Blockchains that SCALE into the BILLIONS

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Step back from Bitcoin for a second. Don’t worry — it won’t be for long.

Investors: step back from Bitcoin for a minute

In fact, step back from Blockchain, too.

Table of Contents

A. The Developing World’s Dilemma

B. The Critical Barrier to a Self-Sustaining Village Economy

C. Architecting the Self-Sustaining Village Economy

D. All Distributed Ledgers Are NOT Created Equal

E. The Billionaire’s Dilemma

F. The One Blockchain/DLT FABRIC To Rule Them All

G. Blockchains/DLTs Worth Mining/Investing In

H. Hashgraph Becoming A Public DLT?

I. Become an Internet of Value Expert (Videos)

A. The Developing World’s Dilemma

Credit: The Zimbabwean

How can you confidently generate wealth if a dictator can steal the title to your land at a moment’s notice? What’s your money worth when dictator-driven hyperinflation leads to the creation of a $100 trillion-dollar note?? These are just some of the challenges that have hobbled the people of Zimbabwe for almost half a century.

The Self-Sustaining Village Economy

Credit: Pierre Thiam,

A Self-Sustaining Village Economy wouldn’t need politicians to feed its villagers.

Instead, the Internet of Value aka IoT Economy aka Self-Sustaining Village Economy would empower its villagers to exchange money, solar batteries, food, and even intellectual property directly with each other without paying an expensive middleman to process the transactions.

Best of all, if Alice & Bob can food, clothe, and shelter themselves, they won’t need to rely on their government for a Universal Basic Income.

That said, there is a critical barrier preventing us from achieving this utopia.

B. The Critical Barrier to a Self-Sustaining Village Economy

Credit: Maranatha.org

The critical barrier to a fully operational Self-Sustaining Village Economy is a public, permissionless, speedy, efficient, secure, and self-sovereign ID solving Distributed Ledger aka DLT. Why?

A public DLT can do all of the record-keeping and fact-checking that middle men currently charge us for.

Today, even with all of the technology available to us, a whopping TWO BILLION people across the globe still don’t have a bank account.

Credit: Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Leora Klapper, Measuring Financial Inclusion

A public DLT will make it affordable for each and every villager in Zimbabwe to have a bank account and gain access to other basic financial services. How can you help your daughter if you can’t send her $5? How can your grandchildren if you don’t even have the title to your land? These are just some of the basic problems worth solving that DLTs address.

Photo Credit: Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Leora Klapper, Measuring Financial Inclusion

For many middle men, the prospect of being replaced by a public DLT represents an existential crisis. Never before has a single technology threatened the livelihoods of so many powerful global institutions. On the other hand, those middle men that have embraced DLTs have surprised everyone by reinvigorating their cash cows.

Western Union Shows That Defense Is The Best Offense (See Update)

Case in point, Western Union used to charge anywhere from 10–20% to transfer money across borders. When they saw that blockchains/DLTs were going to threaten their core business, they tested an integration (updated) with DLT-powered Ripple. This aggressive move allowed them to drop their fees and grow their market share in ways they never dreamed of.

Western Union Quietly Prepares for the Crypto-Era (Update: Dec 13 2017)

“Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability…. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.” ― Thomas A. Edison

A few years ago, Western Union piloted a Ripple integration but decided to end the project due to “lack of adoption.”

Now that adoption isn’t a problem, Western Union is playing their cards, one, by one, by one.

(1) They recently integrated with Coinbase, one of the most popular places to convert dollars into cryptocurrencies in the world.

(2) In a startling announcement to their haters, Western Union integrated with WeChat. WeChat is the WhatsApp of China and has a whopping 902 million daily active users. FYI, WeChat is owned by Tencent, a Chinese conglomerate that generated $151B of revenue in 2017.

That means that every WeChat user will be able to send each other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum via Western Union, no matter where they are in the world…when the timing is right, of course.

And what about Ripple? Ripple’s got plans of their OWN.

C. Architecting the Self-Sustaining Village Economy

The importance of a powerful, feature-rich DLT lead Mance Harmon, CEO of Swirlds/Hashgraph, to suggest the following architecture that will enable the Internet of Value aka IoT Economy aka Self-Sustaining Village Economy:

Blockchains like Bitcoin, NEO, and Ethereum all enable public, Distributed Ledgers.

Now, Blockchain is ONE way to enable a Distributed Ledger, but there are other emerging approaches/technologies that can enable a Distributed Ledger, too:

The real impact of blockchain was always going to be its inspiration. But the first generation algorithm is not efficient or practical for other applications. What the community needs is real research and development that will begin to solve these challenges — not solutions that arbitrarily jam the blockchain algorithm into every pet problem. — Steve Wilson, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

In fact, when you dig deeper, you’ll discover that all blockchains/DLTs are NOT created equal.

D. All Distributed Ledgers Are NOT Created Equal

Michael Jagdeo / attractfunding on Twitter

D1. How Secure is SECURE?

Just how secure is secure? Secure as in your DLT is impervious to DDOS attacks? Secure as in you have a mathematical proof for quantum security?

D2. Bitcoin’s a Gas Guzzler

Case in point, the Bitcoin blockchain will consume the energy equivalent of Denmark by 2020. Can you imagine a digital currency causing global warming?

D3. Immature Blockchains Can Be SLOW

Credit: Zilliqa Keynote

Energy-efficient scalability isn’t the only issue hampering blockchains. They can be terribly slow, too.

The Bitcoin blockchain can only process seven transactions per second. The Ethereum blockchain can only process ten transactions per second. VISA processes EIGHT THOUSAND transactions per second and claims they can handle OVER 50 THOUSAND TRANSACTIONS PER SECOND.

Is there a blockchain/DLT that can beat VISA?

E. The Billionaire’s Dilemma

Amateur Investors wake up in the morning and ask themselves,

“Should I buy and hodl more Bitcoin?”

Intermediate Investors wake up in the morning and ask themselves,

“Which cryptocurrency is going to rise the fastest today?”

A More Lucrative Question

Which set of interoperable blockchains/DLTs — by solving all of the critical global security, scalability, and speed constraints BETTER than middle men currently do — will form the FABRIC OF SOLUTIONS that enable the Internet of Value aka IOT Economy aka Self-Sustaining Village Economy?

F. The One Blockchain/DLT FABRIC To Rule Them All

It would be simple if the Self-Sustaining Village Economy could be powered by one, single, public, permissionless, speedy, secure, and scalable blockchain/DLT which also solved the Self-Sovereign Identity problem.

But there isn’t, and there’s nothing to indicate that there will be a single one blockchain/DLT to rule them all.

I think an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains/DLTs will be required. — Naohiro Fujie, Deputy General Manager, CTC (Japan)

The solution is clear: In the absence of one single public, permissionless, speedy, secure, and scalable DLT which also solves self-sovereign identity, an interconnected, interoperable fabric of blockchains/DLTs will fill the solution gap.

F1. Self-Sovereign Identification Leaders

Matthew De Silva, EthNews

If it walks, talks, and acts like a duck, is it a duck? That’s the challenge with Identity over the internet. It’s very difficult to tell people apart when you can’t see them.

Everyone agrees that a Self-Sovereign Identity is the key to unlocking the entire IoT Economy aka Internet of Value aka Self-Sustaining Village Economy.

Interoperability is one of the biggest concerns for me because we want to use blockchain as a platform for Identity Proofing and it means that we want to be used from 3rd party applications. — Mr. Fujie

This is such a difficult challenge that there are specific blockchain solutions that have dedicated their lives to solving the Self-Sovereign Identification problem. Their success will lie in cooperating (aka interoperating) with other blockchains/DLTs to create a fabric of solutions that enable the Internet of Value.

Blockstack, Blockstream, and Sovrin all seem to have solved the Self-Sovereign Identification problem.

Photo Credit:Naohiro Fujie, Deputy General CTC, Japan, June 2016

Lead by the genius Dr. Leemon, Swirlds claims that their DLT, Hashgraph, can outperform all of the other blockchains and DLTs when it comes to speed, security, and scalability.

As an Identity Guy [manufacturer of Identity Solutions], I’m always searching for ways to address problems worth solving in Identity, i.e. there aren’t any good ways to make strong proof for employees/civics/students identities.

In 2016, one of largest Identity Product vendors called Ping Identity made an announcement that they would work with Swirlds. I heard about the concepts behind hashgraph and found them to be one of the solutions that I’d been searching for a long time for. — Mr. Fujie

However, unless they bring their private, permissioned Hashgraph DLT into the public (nobody but Dr. Leemon knows if that’s possible), we have to consider other alternatives.

IOTA is another emerging DLT innovator that claims its public solution is quantum-immune. As always, to the most adopted solution go the spoils.

Zilliqa, emerging from the accomplished National University of Singapore team lead by Dr. Prateek, recently announced that their blockchain platform could outperform Ethereum in terms of scalability and speed by 1000x.

G. Blockchains/DLTs Worth Mining/Investing In

H. Hashgraph Becoming A Public DLT?

“We are going to be talking about a PUBLIC ledger with a token or a cryptocurrency in the near future.” (Dr. Leemon, Hashgraph)

Source: Is a public hashgraph really an alternative to PoW and PoS? Reddit

I. Become an Internet of Value Expert (Videos)

This post was inspired by a conversation with a Core Developer from Zilliqa following this post.

These videos will get you up to speed.

PS — Don’t sleep on Ripple.

Internet of Value 101: HMW transition to Internet of Value? Don Tapscott

Internet of Value 201: Self-Sovereign Identity — Ryan Shea, Blockstack

Internet of Value 202: Self-Sovereign Identity — Christopher Allen, Blockstream

Internet of Value 301: Scalability — Christel Quek, Zilliqa

Michael Jagdeo / attractfunding on Twitter

Bonus!

Dr. Leemon Baird, Hashgraph’s inventor, achieved his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in record time. It takes a mind like that to create a fourth generation DLT.

Got me to thinking. Whose to say there won’t be a more efficient algorithm tomorrow? And the next day? And with every new incremental improvement, a new ICO to invest in?

Q3) Will better and better consensus algorithms/DLTs continue to emerge in what might be compared to a global math competition? If so, how can Investors, Miners, and DApp Developers adapt/survive?

For question3, this is difficult question I think, so there is no clear answer so far. I think it is not a problem of consensus algorithms but a problem of how to be a defact and to be a defact, existence of major service(s) are most important thing as well as BitCoin for current blockchain. — Mr. Fujie

Suddenly, a new contender has emerged.

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