In the past few years, the blockchain has gradually evolved into a crucial technology. Startups have absorbed billions of dollars from traditional money and token sales to develop software and proof of concept, and use blockchain to solve many of the problems with online services focused on puzzles. But blockchain technology will be the mainstream adoption?
Blockchain promises to protect us from DDoS attacks and data tampering, prevent election fraud, accelerate transactions, reduce costs, increase transparency and reviewability. These are features that every IT expert and software developer can appreciate, but they are also taken for granted to average users. In fact, blockchain needs a specific value proposition for the average user if it is to be truly attractive.
Large tech companies like Facebook and Google gather and store large amounts of user information and use it to improve algorithms that run their services and generate revenue. But users have no ownership of the data and must rely on those centralized services to store and secure their information. This actually locked them in those platforms, depriving them of their choices and controls. If Facebook closes your account, you lose all the data, connections, reputations, preferences, and interactions that you have generated over the years. The same goes for Google, YouTube, Amazon, Twitter and other sites.
In addition, there are some cases similar to the massive data breach released this week, in which 143 million consumers' social security numbers, addresses and other data are exposed to hackers and identity thieves. Blockchain architecture allows user data to be filtered out of server applications that use it. Some companies are exploring this concept to allow users to regain control of their data.
For example, Enigma, which uses blockchain to protect user data privacy, is also shared with cloud services and third parties. Enigma's platform protects data by encrypting the data, breaking the data into pieces, and randomly assigning unidentifiable pieces of data to multiple nodes in its network. They can grant or deny access to third parties and services that want to calculate their data without revealing the data.
Social media is another area where blockchain startups are disintegrating. Some platforms increase privacy and data ownership by storing information on the blockchain and allow users to control how their data is accessed, shared, and monetized. The key idea for blockchain applications should be to move the Internet from an application-centric model to a user-centric structure, maintain control of its digital footprint, and decide who will access it.
For the blockchain, we still have some way to go.