Web3 Use Case - Decentralized Blogging

The Problem

For the 99.99% of the blogs out there, hosting on web 2.0 works. There is no need to have your blogs on a decentralized hosting platform.

No one is going to take your blog down. But for the 0.01% of the blogs out there, a hosting provider or even the government will want to take your blog down for public consumption.

Why?

There are some legitimate reasons. You could be committing a crime with the content on your blog. And they should be taken down, especially if it involves violence.

But often, it could be because they don’t like your content and are in a position in power where they can take down your content.

It could be something uncontroversial like health and nutrition related. A person could blog about the benefits of supplementing with Vitamin D. Nutrition scientists have increased the recommended dosage of Vitamin D over the years. The dosage recommended now would have been considered dangerous years ago.

I doubt the authorities would take your blog down for advocating high Vitamin D usage, but you never know who will be in power today, tomorrow, or in the far future.

The Solution

Web 3.0 solves this. Instead of hosting your blog centrally on a server, the blog can use decentralized hosting. This is where the blog is hosted on many servers. If someone tries to shut down one of the servers hosting your blog, there are 99 other servers hosting your content.

So if they shut down 90 of the servers, ten servers are hosting your blog.

And some of those servers are being hosted in someone’s garage in various countries around the world where it’s not so easy to shut down.

As long as one server is out hosting your content, you will still be able to serve your blog to others.

When someone updates their decentralized blog, it uses peer-to-peer technology to update the content on all the servers hosting their blog. So the blog content is the same on all the servers.

This allows the blog to be served up from any server when a person tries to access the blog on a browser.

The Problem

The father and mother of a family die, leaving two kids, one home, and a mixture of stocks and cash in the bank.

The father and mother made a will, but there is a dispute about whether the executioner follows the will. What if the executioner is not following the will, withholding the money in the bank, and preventing the surviving family members from their share of the inheritance?

What if the executioner is one of the kids, and they feel that the will is invalid and they are not getting their fair share? That person may improperly change or falsify the will, so it goes in their favor.

So there can be a lot of issues that arise depending on the executioner.

Could Web3 and smart contracts solve or alleviate this issue?

The Solution

To simplify the problem, we will just deal with the will involving the stocks and cash in the bank.

1. So the family hires a developer to create a smart contract will.
2. In the smart contract, upon the death of the father and mother, the stocks and money will be split 50/50 between the two kids.
3. The Smart Contract will connect to the local county database via API to check if the death certificates for the father and mother exist.
   1. The code can check the local county database for the death certificate daily or weekly.
4. If the death certificate exists for both parents, then it will connect to the Bank via APIs and transfer the ownership of the stocks and cash to the kids.

And that is how smart contracts can be used to replace an executor of a family will.

The Problem

Your son or daughter wants a new e-bike or something rather expensive. As a parent, you don’t want to spoil your kids with costly gifts they may or may not use.

But kids persist and will keep begging, persuading you to buy them that gift.

So you make a deal with your kid that if they get straight A’s, you will buy them an e-bike.

From the kid’s perspective - you get straight A’s, and your parents still don’t buy you that e-bike. They say the e-bike is too dangerous, which they may have a point, but they did break their word.

And the parents will say that we didn’t have a formal contract and we're just joking or saying it so you would concentrate on your grades.

The parents and kids could have made a contract, but who will enforce that? The parents can just disregard the agreement.

The Solution

That is where the smart contract could solve this problem.

A smart contract is code that runs on the blockchain - a decentralized, lightweight database where entries into that database can’t be edited or deleted.

A developer or a no-code program can be used to create a smart contract.

So how would this work?

1. Imagine there is a no-code website that creates smart contracts designed to look up your kid’s grades at school
2. You would go onto this smart contract website
3. Create a smart contract with the following details
   1. Checks to see if your kid got straight A’s from the school’s report card website
      1. The school report card website can provide an API that you can use in the smart contract
      2. Or, if there is no API, you can enter the username/password for the report card website, and the smart contract will scrape the webpage for your kid’s grades
   2. If the kid did get straight A’s, then trigger a purchase of the e-bike using funds from the parent’s bank account or credit card
      1. The bank account or credit card number will be encrypted in the smart contract so no other party can steal it
         1. Cryptocurrencies can be used too
            1. The smart contract will have the address and amount of the cryptocurrencies needed to purchase the e-bike.
   3. The smart contract would run the day after the school’s report card is published.

Running the smart contract:

1. The day after the school’s report card is published, the smart contract will run
2. It will use the API or username/password to login into the school’s report card website
3. Check your kid’s grades
4. If your kid got straight A’s, it would use the credit card number to purchase the e-bike from the e-bike’s website.
5. The e-bike gets delivered to your door for your kid to use

I see smart contracts having a lot of value for little things like motivating your kids to get good grades.