China’s Coronavirus Whistleblower Is Now Memorialized on Ethereum Smart contracts
Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital was the whistleblower for the recent nCOV (novel coronavirus) or COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) epidemic. His voice was earlier silenced by the Chinese authorities charging them with rumours. But after his death due to being affected by the same virus, peoples’ sentiments have regarded him as a public hero. Recently an Ethereum smart contract has been dedicated to him by someone with source codes in the shape of a monument in his memory.
What is Ethereum?
Ether is a native cryptocurrency of Ethereum like other blockchains. It is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that features the functionality smart contract.
What are Smart Contracts?
Smart contract are used to describe a computer code which can facilitate the exchange of money, content, property, shares, etc. A smart contract is like a self-operating computer program running on the blockchain that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. Because these run on the blockchain, they run exactly as programmed without any possibility of censorship, downtime, fraud or third-party interference.
Immortalized in an Ethereum Smart Contract
The immutability of smart contracts on Ethereum ensures governments cannot rewrite history, or even eradicate it in cases such as the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, which the Chinese government has blocked behind ‘The Great Firewall of China’ which dictates what locals get to see. The monument which exists on the Ethereum blockchain will serve as Dr. Li’s last act of defiance, as his memory will now be preserved forever, in theory.
This decentralized public computing platform, unlike others, allows developers to create whatever operations they want. It means thousands of different applications can be built which can go beyond anything we ever seen.
Published at Mon, 17 Feb 2020 09:06:04 +0000