Chapter 9. Enterprise Use Cases

This chapter focuses on how blockchain and smart contracts have penetrated the industry. We start this chapter by introducing the concept of the Internet of Money, and explore how smart contracts have started affecting technology, society, and economics in various industries. Specifically, we will explore 18 use cases for blockchains and 12 use cases for smart contracts. We conclude this chapter by designing various modules of a command-line interface-based, decentralized, microblogging platform and deploy it over a private blockchain.

After studying this chapter, you will be able to:

• Appreciate the concept of the Internet of Money
• Know about various use cases for smart contracts and blockchains
• Understand the building blocks of a microblogging DApp
• Explore the security and administrative properties of a DApp

"What you seek is seeking you"                                    - Rumi

Before we start this chapter, I want you to take a step back and ponder on the preceding...

Banking and payments

The blockchain is going to disrupt the banking industry the way the World Wide Web did the media industry. It is destroying regulations and compliances arising due to borders, as cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum are making cross border transactions in seconds, with substantially lower transfer fees. This is connecting the investors of developed countries to the innovators of developing countries. Banks such as Barclays are implementing blockchains to strengthen their operational capabilities. Banks are also seed-funding and investing in blockchain-based start-ups.

Insurance

The global market of insurance is based on trust. A blockchain is a new way of managing trust. It can be used to verify the insured person's identity, as well as interact with real-time data using frameworks such as oraclize to make amendments on the sum assured during payouts. Smart contracts for automobile and crop insurance can be powerful in determining a payout, without any significant...

Networking and the Internet of Things

Blockchains can enable communication and micro payments between machines, without human intervention. The economy of machines is an emerging field that will prove crucial in steering innovation in automation.

Project Oaken is an award-winning, Ethereum-based, smart contract project that uses the IoT to pay automated tolls to tolling booths for self-drive and manual cars. The prototype was tested successfully using Tesla, resulting in a $100K win at the Dubai Blockchain Hackathon. Currently, Oaken Innovations have teamed up with Toyota research and MIT Media Labs to research such prototypes for an autonomous drive future.

Voting

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."                                                                                                      - Joseph Stalin

Data scientist might be the sexiest job according to the Harvard...

Smart contract use cases

In this section, we will be discussing how smart contracts as a technology can disrupt every aspect of society and its economy.

Figure 9.2 depicts 12 use cases for smart contracts:

Figure 9.2: Smart contract use cases

Insurance

Most of the insurance processes are disjointed by nature with many human interventions. Smart contracts along with the IoT can make self-aware decisions for automated insurance payouts.

It increases savings by reducing duplicated work in verifying reports and policies.

Trade finance

Smart contracts facilitate faster letters of credit and payment initiations, leading to streamlined international transfers. This increases the liquidity of assets, improves efficiency in creating contract agreements, and promotes faster approval of payments.

Derivatives

Smart contracts eliminate duplicate processes during a trading life cycle by streamlining post-trade processes. It supports real-time valuation of promotions, automated external event processing, and automated...

Decentralized microblogging

In this section, we are going to explore the design of a basic Ethereum-based microblogging platform. Using these platforms, new users can register to get a personal microblogging account, which they can you to send anonymous tweets to a decentralized Ethereum-based private blockchain, with comments disabled by default.

But why do we need a decentralized blockchain for tweeting, and more importantly why are the users anonymous? To answer this question we need to understand the administrative and security constraints of a normal centralized microblogging platform, which we discuss in the next section.

Administrative and security constraints

Popular microblogging platforms such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Weibo (the Chinese variant of microblog, dominated by Sina and Tencent) are basically centralized social network services that are prone to problems.

The problems are mainly in two separate dimensions. One is technical, another one is social. In the technical dimension...

Summary

We began this chapter by understanding the concept behind the Internet of Money. We saw how programmable money is like building a concrete house that requires a lot of prior planning. Then we discussed various use cases of smart contracts and the blockchain. We listed almost every aspect of society and the economy that has a chance of getting disrupted by this revolutionary technology. We concluded this chapter by designing a decentralized microblogging application and deployed it into our private blockchain.

In Chapter 10, BaaS and the Dark Web Market, we will discuss certain enterprise-level frameworks that are using Ethereum blockchain to set up a development platform. We also have a glimpse of the dark web marketplace and how to explore it safely.