Blockchain can fix everything

I am having multiple discussions about what the future might look like, and how blockchain can simply fix everything. We just need a bit of traditional trust in the decentralized, trustless by default, environment.

Decentralized stairs in New York’s Vessel

🎓 School diplomas

I’ve seen my university diploma just once. Right after a last exam, I jetted off to a new exciting adventure, missing the graduation ceremony and instructing my school to send the diploma home. I haven’t been required to show it even once. So much for graduating with honours!

First, blockchain can fix that. All major schools should follow MIT lead and issue digital diplomas using blockchain. In a current emerging Layer 2 environment, MIT can use rollups to instantly issue thousands of diplomas every year and push them onto Ethereum. Cheap, clean, and relatively safe solution for an institution.

🏠 Home equity

If you own a house (or can pretend that you own one, for the sake of the exercise), and want to do remodelling or an upgrade, you go to the bank and get a loan. In May 2021, in the US such a loan carries a 5-25% APR. Now imagine that with the power of blockchain and DeFi your house can have an IPO (or, rather, Initial House Offering, IHO) and sell, let’s say, 5% of its equity to the market.

The transaction is simple — you show off your house, it’s interior, exterior, potential, and show your plan, ie you plan to upgrade the backyard, the basement, etc. Prospective buyers on the other end of DeFi can buy shares of your house, knowing that, a $1 million asset can become $1.2 million once you take time and money to renovate basement. The holders of these “home shares” can resell them on the market (liquidity), or keep them, investing in various real estate market without being exposed for tax purposes (ie domicile tax rules).

There’s no interest to repay. You and the holder of equity can benefit from appreciation in property price, city can benefit from extra work getting done (which otherwise might be delayed or not done, depending on credit) and increased tax base, and neighbours can benefit from both more real estate available for people (ie if basement is rented out), and beautification of the street.

🖼 Art collections

Physical art has long been used to get loans, with art being collateral. However, art appraisal is not an exact science, and art liquidity is generally low. Now, imagine that such art collections can be put onto blockchain (NFTs), and used to boost liquidity. Each art collection can have their own “IPO”, or rather Initial Art Collection Offering (IACO), and participants can buy small stakes, thus allowing for market price discovery and liquidity.

There will be “big names” offering stamp of approval, which will help ease market worries. Combined with more transparency, liquidity and price discovery that is available with blockchain and fractional ownership, asset holders can transact directly with the whole world.