Although I am very much interested in monetary aspect of blockchain technology, it is the utility that makes me go Wow! We can do that? The technology gives room for many unique ideas on usage to flourish and we are barely scratching the surface.
I know that there are more awesome ideas out there on what and how to utilize the blockchain and what is stopping them from being fully realised is investors. It takes a whole lot of packaging for a venture capitalist looking for a good business prospect to consider investing in a blockchain protocol. This is because the blockchain community is still a wild frontier. Most of what is going on are experiments, trial and error and there are a lot of errors out there.
Despite this, more and more projects are coming into the scene with superb finish and unique utility as their main draw. The DeFi space is filled with all sorts of projects now. Shitcoins, shitty airdrops, hackers, rugpulls, con artists, fake sites, dumps, high fees, poorly maintained exchanges and so on, This is not an uncommon experience in the world. The Gold Rush had such shady characters shadowing prospectors all day long. It is nothing new.
Many blockchain supported blogging platforms have come and gone over the years. On these platforms, the promise of being paid to write was a draw. What went wrong with the ones that fell is anyone's guess. It could have been poor planning, refusal to carry the community along with future plans, poor UI, no innovation after launch, low price—it could have been anything or nothing at all. It could have simply been that people were not ready for what they were selling.
One of the common problems of the blockchain space that I have found to be very human, is the need to copy success. There are more copies of successful projects put there than there are original ideas. For every new idea launched on a blockchain, there are about a hundred copies. For some utility, like exchanges for example, this is good but for a project like a blogging platform for instance, it's a drag.
The chances of winning by being the exact copy of the original is very slim. Attempting to cut away from the original without any clear idea or vision on how to do so, is also a bad idea. It is better you create unique projects or know what you want to do different on an already existing project instead of winging it and hoping for the best.
Blockchain technology is very much in its raw form. The user can still see the bones, the muscle, the pulsating heart of their favourite project. Bad actors have access and they are many like a locust swarm. It therefore makes it difficult for not only big businesses but also governments to venture into the space. I truly see a potential for clean and transparent governance in blockchain technology.
Recently, the Nigerian government began a drive to amalgamate the different identity options that have floated over the years into one, ensuring a single database for every citizen just as you have with the US social security number. I think this is a welcome development. A single database solves problems such as identifying the number of persons living in different parts of the country, the employed and unemployed, the educated and uneducated, the increase and reduction in population, the areas that need basic necessities of life and so on. Ethnic groups that have long been pressed under the deliberate attempt to seem like majority in an ethnically stratified society will find a voice and platform to speak. The positives are many for such a project but it is also prone to abuse and manipulation.
In a country that shares its wealth based on majority of ethnicity, number of states occupied, contribution to the national purse, there will always be infighting. Each party will seek any means to get more than its fair share and those without a voice will be denied what is their due. Data has been manipulated many times before. Rewriting the history of a people is the job of most governments. Sometimes all they need to do is remove every offending material from public domain and in no time, memory becomes distorted and then forgotten.
The blockchain technology with its feature of immutability makes manipulation almost redundant. You cannot fight a tyrant even though the evidence of his tyranny are everywhere. Yet evidence is vital in the struggle for emancipation. Every society seeks leaders that can be held accountable, that are not above the law, that due to strictures, are unable to change the narrative, corrupt the power structure or seek truncate a people's dream.
A single database that carries the identity of each citizen built on a secure blockchain protocol, averse to manipulation, decentralized, inaccessible to politicians and their acolytes will do more good for everyone. A central database that includes inputs from every part of government, from the wards to the federal level, that takes in all the paper work of jurisprudence, the wrangling around the fine print of bills among lawmakers, the processes of the police, etc will change the game drastically. It means that elections, one of the first stages of fraud and corruption in virtually every country in the world will be done without hitch and true results will be published.
It means that those who have retired from active service and are due for pensions will be easily identified and no identity thief will be able to claim monies for the dead. It means that citizens who do not pay their tax can be easily identified. It means that the literacy of every community can be gauged correctly and the needful done. It means accountability of government. It means the economic truth of a country can be ascertained instead of those political grandstanding and rhetoric that we are used to. The utility of the national budget can be seen and payments to contractors can be compared to work done. The tools to create such a network are out there. It just needs a coming together of minds for it to come alive.
Having said all of the above, the possibility of a hack, of slow blocks, of many of the different issues that ails any blockchain from day to day cannot be ignored. Can the whole soul of a country be stored on a blockchain protocol? Can any country withstand such a hack if or when it occurs? Are there ways through which the possibility of such a protocol failing, whether through human hands or the fickle hands of computers, can be reduced or removed? I do not know.
As time unfolds, the blockchain developers will find more and more ways to tighten security and discourage bad actors. It would be good to have a truly secure chain that can guarantee the platform to handle so huge a task.
I simply speculate. I dream. I hope. The blockchain space has gained a lot of ground in the world of finance and gaming. It is time it enters the society by solving the ordinary every day problems of the average person. Innovative ideas are what will take us to that place. It is what will sell what we have seen to those who do not care for computers or technology.
If a chain can bring about more robust relationship with the average person on the street, touching him or her where it matters—job, food, health, security, shelter, love, history, religion, peace, land, water and so on—there will be more onboarding than we can handle. The blockchain can be more than a financial instrument, a gaming app, a blogging site. It can be more than an ATM card. It can be more than a space for speculations like mine here. It is possible and I hope that I live to see the advent of social conscious projects on the blockchain space. Good morning.