This got me wondering. Are there any blockchain projects or products in the wild that use blockchain but are not finance driven.
Anything else is just an append only Merkle tree, which has found used for 50 years
- Lens Protocol [https://lens.xyz/ (one example implementation: https://lenster.xyz/)] is an early social network built on top of Polygon.
- Farcaster [https://farcaster.xyz/] is another one, that takes a more hybrid approach of using Ethereum for trustless identity, but stores social stuff in a "sufficiently decentralized" way.
- ENS [https://ens.domains/] is a universal username system.
- Unlock Protocol [https://unlock-protocol.com/] uses NFTs for tradeable subscriptions, event tickets, etc.
- Radicle [https://radicle.xyz/] is a decentralized Github basically, that (optionally) uses Ethereum to store the Git HEAD of a "project" essentially.
- Arweave [https://www.arweave.org/] stores files permanently using a cool "endowment" mechanism. Currently, the network has secured its storage for like 1000 years in theory.
There's a whole ecosystem of apps that use smart contract chains as a trustless/decentralized/distributed compute and storage layer, and use "cryptoeconomics" to incentivize user behavior toward a goal that isn't money-based. It's just far less mature (and noisy) as all the finance stuff, so anyone not actively building in the space isn't seeing most of it today!
After few years I am convinced, that anything blockchain/decentralization related must inherently have some monetary incentives flow.
Edit: Two out of first three words claims that
It uses proof of authority