The Problem
Your son or daughter wants a new e-bike or something rather expensive. As a parent, you don’t want to spoil your kids with costly gifts they may or may not use.
But kids persist and will keep begging, persuading you to buy them that gift.
So you make a deal with your kid that if they get straight A’s, you will buy them an e-bike.
From the kid’s perspective - you get straight A’s, and your parents still don’t buy you that e-bike. They say the e-bike is too dangerous, which they may have a point, but they did break their word.
And the parents will say that we didn’t have a formal contract and we're just joking or saying it so you would concentrate on your grades.
The parents and kids could have made a contract, but who will enforce that? The parents can just disregard the agreement.
The Solution
That is where the smart contract could solve this problem.
A smart contract is code that runs on the blockchain - a decentralized, lightweight database where entries into that database can’t be edited or deleted.
A developer or a no-code program can be used to create a smart contract.
So how would this work?
- Imagine there is a no-code website that creates smart contracts designed to look up your kid’s grades at school
- You would go onto this smart contract website
- Create a smart contract with the following details
- Checks to see if your kid got straight A’s from the school’s report card website
- The school report card website can provide an API that you can use in the smart contract
- Or, if there is no API, you can enter the username/password for the report card website, and the smart contract will scrape the webpage for your kid’s grades
- If the kid did get straight A’s, then trigger a purchase of the e-bike using funds from the parent’s bank account or credit card
- The bank account or credit card number will be encrypted in the smart contract so no other party can steal it
- Cryptocurrencies can be used too
- The smart contract will have the address and amount of the cryptocurrencies needed to purchase the e-bike.
- The smart contract would run the day after the school’s report card is published.
Running the smart contract:
- The day after the school’s report card is published, the smart contract will run
- It will use the API or username/password to login into the school’s report card website
- Check your kid’s grades
- If your kid got straight A’s, it would use the credit card number to purchase the e-bike from the e-bike’s website.
- The e-bike gets delivered to your door for your kid to use
I see smart contracts having a lot of value for little things like motivating your kids to get good grades.
