Why does scalability in next generation blockchains, or Bitcoin/Ethereum alternatives matter?
What is Metabase, what makes it different, and how does it overcome the limitations of current blockchain technology?
We’ve been getting these questions a lot from people interested in the next evolution of crypto and blockchain technology, but beyond this, we’ve been asking ourselves the same questions since the early blueprint and drafting days for Metabase.
As we gear up for the Metabase ICO, we wanted to introduce you to Metabase with some bite-sized insights about the project.
Of course, we have plenty of information packed into our Technical White Paper, and you can find out about our motivations & approach in more detail by reading the Introduction to Metabase. But if you’re short on time and want a quick taste, this post has got you covered.
Where we’re at
Emerging in 2009, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and its core operating technology, a blockchain, has laid the foundation for a new era of digital peer-to-peer transactions. Bitcoin has gained legitimacy among millions of people around the world, and even some governments. Bitcoin is now accepted, managed, and sustained by a vast international community as a platform to exchange value.
While Bitcoin continues to offer one specific application of blockchain technology, a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online payments (transfers of value), the advent of the Ethereum open software platform, served to realize the broader potential of blockchain technology beyond Bitcoin.
In doing so, it opened up a world of unimagined decentralized possibilities, where more complex constructs of value can be built, transferred, and managed with greater ease and transparency.
Although we have seen developments beyond these two blockchains, innovations have been piecemeal and singular in their approach, highlighting features that are appealing to blockchain insiders, but not providing a comprehensive solution to the prevailing problems that blockchains and cryptocurrencies face (especially relating to usability, applicability, and adoption).
We’ve come a long way, but not far enough.
Together, Bitcoin and Ethereum have proven that blockchain technology, decentralized systems, and global collaborative communities can work. But, at the same time, vast improvements and innovations are needed to meet the true promise of blockchain technology.
If we want to take decentralized applications to the next level and build a viable future, we must create a better infrastructure. An infrastructure that can scale and provides an easier way of making more extensible and sophisticated applications to be able to deal with the complex problems that the world is facing.
What is Metabase?
Metabase is a scalable blockchain and Smart OpCodes platform for building next-generation businesses. A multidimensional blockchain system focused on developer usability, extensibility, scale, and security.
We’ve created a blockchain infrastructure designed to empower developers, entrepreneurs and industry, to easily create advanced distributed applications and scale them into the market-leading businesses of the future.
What makes Metabase different?
You may be wondering what sets Metabase apart from other projects trying to solve blockchain scalability issues. For Metabase, the difference is that scalability is just one element that we look to solve.
From the beginning, our team understood that first generation blockchains have several limitations that are preventing their widespread use and adoption. Scalability is just one of these limitations and cannot be dealt with in isolation.
[Scalability + Real World Inspired Monetary Policy + Smart OpCodes]
So, instead of only focusing on scalability, like most other projects, Metabase takes a multidimensional approach. It is this multifaceted approach “scalability + real-world inspired monetary policy + smart OpCodes” that makes Metabase a next-generation blockchain platform and sets it apart from other projects.
Why we’re building Metabase
While emerging blockchain technologies have revolutionized usability among an elite developer community, it has fallen short of making the development of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and decentralized applications easy and accessible to entrepreneurs and innovators.
We’re building the Metabase cryptocurrency and blockchain platform from the ground up to empower the world’s most underused resource — entrepreneurs.
A platform that enables a broad and diverse group of entrepreneurs and innovators, with varying levels of technical understanding to build blockchain powered decentralised applications and scale next-generation businesses that impact society.
Moving beyond first-generation blockchains
First generation blockchains have several limitations that are preventing their widespread use and adoption. To make it much easier for the average technologist to leverage the power of blockchain technologies, Metabase will directly address the major problems impacting current blockchain systems which have lead to burdensome usability and low adoption rates.
A scalable blockchain protocol — to increase transaction throughput.
The conventional blockchain is a linear linked list of blocks. Attempts to increase transaction throughput have focused on parametric changes to this design — hitting roadblocks in the process. With Metabase, we are proposing a new blockchain design that looks more like a tree structure, instead of the linked list like structure of conventional blockchains like Bitcoin.
If the usage of the system increases, the Metabase blockchain branches into two, with the mining process occurring on two branches simultaneously thus creating two blocks in one block creation time interval. We took this path because we felt the original design was limiting us from better solutions, so we re-envisioned a new design structure itself.
Dual currency — to decrease transaction fees and increase adoption.
Today, the more people use a blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum, the costlier the underlying currency and the more expensive it is to make transactions. So, when adoption of a platform/blockchain increases it has bad side effects for users. With Metabase, there are two currencies. One reflects network adoption and the other is used for denominating transaction fees. The supply of the latter token increases at a significantly higher rate than the former which means increased adoption of the platform will not negatively impact transaction fees.
A next-generation virtual machine — for more powerful functions and expanded programming capabilities.
Ethereum created the application development aspect on a blockchain. But creating complex applications is still very difficult because of the lack of standardized community-vetted libraries. Metabase will feature an upgraded Ethereum style virtual machine. This virtual machine will feature an augmented OpCode space which can be used to incorporate standardized and community-vetted programming constructs directly onto the platform as OpCodes.
Metabase proposes to create a marketplace for developers where they can develop and monetize programming constructs by embedding them onto the OpCode space (via a community review process) This will empower developers to utilize platform-level constructs to build more powerful and multidimensional applications.
Easy to use tools- for unprecedented accessibility and ease of use.
Our goal with Metabase is to create the necessary APIs and development tools that can be used to interact with Metabase. Unlike current solutions that involve third-party SDKs and centralized architecture, Metabase will provide frameworks that can connect to the blockchain directly. The functionality will be implemented in the form of a library for mobile platforms and as a browser extension on browser platforms.
The Metabase ecosystem will embrace both browser and mobile platforms as first-class citizens and aims to encourage and support consumers in search of easy-to-use blockchain applications on Metabase blockchain.
Besides the official mobile and browser applications, Metabase will provide and maintain an SDK and an IDE for developers. Our intention for the Metabase platform is to create easy to use mobile and browser applications for end users and support developers with robust tools and frameworks, enabling them to create next generation of blockchain applications.
Developers will be able to create and deploy new products to Metabase blockchain directly by using the browser plugin and IDE. In terms of functionality, Metabase IDE will not be limited to compiling and deploying smart contracts but will play a critical role during development and guide developers to use best security practices at every step.
Come change the game with us
If you feel like the Metabase project is something that you would like to get involved with, we encourage you to get to know the project and join our online communities.
Find out more about the Metabase project and join our ICO pre-sale.
Find out about our motivations and approach. Read — Introduction to Metabase
For all the tech, check out our Technical White Paper
Join our Metabase community on Telegram. We talk about blockchain protocol innovations and scaling decentralised applications into the disruptive businesses that will change the game. Join now!
[Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Metabase/
The front page to the Metabase community. Keep up to date on news and events on everything related to Metabase with members for the IV team. Join now!
Originally posted on our Metabase blog.