What is the application of the blockchain technology? How can this technology be used in the real world?

 So you heard about blockchain you got on the Internet, you read a few articles or watched a few videos to figure out how it works, and now that you understand that, you're still confused. How can this technology be used in the real world?

 Well, let's take a look at a few examples. But before we do that, let's quickly recap what a blockchain is. In simple terms, it's a distributed database that everyone can get a copy of. Every person with a copy can add new records to this database, but they cannot change any record that's already in there. This property makes blockchains great to record data in a transparent way, because everyone gets to see what's in it.

 So how can it be used? Well, in this content I'll give you 9 examples. Let's start with the most obvious and most popular application of blockchains and that is cryptocurrencies.

 When Bitcoin launched in 2008, it allowed people to directly transact with one another without having to trust third parties like banks. Since then, over 5,000 different cryptocurrencies have been created. But let's look beyond cryptocurrencies. Let's look at how blockchain technology can be used in cars for example. Ever heard of odometer fraud? By tampering with the odometer, someone can make a car appear to be newer and less worn out, resulting in customers paying more than what the car is actually worth. The government tries to counter this by collecting the mileage of cars when they get a safety inspection, but that's not enough. So instead we could replace regular odometers with smart ones that are connected to the Internet and frequently write the car's mileage to a blockchain. This would create a secure and digital certificate for each car and because we use a blockchain, no one can tamper with the data and everyone can look up a vehicles history. In fact, this is already being developed by boss's IoT lab and they are currently testing it on a fleet of 100 cars in Germany and Switzerland.

 So blockchains are great at keeping track of things over time. So besides odometers, you can also keep track of things like intellectual property or patents, or it can even function as a notary. See, a notary is someone who can confirm and verify signatures on a legal document, but we can just as well use a blockchain for that. The online website stamp dot IO allows you to add documents to the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain. Once added, you can always prove that you created a document at a certain point in time much like a notary, although right now blockchains aren't on the same level as notaries in the legal perspective.

 Another interesting application is digital voting. Right now, voting happens either on paper or on special computers that are running proprietary software. Voting on paper costs a lot of money, and electronic voting has security issues. In recent years, we've even seen countries move away from digital voting and adopting paper, again because they fear that electronic voting can be tampered with and influenced by hackers. But instead of paper, we could use blockchains to cast and store votes. Such the system would be very transparent as everyone could verify the voting count for themselves and it would make tampering with it very difficult. The Swiss company Agora is already working on such a system and it's going to be completely open source. But there are many challenges. First, you have to be able to identify voters without compromising their privacy. Secondly, if you allow people to vote with their own computers or phones, you have to take into account that those might be infected with malware designed to tamper with the voting process and a final example, a system like this also has to be able to withstand denial of service attacks because that could render the whole thing unusable. Definitely a tough nut to crack, but if it becomes reality, it could make for a more transparent and practical voting system.

 Let's move to yet another example, the food industry. They could use blockchain technologies to track their food products from the moment they are harvested or made to when they end up in the hands of customers. See, every year, almost half a million people die because of foodborne diseases, and that's partly because it takes too long to isolate the food that is causing harm. Blockchains could help us to create a digital certificate for each piece of food, proving where it came from and where it has been. So if a contamination is detected, we can trace it back to its roots and instantly notify other people who bought the same batch of the bad food. Walmart and IBM are currently working on such a system. It allowed them to trace the origin of a box of mangoes in just two seconds compared to days or even weeks with the traditional system. A system like this could be applied to other industries as well. We could use it to track regular products and battle counterfeit goods by allowing anyone to verify whether or not the product comes from the manufacturer you think it does. Another idea would be to track packages and shipments by using blockchain. That is something that IBM and container shipping giant mersk are working on. A decentralized ledger  to help with making global trade of goods a lot more efficient, alright, so far we've looked at ways blockchain can be used to keep track of information and verify its integrity.

 But blockchains can be even more powerful when we add smart contracts to them. These contracts are tiny computer programs that live on the blockchain and can perform actions when certain conditions are met. Insurance companies could use smart contracts to validate claims and calculate a payout, or they could allow us to only pay for car insurance when we're driving for instance. But it goes even further, with smart contracts, we can secure our own data on a blockchain. They could, for instance, allow us to store our medical records on a blockchain and only allow doctors to access them when we approve it with a digital signature.

 In the same fashion, you could store your personal identity on there and choose what data you want to reveal. Ordering alcohol in a bar, for instance, only requires you to prove that you're over the legal drinking age, and with smart contracts, you can deliver that proof without revealing anything else. Or think about collecting royalties for artists. A future streaming service could set up two smart contracts, one where users sent a monthly subscription to, and one that keeps track of what the user has listened to at the end of each month. The smart contract then automatically distributes this money to artists based on how many times their songs have been listened to. So as you can see, blockchain technology can be used in so many different ways. This content is just a brief overview of how they can be used and it's by no means a complete list of all the applications that would make for a very long content as there is so much going on in this space. Let me know when the comments below what your favorite application of blockchain technology is. And if you found this content interesting, consider getting share it. Thank you very much for reading and I hope to see you in the next time.