Ethereum (ETH) Unusual Use Case Indicated by Vitalik Buterin and It's Not About Crypto

Vitalik Buterin, Founder of Ethereum, is a prominent advocate of non-crypto use cases for decentralized blockchain-based systems. In a recent tweetstorm, Buterin proposed designing historical data marketplaces that are powered by the Ethereum blockchain.

Vitalik Describes the Concept of Decentralized Data Marketplaces

In a passionate series of tweets, Vitalik Buterin claimed that decentralized data marketplaces and their numerous types of information (logs, transactions, i.e. historic data) may be one more splendid application for Ethereum-based systems.

One example is logs:

1. Client sends message "I want all historical logs for topic X"
2. Provider replies back with logs + Merkle proofs
3. Client re-broadcasts provider's response; if the provider missed a log their deposit can get slashed

This could be done for txs too...

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 2, 2020

This concept includes two categories of actors - clients and providers. A client requests the historical logs for a subject or process he/she is interested in. A provider responds with the logs verified by Merkle proofs, the instruments used to validate the security and integrity of data in the blockchain.

Once the logs are received by the client, he/she re-broadcasts it to his/her providers. Should this interaction get out of hand, the deposit created to initiate the exchange is slashed. 

The last measure will incentivize the provider to maintain the integrity of gathering data, and at the same time, preventing the client from cheating with his/her deposit.

Win-Win Opportunity for Ethereum (ETH) and dApps

Vitalik Buterin underlined that the permissionless nature of the provider is crucial for this system. As such, the entire process of interaction is organized in a decentralized manner.

Once this concept is introduced, both Ethereum (ETH) and the decentralized applications that are used for their computational power for the transactions, would benefit:

1. Clients could stop storing history themselves, and only store state (~5x storage size decrease) 2. Dapps could get more gas-efficient (many dapps are suboptimal gaswise today because they put things in storage to read them more easily)

Vitalik Buterin added that this framework interaction should include cryptoeconomical incentives and rely on Layer2 solutions in order to be useful and profitable for its users.