The Graph: Applications and Data to Use Web3
By: Nina Drokina
Tags: Web3, Dapps, The Graph Protocol, The Graph, Subgraph

Essentially being a trusted and decentralized database, Web 3 finds its applications in fields as varied as the energy sector, forestry, fisheries, mining, material recycling, air pollution monitoring, supply chain management, and their associated operations. The Graph developers can create applications that enhance the growth of interaction with internet-based systems in all these spheres.

Now, we already have dApps in social messaging (Whisper, Telegram, etc.), storage (IPFS, Swarm, Storj, etc.), state machines (Evn, custom, etc.) Data Feeds (Oraclize.it, town crier, etc.), Off-chain Computing (Cloud, VMS, etc.), Governance (Daos, Hard / Soft forks, etc.), will have the growing tendency in the future.

Also, the data and applications that will use the decentralized platform on Web3 are from these areas:

DeFi

Decentralized finance also called open finance, is a fledgling technology with potential. DeFi operates via decentralized, permissionless (without any central authority) applications, called DApps, built on a blockchain network, most commonly Etherum. Visionaries see this as an open-source alternative to every financial service we use today. Picture savings, loans, and trades, to insurance and even more, as all globally accessible.

Health Care

Accurate and detailed medical records are essential for the wellbeing of patients, as they contain valuable information about their medical history, which is needed for diagnostic purposes and to improve the examining doctor’s decision about suggested treatments. There are several countries putting their resources into leveraging blockchain technology to improve the quality of their citizens’ lives. In addition to Estonia already mentioned, UAE, Singapore, and other countries are implementing blockchain to store medical records, instead, dApp can store this info for health service.

Governance

When governance is centralized, it means there is a central authority that can come up with policies that may or may not take the contributors into consideration, and thus if the central authority makes a bad decision, it affects the contributors. However, a decentralized governance system where the contributors are responsible for the system’s decisions is the perfect solution. With the Web3 protocol, decentralized governance will blaze the trail for better administrative systems.

Grants & Certification

One of the greatest potentials of Web3 is that it can serve as a decentralized, permanently unalterable storage layer for any type of information, or asset, and not just used for the settlement of financial transactions. Creating DApps makes the technology suitable for storing and certifying all kinds of information, transactions, employment qualifications, and sensitive records/documents. What has attracted the greatest interest, however, is the certification of data and verification of identities. There are many, additional areas where certification using Web3 technology can be applied, including the issuing of land registry title deeds, etc.

A category like this needs all the transparency and privacy it can get, and an immutable technology like the blockchain makes data and records transparent enough to see, but private enough not to access. Creating DApps for grants will be a welcome development to be used on the Web3 platform because it will eliminate the monopolies that centralized systems have caused.

Marketplaces

In recent times we have seen the emergence of so many e-commerce platforms because it brings some ease of doing business to users of such platforms with DApps on the Web3 protocol because it gives users more control over their activities on related platforms.

Entertainment, gaming, Gambling Industry, Music/Movies

Entertainment is a wide area with lots of subcategories, and as with other categories, they need a decentralized system if their full potentials need to be harnessed. From intellectual property claims to music licensing, from movie platforms to gaming, DApps can be created for different entertainment-related systems. For example, It is a way to solve the problem of illegal downloading with several innovative ideas being introduced to pay artists and studios for legal downloads. Web 3 improves and transaction costs are further reduced, the decrease in the power of monopolies may accelerate, creating the democratization of power between consumers and firms.

Trust has continued to be one of the major challenges for the gambling industry in general. Especially for online gambling service providers, there are concerns with regards to the fairness of the random processes utilized (i.e., in the calculation of odds) and of course the protection of the funds that are involved in gambling transactions. At the moment, the crypto community has begun to enjoy some entertainment DApps, and that is proof enough that the mass adoption of DApps is around the corner.

IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming essential for many daily activities and a major technological component for smart cities, smart homes, and vehicles. In addition, wearable devices have opened up many opportunities in medicine, e.g., programs that monitor our health, tracking our daily exercise, and even enabling remote care. Exploiting the information generated by such IoT devices can effectively transform our homes and cities and have a profound effect on the quality of our lives while saving energy and providing us with useful, personalized information.

Social, messengers

With decentralized social apps, the possibilities are endless. Users of such social DApps will not be victims of monopolized systems where the social platforms have more power over user data than the users. Social DApps will eliminate the chances of data theft, as well as promote seamless social communications between users from all parts of the world.