Many of us speculate about how Facebook - the social media giants, could start to integrate blockchain technologies within their service. Overall, the possibilities are endless. The blockchain can be used for more than just processing payments, as a matter of fact, cryptocurrency makes up only a very small percentage of the blockchains potential.

Other use cases include data storage, logistics management, audit keeping and even authentication and data management - one of the most attractive use cases of blockchain technology for Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

According to reports out last week, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that his blockchain development team at Facebook have explored moving the current Facebook login system onto the blockchain in order to improve the way Facebook lets you log in to third-party apps. You know when you go to sign into an online store or something similar and the store gives you the option to login with Facebook? This is the action that the blockchain could vastly improve for Facebook.

The current system used by Facebook is known as Facebook Connect, this allows users to manually log in and out of third-party applications that link to their individual Facebook account. This makes a wealth of data vulnerable to hacks and theft, as we have seen a number of times over the past few months. A move onto the blockchain would allow this authentication system to use a decentralised app that requires no intervention from any party, nor would it be open to being hacked, it would be far more secure.

According to Sludgefeed, Mark Zuckerberg has recently told Prof. Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard University how he believes this system will work:

“You basically take your information, you store it on some decentralized system and you have the choice of whether to log in in different places and you’re not going through an intermediary. There’s a lot of things that I think would be quite attractive about that.”

Furthermore:

“For developers, one of the things that is really troubling about working with our system, or Google’s system for that matter, or having to deliver services through Apple’s App Store is that you don’t want to have an intermediary between serving the people who are using your service and you. Where someone can just say hey, we as a developer have to follow your policy and if we don’t, then you can cut off access to the people we are serving. That’s kind of a difficult and troubling position to be in.”

This is not confirmation that Facebook are going to move their current login system onto the blockchain, though it is promising that Zuckerberg has admitted that this is one area that his team are currently working on and are exploring further. Perhaps a Facebook-based adoption of the blockchain is a little closer than we think?