Brilliant blockchain ideas

Blockchains offer a means of creating an immutable record of transactions on a peer-to-peer network of computers. Here are some brilliant ideas of things we could use blockchain for:

  • Record the usage of toilet paper in public toilets – As each square of toilet paper is dispensed a transaction is added to the blockchain so that an everlasting and never changing record of how many squares of toilet paper were used in each visit is maintained.
  • A single pixel of a famous photo – If you’re NASA and you own the rights to iconic images such as the Blue Marble from the 1972 Apollo mission, why sell the image as a whole as a single NFT when you can sell each individual pixel and create a unique and finite community of Blue Marblers.
  • Every tin of beans – In fact every piece of food produced is recorded on a blockchain, with transactions added each time it changes location, from manufacturer to wholesaler to supermarket to your kitchen. Your smart kitchen communicates via bluetooth with every piece of food within it so when you open the tin (or your robot butler does) that too is added to the blockchain so that everyone knows beyond a doubt that that tin of beans has been consumed.
  • Blockchain of blockchains – Create a blockchain that records that every transaction that happens on every other blockchain so that there is an immutable record of all the blockchains. Just in case.
  • Santa’s list of naughty and nice children – Every child in the world is added to the blockchain , and every time each of them does something naughty or nice another block is added, enabling Santa (or more probably Elves with PhD’s in data science) to maintain an unarguable list of which children are getting presents this year. Santa could sell licenses to enable apps to be built that show the data for convincing children to behave or marketing toys to them.

If you’re looking for something more helpful, this demo of how a blockchain works is great.