Transparency, security and decentralization, the three most important aspects of blockchain that have led to its popularity among developers and tech enthusiasts. Blockchain is spreading at a very fast rate across the globe with different countries having their own blockchain communities trying to solve the various challenges that centralization has plagued them with. Smartphone companies such as HTC have even announced blockchain smartphones as part of their growth. They expect blockchain technology to be adapted by more people in the years to come. This progression is crucial if blockchain is ever to become mainstream. Before, blockchain was all about cryptocurrency but as people got to understand how it works and its real-world possibilities, it became clear that blockchain was going to be an integral part of the future of technology.
✅Various decentralized applications have touched nearly every aspect of the economy that could be influenced by blockchain. In financial technology, companies such as Huobi are showing how useful blockchain can be in the exchange market, SpringRole deals with employment and how blockchain can help change that too while CyberMiles deals with its impact on online marketplaces. In short, blockchain may have a hand in everything eventually.
The Rise of Blockchain
Bitcoin is arguably the main propagator of blockchain technology. A few years back, blockchain and Bitcoin were synonymous especially to first time crypto enthusiasts who did not understand the difference between the two platforms. Its ledger like format of recording each transaction carried out in its platform attracted more people to adapt Bitcoin as the safest and most secure form of payment. As people got to understand more about blockchain, developers came up with even more uses as the Ethereum protocol was launched.
✅Ethereum marks the second phase blockchain technology. After the creation of the Ethereum protocol, decentralized applications were on the rise; nearly all of them were opting to base their services on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum had some problems that would see these decentralized applications not reach their full potential, the main problems being scalability and a conservative approach towards developers. In as much as many applications are still being built on top of Ethereum, it may take more time before their full functionality can be exploited by their users. To improve on the flaws of the Ethereum network, decentralized application developers started creating their own protocols. EOS recently moved to their mainnet which would allow them more flexibility and generally allow them to provide better services for their subscribers. Mainnet swaps are increasing as more decentralized applications opt for scalability and a developer friendly interface.
The Seele Protocol
Seele’s name comes from the German word, Seele, meaning soul and just like humans, Seele believes that blockchain needs a ‘soul’ if it wants to achieve true adoption or go mainstream. This may actually be true, in order for blockchain to progress a sort of standard needs to be set by at least one platform, which may guide future protocols to adopt this standard during their development. Seele’s protocol marks the fourth phase of blockchain and with it come some changes that will help blockchain grow its own community from tech enthusiasts to laymen who may even not understand a single concept in blockchain. Seele has to do away with some of the industry staples that protocols are accustomed to such as the proof of work mechanism in order to achieve this. Efficiency is important as the world progresses and some aspects of blockchain may die away if they hinder better functions and far better results.
✅The consensus mechanisms used such as proof of work and proof of stake take up a lot of energy, especially proof of work which requires nodes to use powerful computing machines. The consensus time is greatly affected which affects the overall transaction time. In a case where the demand for services within a protocol is great, decentralized applications will exhibit slow responses as the protocol tries to meet the demand being placed on it. Ethereum is a great example of how demand can really slow down an unprepared protocol. Cryptokitties once led to the slowdown of services being provided by Ethereum due to the number of people that were playing it and its inability to scale efficiently.
➡️The Seele protocol handles the issue of consensus with a new mechanism known as the neural consensus algorithm. It reduces the time taken to come up with a consensus by making it easier to select the nodes required to vote. It also makes the voting continuous as opposed to as opposed to discrete which is seen in proof of work and proof of stake. Because of the reduced demand on nodes, it saves the energy required for consensus to be reached by a group of nodes which is important as the world is trying to save on energy. Scalability is however the main issue here. Through this consensus algorithm, Seele can improve the transaction speeds per second from Ethereum’s 15-30TPS to 1 Million transactions per second. Decentralized applications would be able to achieve their desired performance rates if Seele can achieve such rates of transactions. 1 Million Transfers per second as an industry standard would accommodate the expected magnitude of people when blockchain achieves mainstream recognition.
➡️Linear scalability is also possible through Seele. This also helps in improving consensus time by enabling Seele to perform better and faster as the number of nodes increase in the protocol.
➡️Decentralized application development is an important factor that also has to be taken care of in a forward thinking blockchain protocol. In past phases of blockchain, developers had a hard time working on their innovations. Developers ended up taking more time coming up with their applications as they struggled to find the right tools to write their applications. Different developers use different languages while coding, these languages are not all supported by Ethereum; in fact very few are actually supported. This hindered app development progression. Furthermore, there was no guide for developers as they built their applications. They had to learn how to navigate these protocols on their own which is both frustrating and cumbersome, hindering the quick development of world changing decentralized applications.
➡️The Seele protocol improves greatly on this. Seele is currently working on a program that will make decentralized app development easier and simper for developers opting to use Seele’s protocol. Seele will offer an application development tool that will be essential in all stages of development of the app. With the development tool, development and testing of smart contracts to be used in the application will be supported. Furthermore, even the deployment of smart contracts will also be part of the development tool offered by Seele to developers.
➡️Seele goes a step further by offering an SDK that supports cross-platform app development. This is actually important as Seele wants its platform to support cross-platform decentralized application functions.
Potential Uses of Blockchain
Blockchain has already been tested in different sectors. The Seele use cases would mostly be improvements from past blockchain phases, providing more efficiency thus better services rendered by the decentralized applications.
➡️Social media. Decentralizing social media could not have come at a better time. Facebook recently faced backlash from their users and governments around the world due to the misuse of user data that was exhibited by their inability to control the collection and use of data generated from its platform by their users. Cambridge Analytica was the cause of all this and it came as a wake-up call for many. Privacy is under threat with the centralized system currently in place. Decentralizing social media would provide the privacy and data control needed by users while still giving them the social media experience they are used to. Seele can comfortably support a host of social media applications on its platform due to its TPS and scalability capabilities.
➡️Healthcare. Universal healthcare can be supported by blockchain technology and specifically the Seele protocol. Cross-platform support can help data sharing between two decentralized healthcare applications. Data can be shared securely using the Seele protocol when needed. It could be quite useful where healthcare data is needed urgently in a different geographical location especially where a healthcare DApp may not be supported but other healthcare Dapps are.
➡️E-government. Blockchain can truly help reduce or do away with the vices that are seen in different regimes. Corruption is one of the key vices that even affects once credible institutions such as the world football governing body, FIFA. Seele’s protocol has the scalability, security and efficiency required for governments to exploit. Governments and other institutions can come up with their own decentralized applications that will be essential in streamlining their activities. Activities such as voting may be smooth and contention free if a transparent and secure system can be implemented. Seele has a place in the future of governance.
➡️Fintech is always in constant need of improvement. What worked yesterday may not work today in fintech. Seele has TPS that could handle what financial markets throw at it. Dapps could be developed specifically for fintech providing solutions to some of the challenges they are facing. With faster transfers, more assets could be traded in a day compared to the figure being traded using their current system.
Seele improves where other protocols have achieved functionality. It works to make services far much better and shows the need for a step up in the blockchain Sphere. According to its roadmap, the Seele platform launches during the last quarter of 2018. Right now, tests are being done on the platform to determine the extent of its power. Seele is likely to have more uses once its platform is out. Developers are likely to come up with novelty Seele applications once they truly understand, through experience, the working of the Seele protocol.
Seele has set itself up as the future standard of blockchain protocols.
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