An Exploration of Blockchain in Social Networking Applications

Abstract

Human beings have an innate tendency to socialize and the Internet gives us the opportunity to overcome geographical barriers and communicate with people located even at the opposite side of the world. Computers that started the journey of digital communication with simple emails and bulletin board systems in the eighties of the previous century have manifested their potential of connecting people across the globe with the evolution of social networking. Social networking has emerged as effective tools for bringing people of similar disposition or needs, whether professional or personal, under the same platform enabling interaction and sharing between peers. However, these services operate in a centralized environment. Blockchain, on the other hand, is revolutionizing the process of sharing things digitally between peers in a decentralized and secured fashion. In this paper, we investigate how blockchain can be applied to social networking services and review some of the currently existing social networking applications that utilize blockchain. We then propose our social networking application, e-Mudra, built on the principles of blockchain technology that facilitates peer-to-peer exchange of leftover foreign currency from international travel.