In short, Holochain is good for sharing collaborative data without centralized control. Imagine a completely decentralized Wikipedia, a DNS without root servers, or the ability to have fast, reliable queries on a fully distributed PKI. Here are some examples of where Holochain can be useful:
- Social networks, social media, & VRM: You want to run a social network without a company like Facebook in the middle. You want to share, post, publish, or Tweet to a shared space, while automatically keeping a copy of these things on your own device.
- Supply chains & open value networks: You want to have information that crosses the boundaries of companies, organizations, and countries, and is collaboratively shared and managed, but is not under the central control of any one of those entities.
- Cooperatives & new commons: You want to create something that is truly held collectively, not by any particular individual. This is especially good for digital assets.
- Peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms: These are applications where value is produced collectively and every person has similar capabilities, access, and responsibilities.
- Collective intelligence: These include governance, decision-making frameworks, feedback systems, ratings, currencies, annotations, or workflow systems.
- Collaborative applications: These include chats, discussion boards, scheduling apps, wikis, documentation, etc.
- Reputational or mutualcCredit cryptocurrencies: Currencies where issuance can be accounted for by actions of peers (like ratings), or through double-entry accounting, are well-suited for Holochain. Fiat currencies where tokens are thought to exist independent of accountability by agents are more challenging to implement on Holochain.