As it stands right now, blockchains are built in isolation. Only recently has there been talk about connecting them and making them inter-operable. The only time we truly see these chains operating with each other are via offchain secondhand exchanges where people can trade one coin for another. The interoperability alliance wants to allow independent chains to instantly transfer data and value between chains.
"Take for example, Cryptokitties, a digital collectible that can be provably rare, unique, and utterly resistant to forgery (the power of the blockchain at its best). A Cryptokitty is a type of contract, but also a token (currently named a non-fungible token ERC #721), on the Ethereum blockchain. The game, Cryptokitties, slowed down the Ethereum blockchain significantly (scaling issues), but all this could change with true blockchain interoperation. Imagine Cryptokitties tokens still being non-fungible, provably rare, token, but never hosted by a single blockchain. The business of Cryptokitties could spawn an Aion-x chain, use it as a rapid ledger and proof of transaction, record those transactions, compiled and intermittent, on major public blockchain networks (like Ethereum), and allow the smart contract of Kitties themselves be available to any smart contact platform. Aion-1, Ethereum, ICON, other Aion-x chains, etc. The smart contract would have a life beyond any single blockchain." - Ethereum's AI
This is a rudimentary example of the type of things these blockchains could accomplish. As more real, useful apps come along. The use cases will continue becoming more apparent and necessary. You can read the full article from Ethereum's AI here, and I would definitely recommend you do, its worth the read!
They also want to have a privacy layer to allow people and business to be able to keep data private as well! Not all information needs to be public information. I will take a moment to talk about each of the 3 and what they are doing separately.
AION
Aion is hard at work trying to connect blockchains. Moog Inc is a company that specializes in building parts in the defense and aerospace industries, and they have chosen Aion to be the chain that onboards their entire manufacturing documentation to a network shared by multiple stakeholders. They have partnered with Bancor to help solve liquidity regardless of trade volume. Bitt has partnered with them to create a settlement network serving the Caribbean. Their partnership with Enigma will allow the interconnected blockchains to process sensitive data and enable computational privacy. Other partnerships like Metaverse, Sonm, and SingularityNet have already been formed and will help them in carious areas. More importantly it will help all these chains utilize each other's unique properties. To me thats pretty exciting news!
WANCHAIN
This coin is not yet on the market but it should be available soon where you will probably see it enter the top 50 coins. It is created by Jack Lu, who is a former co-founder of Factom. Partnerships have not really been announced yet but people are expecting big things to come out of this. They are partnered with Factom and it is expected that they will also partner with Quantstamp. This is the most unknown of the 3 coins in the interoperability alliance, but its also the newest and least developed. Give it time and watch it explode onto the exchanges. Then wait for a dip and grab some if you feel like it before they start announcing big partnerships.
Icon
Icon is partnered with Loopchain, and will utilize their exclusive partnership with the Korea Financial Investment Association. They have partnered the Kyber Network to utilize instant guaranteed liquidity. They have helped work on the ChainID blockchain identification system. They have partnered with Woori bank in Korrea to create the Weebee coin. They are also working with Kyobo Life Insurance to create an insurance auto claiming system. They will be an important player in the Korean blockchain space.
The creation of the Interoperability Alliance is providing synergy between all these projects and all these partnering companies. This synergy will allow these 3 blockchains to progress rather quickly, hopefully giving us new ways for our cryptos and our blockchains to interact with each other.
This is not investment advice of course, but just know that three legs are better than one.. and the tripod that these 3 companies have formed will allow them to take large strides this year as a group..
Woot woot,
