We live in the Information Era where data plays a major role in decision making- both for companies as well as common man.. but how can one be sure the data is not manipulated? Addressing this problem comes the blockchain.
Let's understand where few cases where data is being Manipulated.
Case 1: Perceived Pricing
Most of the products and services like real estate, stock markets, product value in a e-commerce, almost everything in our society depends on perceived values, meaning there's no real value- value is set depending on supply, demand, built-up people's perception
Example 1: Real Estate
You want to buy a land in particular street in MG Road- you try to search for prices online- the sites that ranks up are 99 acres, Magicbricks- where brokers or owners put a particular value for the land. As they know you'll bargain, they'll put up which say will be 40% higher than regular value.
You ask the previously purchased value, year from the seller- which he'll manipulate to greater value (Even if it involves showing fake documents)- even if they say real values, they might have been manipulated by higher price by their seller. In short, there's no Unaltered data source to take decide price- you depend on what's available online or trust people's words
Example 2: Reseller
Most of the cases, there's no rules on the resellers on products that doesn't have MRP ( Example: fruits), do you know what's the price of 1kg of apple that's given to the farmer vs that's sold to you- what if its 4X-5X? how do you know this data to make sure you're not paying way too much ( All online players pricing will be similar)
Example 3: Hospital pricing
Most of the Hospitals in India have differential pricing technique where they charge different price for different customers depending on whether they have health insurance or not, why should you be charged more just because you have health insurance?
Case 2: Authenticity
Example 1: Product in an e-commerce
Consider you buy a costly product from an e-commerce store, how do you know if its the real product and not duplicate, how can one be sure the product is not a second hand product, not all products have authenticity checker coders and resold products literally can't be checked with authenticity checker
Example 2: Documents Verification
Consider you're hiring, you have interviewed potential employer and decide to hire him, you ask for the documents including last month pay slip (can be modified), once you hire the person, you ask for documents for tax deduction- like Broadband bill which again can be edited,
While there maybe ways - where authenticity can be checked, but there's always a loophole.
Example 3: News
Phys.Org reports 86% of internet users admit being duped by fake news- most of which are spread through Facebook- news changes the entire perception of people for almost anything- A person can simply say he has sold 30,000 units of book in Amazon and promote in facebook as popular author.
Currently there's no governing body to say if the news is an Opinion, Verified news or simply fake news, say there's governing body to it, what can be the procedure to make data is not manipulated again by bribes? can we save who verified each data to take action against that person?
Like-wise there are lot of data manipulation cases like identity theft, direct data manipulation through bribes etc. Can there be one medium (To keep it simple, Say an Universal encrypted QR Scan Code for each product/data) of source where data can be backtracked and extremely difficult or impossible to manipulate data, which is decentralized (not stored in single source). This eliminates middle men and helps to speed up multiple processes including international transactions to processes that involves paper work etc?
This is where Blockchain Technology comes into picture with a promise to solve most of these problems in sophisticated manner.
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