What's blockchain?
Currently, most people use a trusted middleman such as a bank or notary to make a transaction. Blockchain allows consumers and suppliers to connect directly, removing the need for a third party.
Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger. or (de)centralized database, that records every type of transactions and publish these on the network so everyone can see.
What's a usecase?
A usecase is a methodology used in system analysis to identify, clarify, and organize system requirements. The usecase is made up of a set of possible sequences of interactions between systems and users in a particular environment and related to a particular goal.
The goal is mostly described as problem that need to be solved or an opportunity that can be achieved.
What's "Help with blockchain usecase"?
At the moment it's clear that blockchain has potential to solved the following use cases:
But what more can we achieve with blockchain?
"Help with blockchain usecase" is a reoccurring article in which I want to challenge and/or encourage the readers to think or share about new ideas we can achieve with blockchain.
This usecase
While taking a bath this morning I started thinking about how lucky I am. I won't go into the reason why I feel so lucky, but I started to wonder if I can get more lucky, so I started to invent methods of finding out if I can get more luck. My mind dwelt on receiving some financial luck, but the crypto-market is in a bear and has gone down more than 50% the past weeks so blockchain wasn't going to do it for me today. I’d be better of spending that money on a lottery ticket than buying a crypto...
Lottery has never worked out for me as I've never won more than €10 in prize money. Last month for example I played in two and didn’t won anything. One was from the state lottery of which I invested €15 that could have paid out €12.500.000 and the other was on my zip code in which I played for €13 and could have shared €1.000.000 with all my neighbors that also participated.
Lottery has been around for centuries in one form or another. Over the years, it has evolved and some rules have changed but the underlying ideas remains the same. It’s a business in which the companies always position themselves to win. Sometimes they lose small other times they win big but in the long haul they will always make profit, so this means that as a customer you are always in a disadvantage.
I've always known that the chances that you’ll get hit by a bus were greater than winning the mega-jackpot. But despite this knowledge I always asked myself whether this chance is small or whether it’s just zero. What happens behind the scenes? Are the winning numbers and whether a winner will be allocated not determined in advance? These are some questions that you’ll never get an reassuring answer on as you don’t receive insight into the machine and/or formula that determines these things.
As blockchains is an open ledger and one of its ideals is to make software that are open-sourced I started to look on the internet if there are companies or communities that are working on a decentralized lottery system on blockchain. It’s seems that there aren’t allot of lotteries that make use of blockchain yet, but there’s one company that has put it’s software including formula on github. The company is called FireLotto and they seem to have a working product and are currently having an ICO to receive money in order to marketing their brand. Looking on the their github I find one issue regarding the determination of winner.
It describes one of my concerns and a employee seems to addressed it right on. I’m not sure whether the issue has been fixed already in their system, but these are the kind of things that can give me more trust in lotteries and could attract more customers in my opinion.
Please read the whitepaper on their website and comment on whether you think blockchain can bring something positive to this business and what exaclty.