If you approach any schoolboy or schoolgirl in 2018 with a question ‘What is the rage now?’, the answer would most probably be: ‘Blockchain’. Okay, there may me some alternative titles and various applications of this organizational system. Still one should not deny how massively spread projects on Blockchain are now.
As we have always been in chase of unfound answers, in this article we are pondering over a massive surge of popularity of one simple though genial digital ledger. And now we are to answer a couple of questions.
- What is Blockchain?
There may be numerous definitions to this word.
First and foremost, one could view Blockchain as a decentralized, or distributed, digital ledger aimed at effective transaction recording.
Another possible approach to Blockchain is viewing it as a highly secure by design computing system habitually managed by a p2p network.
Meanwhile, some understand the concept as a database or just a chain of blocks that undergo constant development. A new block can add to all the chain only if the previous task has been successfully completed. Users participating in solving the puzzle by means of their software’s computational powers get some revenue in Bitcoins or other crypto-coins or tokens once it is solved.
- Why such a hit?
There exist several reasons for the overwhelming popularity Blockchain is currently facing. It is a transparent system so, when done, each action or transaction — as it is more frequently called — instantly gets into view of all users within the system. Moreover, unless a respective trigger of a smart contract snaps into action to verify that all required conditions have been met, no blocks could be added to the existing chain.
This condition of operation is to guarantee no scam takes place on Blockchain. And makes any kind of third party completely unnecessary.
The latter kills two birds with one stone.
It increases overall security of business operations on Blockchain and in such a way attracts more users. It bears fruit even in the spheres people used to be unable to control and were quite skeptical about. Including Charity.
It brings more profit to both sides of any business operation as no longer need to waste money on mediators.
Given a choice of Blockchain definitions, we still land at some united understanding of what Blockchain really puts on offer for us. This is data, information or, in other words, truth. Easy-to-access and not requiring additional verification or a middle-man to ensure its validity. From that one would easily make that an opportunity for some universal shared truth to be reached costs a fortune.
- Main spheres of application
To-date, there already exist loads of projects successfully operating on Blockchain. To pigeonhole them all into clear separate categories seems inapproachable. Nevertheless, we consider any attempt as worth making so, for example, they may be divided into ‘mono-platforms’, ‘fat protocols’ and ‘gray area projects’. It seems pretty easy to derive the intended purpose of each of them from their names but let us shed some light on that, still.
Mono-platforms are the ones fully dedicated to solely one business operation. These could lie within several categories:
Currencies. They aim to produce a better currency and also provide users with one of the following goodies: a store of wealth, a monetary unit of account or an exchange medium.
Sovereignty. Kills the necessity to trust unknown third parties and rely on people’s ratio despite the human factor.
Shared data. A kind of handy decentralized data warehouses for aggregators.
Authenticity. Help guarantee overall security and validity of data at disposal.
Developer tools. Lego blocks for dapps, or application interfaces, enabling direct contact between users and protocols.
Fintech. Simply satisfies the need for convenient tools for financiers within multi-currency economies. For instance, makes currency exchange and landing easier.
Takeaways. Here to expand a functionality range of the web3 development stack.
Value exchange. Able to create Blockchain-fueled trust among otherwise disconnected parties.
- Waves of interest
Looks like impossible to outline ‘waves of interest’ when it comes to Blockchain. After being publicly emerged by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, this technology, approach and overall philosophy keep getting more and more popular. And trustworthy in people’s eyes. Despite confusing Blockchain with crypto-currencies, which is just one of the possible applications of Blockchain, this future-is-now technology goes on attracting quite a large-scale investment. And supporting a brand-new concept of truth making trust, transparency and stability a must.
The aforementioned has inevitably led to an influx of builder teams destined to build the decentralized. That has, on the one hand, appeared as an intended outcome and furthermore saturated the market to some extent thus expanding the offer limits for users. However, the second edge of this fortunately not a bloodstained (yet) sword is all about hype. Crypto and Blockchain being perceived as a trend or fashion can greatly hinder development of really worthy projects designed to change the future for the better. As, firstly, it is getting more and more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and find proper projects among false ones. And also the market being overfilled with new-coming start-ups eager to set up their ICO, TGE or whatever fund-raise-related — cannot but arouse well-earned scepsis.
- Future expectations
Currently, the world’s business, technology, finance community or communities are on fire. And it is only natural as the current market gets eventually dominated with the now widely-known Blockchain-technology. It having paved its way to quite a range of industries and spheres of life, it is now an open question whether or not we should expect this model’s total takeover.
However, there is one thing that is clear to us all: the world will never be the one it used to be even 10 years ago. So a piece of advice for every man of reason here could be:
Stay on the same wavelength as the planetary pulse;
Be open to a change;
Listen not only to your common sense but to your intuition, too.
As we know in SELFLLERY, there may occur some situations when no logics could be of use for you. Still there is none where your intuition would not come in handy.
Be fearless and ride the wave of Blockchain — with SELFLLERY!
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