Ethereum-based projects

Ethereum is like Bitcoin, but it's for code! It's the blockchain for smart contracts and it stores immutable code and logic in the blockchain. Immutable is a very important word here. That's pretty much all you need to know about Ethereum. So, what's possible right now? Let's have a look in the following sections.

Gnosis

Gnosis is market-driven forecasting technology. It is based on proven scientific research. It has its own platform known as the Gnosis platform and you can build your own platform on top of it. It basically makes trading predictions. And correct predictions are given the tokens that were at stake for incorrect predictions. Visit https://gnosis.pm/ to access Gnosis.

The way it works is that you trade predictions or you bet on predictions. The following is the front page of Gnosis:

Gnosis front page

In the preceding screenshot, do note the question that is being asked on their home page. Will Dubai's world record for the largest New Year's Eve fireworks display get broken? You can vote yes or no, and by voting, your tokens are at stake, and an Oracle is then going to tell you whether the event happened or not. The blockchain will then check on that Oracle. Oracles are nothing but smart contracts that interact with the outside elements. They can store and retrieve data—this is just what an Ethereum transaction needs to make decisions. An Oracle is a trusted source, and after checking with this trusted source, you can determine in a blockchain whether the event really did happen or not, and you can be absolutely certain about it.

The following diagram explains exactly how this happens:

The Gnosis platform layers

FirstBlood

FirstBlood is comparable to Gnosis; it is for e-sports. In cases where you are a gamer, you can sign up for a match using tokens. You can put tokens at stake to win tokens, you can put yourself in a queue in a pool of other teams or people, and you can play against them. You can even participate in tournaments. The winner of the game gets the tokens. Oracle is used to decide the outcome of a match. Visit http://firstblood.io to access FirstBlood.

Dynamis

This is a peer-to-peer insurance company, meaning there are no more middlemen. Currently, they are working on unemployment insurance, wherein you get paid to be unemployed! You just have to show people that you are actively looking for a job. The way they verify this is by using an Oracle similar to Gnosis and FirstBlood, but they use it to check LinkedIn and to verify that you have been applying to jobs.

To learn more about Dynamis visit, www.dynamisapp.com.

You can also visit http://blog.dynamisapp.com/p2p-insurance-solutions/ to gain further insight.

Ujo Music

This is basically a decentralized music store for artists! We all know iTunes, Spotify, and so on. These are companies that are sitting in the middle of artists and their fans, but fans can't know right away how much money artists actually make from each sale. Ujo Music takes care of this by decentralizing the music store. There are no more middlemen, which means that they are a bridge between artists and fan. This certainly means it ensures more power and money for the artists. There are no worries about licensing and it delivers music services only to verified identities. To access Ujo Music, visit https://ujomusic.com/.

The way it works work is described in the screenshot; they have multiple layers and they have their licensing and payments on Ethereum. They have a persistent identity on uPort which is also built on Ethereum:

Ujo Music 

The files themselves are stored in decentralized file storage, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and the metadata uses constellate which is also built on Ethereum.

The next project is one of my favorites.

Golem

It is a decentralized supercomputer! It does off-chain calculations. Off-chain calculations are calculations that do not happen on the blockchain; calculations are done outside of the blockchain. Then on the on-chain, it will verify these calculations. This means you can rent out your spare computing power or you can hire extra computing power if you need it. You can do this for 3D rendering, computational chemistry, AI machine learning—anything you like. To visit Golem, go to https://golem.network/.

In the following screenshot, you can see the Golem GUI. On the left, you can see a basic wallet; you can also see how much CPU, RAM, and disk space are being used. To the right, you can see a little proof of concept of three tasks being put out there, it's three Blender tasks, in this case, 3D rendering tasks:

Golem GUI