Image credit: Twitter cover image for Loopring

Blockchain as a technology is ushering in a whole new wave of possibilities — distributed trustless ledgers, smart contracts that seek to automate antiquated processes, digital assets and identities and more.

Bitcoin was the one that started it all, but will it be the one ring to rule them all? Personal opinion: I doubt it. Although Loopring is unlikely to be king (it’s not aiming to be king anyway), what it aims to do is absolutely essential in the path to widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies in our daily lives.

You hear of projects looking at interoperability and bringing chains together (think OmiseGo and Ark’s smartbridges), those are ambitious projects with massive potential impact on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We all know using cryptocurrencies and trading for different tokens are a huge pain in the ass due to waiting for the transfer to these centralised exchanges, having to trust these centralised exchanges to hold your funds, execute the trade only if the token pair (e.g. ETH/ARK) exists in that specific exchange, and then transferring it out back into your private wallet.

There is definitely potential in these existing projects to increase the accessibility of cryptocurrencies, but one must be cautious in terms of equating the opportunity for growth with an actual economic/investment opportunity for the industry. Because in many cases, the technology is not adopted because it’s economically unfeasible, or what they are trying to do needs a number of other key conditions beyond their control to be fulfilled first. Imagine wanting to implement driverless car network with a robust enough AI, but without a road system which is compatible as well as a ready ecosystem and partners that are ready to support that (government support, automated charging/repair networks, user safety, threat from competitors etc.). Just having a ready car with great pathfinding AI and advanced sensors will not nearly be enough.