when it's ready" caught my interest but there's no additional detail on what precisely that means.
The other two approaches, one by FrostWire and the other headed by Gary Fung (of isoHunt), seem to mostly concentrate on micropayments. Bitcoin is great for micropayments because from the get-go, Bitcoin has been quite divisible. Sure, a dollar can be divided into 100 cents but your average person is not going to have access to or the ability to handle 0.01 cents. Bitcoin, naturally, can handle fractions of fractions. Of course, when you talk about Bitcoin you are also talking about the blockchain.
In any case, more and more people are starting to take notice of blockchain and blockchain-like approaches and how they might be applied to situations where decentralization, openness (anyone can download and examine a blockchain), and verification could help.
Sooner rather than later might be the right time to dig in learn more about how a blockchain works.
More and more articles are starting to pop up, each mentioning some startup or project applying blockchain technology to address an issue. Below are three that caught my eye this week:
How One Startup Will Use Blockchain Tech to Disrupt Online Gaming
Play, a Chinese/international startup team that plans to disrupt the incumbent online game industry using blockchain tech to remove trust, has recently 'gone public' as a decentralized autonomous company (DAC) on crowdfunding platform DACx.com.
In its prospectus, Play claims it offers a third-party verifiable mechanism to ensure true randomness and fairness for gamers by placing the games' logic on a blockchain. This would remove the need for trust in centralized institutions, it says.
I like the idea of using the blockchain to verify randomness. Implemented correctly, this approach not only provides untainted randomness but allows people to go back and explore previous "rolls of the die" and see how random they were. (If you're interested in random numbers and how one determines if a series of numbers are truly random, take a look at the NIST Guide to Statistical Tests. Also, James McCaffrey, over at MSDN Magazine, has a great article on Implementing the National Institute of Standards and Technology Tests of Randomness Using C#.)
I'm currently looking for the company's prospectus to see if there's more details and if I truly understand what it is they're doing with a blockchain.
Is blockchain the key to the Internet of Things? IBM and Samsung think it might just be
If the Internet of Things (IoT) is to be the quantum leap in computing that many people are predicting, then to start with it needs to prove that it is feasible to link up billions of devices on networks around the world - without running into cost and privacy concerns.
One development that could make this possible is the 'blockchain' system pioneered by Bitcoin.
...
According to IBM, the aim is for the technology to serve as ledgers, or record-keepers, for many billions of transactions which the IoT will generate.
This has the feel of a marketing puff piece but I have no doubt that somewhere within IBM and Samsung there are truly people playing with the IoT and the blockchain.
Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin Micropayments Might Prevent Content Piracy
Content creators are experiencing a growing problem today that just won’t go away: piracy. Once they put their content online, it’s suddenly susceptible to theft, leading to a loss in potential revenue.
...
Streamium allows for content creators to stream live videos and have viewers pay for content by the second. The platform connects the two people together in-browser, creates the payment channel needed for the microtransaction and pushes the content to the blockchain when it’s ready.
The article actually mentions three companies or business interests, with Streamium being just one of them. The phrase "...pushes the content to the blockchain when it's ready" caught my interest but there's no additional detail on what precisely that means.
The other two approaches, one by FrostWire and the other headed by Gary Fung (of isoHunt), seem to mostly concentrate on micropayments. Bitcoin is great for micropayments because from the get-go, Bitcoin has been quite divisible. Sure, a dollar can be divided into 100 cents but your average person is not going to have access to or the ability to handle 0.01 cents. Bitcoin, naturally, can handle fractions of fractions. Of course, when you talk about Bitcoin you are also talking about the blockchain.
In any case, more and more people are starting to take notice of blockchain and blockchain-like approaches and how they might be applied to situations where decentralization, openness (anyone can download and examine a blockchain), and verification could help.
Sooner rather than later might be the right time to dig in learn more about how a blockchain works.
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