Vitalik Buterin shares his thoughts on non-financial use-cases for blockchain

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of both Ethereum & Bitcoin Magazine, took to Twitter to share his thoughts on non-financial use cases for blockchain technology.

In a paper titled “Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?” Buterin expressed a growing interest in using blockchain technology outside of the financial industry. He noted that while other industries have been slow to adopt the technology, he can “see the value of blockchains in many situations.”

Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?https://t.co/T6jlAzCvew

Big thanks to @pujaohlhaver @shreyjaineth for review! You should also check what they have to say; they have some unique important perspectives that are beyond the scope of this post.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 12, 2022

He said that distributed ledger technology can help with “really important goals like trust and censorship resistance but sometimes purely for convenience.” In the paper, he stated that “blockchains as data stores” could be quite significant in the grand scheme of things and that he expects them to be used for “cheap and reliable data retrieval.”

Another potential use case that was discussed was open-source metrics — a concept still in its infancy that would allow diversity and decentralization to be measured:

“An ideal voting mechanism would somehow keep diversity in mind, giving greater weight to projects that are supported not just by the largest number of coins or even humans, but by the largest number of truly distinct perspectives.”

Buterin concluded his paper by saying, “I have a large degree of uncertainty in exactly what level of non-financial blockchain usage in each of these categories makes sense, but it seems clear that blockchains as an enabling tool should not be dismissed.”

Ethereum 2.0 remains on the horizon, and with it, the proposed network switch to proof-of-stake. The update has been delayed several times and recently had a successful launch on Ethereum’s Ropsten test network. The project’s representatives have most recently said that they hope to release the upgrade to the mainnet by August 2022.