cryptocurrency ontology connection

In 2009 an anonyms person or group or people under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin the first cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency is both a currency and a protocol enabling peer to peer financial transactions. The protocol makes use of cryptography to create individual and digitally scares units of currency and a decentralized computer network to ensure the validity of transactions by recording them into a block, a set of time-stamped transactions. These blocks of transactions are stored together in a chain a list of such blocks to create a blockchain, the longest of which is trusted as the true financial ledger for the system. This guaranties accountability and prevents the fraudulent use same unit of digital currency from being used to make multiple simultaneous payments.

In addition to the original Bitcoin there are many other cryptocurrencies using similar concepts and technologies which are being used to solve other issues. One example, Ethereum uses a decentralized network and blockchain technology to run smart contracts "applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference." Smart contracts are intended to serve as legal frameworks, ensuring payment only upon successful completion of the contract terms and conditions. The contracts themselves are programs scripted in the Solidity programming language.

The idea of using block chain technologies and smart contracts is currently circulating among some in the scientific community with efforts such as the attempt to use blockchain technologies for life sciences data management. Building upon this theme, I have been looking for a way to integrate blockchain technologies with the machine actionable knowledge of ontologies. A potential mechanism for such integration would be to utilize ontology classes within smart contracts. Ontology classes being a digital representation of a concept who's definition is backed up with a unique digital identifier (purl) could provide as an accountable representation of a definition upon which participants in a smart contract agree to.

Additionally if an ontology structure can in fact be used to mobilize data which reports on an indicator, concerning for example the health of an ecosystem or the potability of drinking water, then such data and semantic infrastructure could also be called upon and programmed into a smart contract as a necessary condition for the successful completion of such contract. For example a smart contract negotiated between an enterprise engaged in a water intensive industrial activity and a nearby community would make make use of the envo term potable water in such as way as to ensure that the enterprise may not damage the community's stock of potable water. This would be supported by including an independent sensor and monitoring network who's participation is programmed into the contract and who is responsible for providing sensor data about the water in question such as lead concentration of the water. This data along with a semantic framework linking the concepts that lead bearing water is not potable water, could be used to ensure the terms and conditions of the agreement i.e. the community's stock of potable water remains potable water. If violated, the contract would terminate or have a clause for the enterprise to decontaminate the water and pay reparations to the community.