Blockchain Might Help Internet Users To Earn Money For Letting Companies Use Their Data

Blockchain has been in the helm of things for over a decade now. What initially started as a support for cryptocurrencies the innovative technology has gone on to become one of the best inventions after the internet.

Blockchain has been used in several industries and processes. Right from behemoth industries like banking, finance, and e-commerce, to niche sectors like gaming and manufacturing process management, blockchain is everywhere, in every industry. What has added to its success is that several giant corporations across the globe have joined the blockchain game. From IBM in the US to TCS in India, blockchain has grown leaps and bounds over the last ten years.

For years together internet companies like Google and FB have been monetizing customer data. Both the internet stalwarts have been facing criticism over data privacy for quite a long time. However, users will now be hopefully able to make money by simply letting companies utilise your data, which can be made possible through blockchain. A certain section of the internet community had been demanding for decades that they should be paid for allowing companies to access their data.

Blockstack, a blockchain brainchild of the Princeton University Department of Engineering & Computer Science alumni, is working on a project which will allow internet users to have complete control over there data. The company will create a blockchain based decentralised Internet system, which would restrict companies from accessing user’s data. Those who don’t mind companies using your data for a commercial purpose can sell their own data to companies like Alphabet and Facebook.

If Blockstack succeeds in creating a decentralised Internet, it will completely change the way we look at data and privacy.

When the first cryptocurrency was launched way back in 2009, history was created as digital assets turn the financial world upside down. Bitcoin went on to become one of the most powerful assets and one of the most expensive ones too. However, other cryptocurrencies which were launched after Bitcoin could not repeat the same success story. Due to this several people, especially an economist stated that cryptocurrency was another internet bubble which will burst in due course of time. In fact, cryptocurrencies had the worst time since Inception in 2018 with almost every cryptocurrency chapped bleeding, many of them losing as much as 90% in price value. Bitcoin itself kept losing the price battle for 6 months continuously, finally breaking the streak in February earlier this year.

Nonetheless, what we can take away from blockchain and cryptocurrency is the power of decentralization. It is this feature of any blockchain that makes them as successful as they would ever want to be. Blockstack will be banking heavily on decentralization feature to make its vision materialized.

One of the most important benefits of the platform would be that the user will be able to completely cut data access for companies. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai were among the new last year for all the wrong reasons. Their respective companies were found in unethical use of customer data compromising privacy on several occasions. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal might still be haunting Zuckerberg.

A blockchain-based browser Brave has been doing a similar thing for quite some time. It rewards customers for simply watching advertisements. Rewards mechanism is one of the highlights of Brave, as it remunerates its users in cryptocurrencies. Similarly, Blockstack can adopt the same approach, and ask companies to pay the users through cryptocurrencies.

Innovation is what makes blockchain special, and it continues to do so. As per a recent survey by UN World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the United States and China lead the way in blockchain innovation, with both of them filing about 870 and 960 new blockchains respectively.

Trevor Holman

Trevor Holman follows crypto industry since 2011. He joined CryptoNewsZ as a news writer and he provides technical analysis pieces and current market data. He is also an avid trader. In his free time, he loves to explore unexplored places.

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