Hi there. It’s Brady.
One common example that is raised for smart contract applications is escrow, where an account holds a large sum of money as payment and only releases the funds if predefined conditions are met.
A typical setting for this is the purchase of real estate. In simplified terms, the buyer of a piece of property can place their money in escrow, and the seller will know that they’re legit and ready to make a purchase. The inspection processes can move forward, and once everything is deemed kosher, the funds are released to the seller and the deed goes to the buyer. The escrow agent earns some fees, and everyone is happy because they got what they wanted.
But wait! What if you could, as so many entrepreneurs like to say, eliminate the middleman? A smart contract could, in theory, do precisely that. The person who wanted to buy a house can still buy a house. The person who wanted to sell a house can still sell a house. There isn’t an escrow agent who earns commission, but there are some blockchain-related transaction fees. Everyone is still happy, and they get to save a few thousand dollars, maybe more.
I bring this up to make the point that the coverage we see about blockchain projects often skews toward non-fungible profile pics and tokens that are vessels for financial speculation. The applications that could fundamentally change existing systems aren’t covered so much.
Khamila took a look at blockchain projects in Indonesia that don’t place cryptocurrency trading at their core. She specifically examined applications in philanthropy and agriculture. You can check out her article here.
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