There's a Fundamental Divide in the World of Blockchain
The Consensus conference in New York Urban center this week was a collision of worlds. The cryptocurrency space is fresh off a volatile price boom that put it in the global spotlight, and crypto entrepreneurs are more confident than e'er that the token economy is the decentralized future of blockchain. The enterprise blockchain marketplace, meanwhile, is looking beyond coins to deploy private, permissioned blockchains beyond different facets of their businesses.
When y'all put those two camps together, the disconnect tin can be comical.
On the surface, the Bitcoin-led crypto infinite was feeling itself. There were Bitcoin Lamborghinis parked exterior the Midtown venue, while an LA startup on the prove floor was selling actual 18-karat cryptocurrency emblazoned jewelry and gold coins. Startups were advertising new initial coin offerings (ICOs) with dancing mascots.
The reality of how cryptocurrencies are evolving is far more nuanced. Panels delved into circuitous issues like the token economic system, the mining boom, and avant-garde cryptography. Popular coins, from Ripple to ZCash, had a large presence at the show, and at that place was a lot of money to become around. Unicorn crypto startup Circle appear a massive $110 million funding round, a partnership with mining hardware giant Bitmain, and a Fiat-backed money to connect US dollars to the Poloniex commutation.
There is actual 18 karat gold crypto jewelry here. What even is 2022 #Consensus2018 #BlockchainWeekNYC pic.twitter.com/i2JyT5tMEc
— Rob Marvin (@rjmarvin1) May 14, 2022
The enterprise blockchain side of Consensus felt like a unlike briefing. FedEx talked about using blockchain for logistics. Enterprise tech and fintech giants like Deloitte, Microsoft, and SAP made announcements around enterprise adoption and deployment-prepare apply cases hosted on their own clouds. Fifty-fifty AWS entered the fray through a partnership with new ConsenSys-owned blockchain platform Kaleido. At that place was as well a big focus on interoperability and standardization, with organizations such as the Enterprise Ethereum Brotherhood announcing a 1.0 specification.
Eager startups on the exhibition floor straddled blockchain and cryptocurrency, merely several people I spoke to throughout the conference talked about the detachment between the crypto bros sporting T-shirts and the blockchain businessmen in suits. All the same the 8,000-plus attendees from both sides crammed into the overstuffed venue nonetheless. Terminal year, Consensus had about a third this many people.
This twelvemonth'southward Consensus also marked more mainstream consumer tech buy-in. Hardware maker HTC fabricated the surprise announcement of its forthcoming blockchain-powered HTC Exodus smartphone, which will feature a universal cryptocurrency wallet and back up multiple protocols including the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks.
Smartphones are the most ubiquitous computing devices in the globe. The not-yet-released Exodus is simply a kickoff, simply the decentralized potential of turning millions of smartphones into blockchain nodes is staggering in its scale.
Ultimately, information technology comes back to that core question of what'southward more important: Bitcoin and the massive cryptocurrency market it spawned, or blockchain's potential as a foundational technology driven in large part past investments from big banks and tech giants?
Prominent venture backer Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures hitting on that during a Wednesday panel. He said we'll look back at some of the valuations of crypto tokens today and say they were inflated, but doesn't believe cryptocurrencies are a bubble. Nevertheless, he does believe blockchain'south potential as foundational tech outweights the allure of its first and flashiest application.
"This is an entirely new stack nosotros'll get to build applications on, and the tokens are but the fuel that lights up that stack," said Wilson.
Of class it's not equally black and white equally that. IBM is using it to track carbon credits, but doing it with tokens on the Stellar financial cryptocurrency's network. Another very different example is Blockstack, which is building a startup building a blockchain-based decentralized internet. At Consensus, Blockstack launched a new ecosystem-broad decentralized app (DApp) shop that doesn't merely offering fiscal DApps. The market place features decentralized productivity apps, encrypted messaging and video chat, and social networks.
Co-founder Muneeb Ali also brought blockchain's topicality full circumvolve by revealing that he and co-founder Ryan Shea served as technical advisors for the decentralized internet storyline on this season of HBO's Silicon Valley.
Enterprise blockchain company Bloq is crossing that separate as well. Co-founder Jeff Garzik is an original Bitcoin core developer and led the failed Segwit2x Bitcoin fork before it was canceled due to lack of consensus. Bloq is bridging the cryptocurrency and blockchain worlds with its new Metronome cantankerous-blockchain crypto token, which Garzik said is the showtime crypto asset that doesn't have to be on a single network.
Things Become Heated
All the same, the starkest showdown betwixt the crypto and blockchain worlds came during a Monday afternoon panel that was supposed to be most "secure and reliable commercial networks." It turned out to be a heated debate over public cryptocurrencies and enterprise blockchains.
Former JPMorgan blockchain atomic number 82 Amber Baldet moderated the panel, fresh off announcing her new Clovyr private blockchain development startup. On ane side was Joseph Lubin, the reserved and soft-spoken CEO of enterprise Ethereum company ConsenSys. On the other was the flatulent, cowboy chapeau-wearing Jimmy Vocal, a Bitcoin programmer and partner at Blockchain Capital who said Bitcoin is "the real innovation."
Song came out guns blazing. At various points he called blockchain "magic dust" that doesn't instantly solve problems and mimicked Oprah with chants of "you lot get a blockchain, you become a blockchain!" He said that for nigh of the centralized businesses exploring the decentralized engineering science, he doesn't think blockchain is very useful. Song believes the time to come of blockchain technology is in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Asked near Baldet's Clovyr announcement, he said "I didn't come across annihilation just buzzwords."
"In five years, I remember most of the projects in this space will accept been for nothing. Especially the enterprise ones," Song said bluntly.
Half of the crowd cheered Vocal's anti-blockchain rhetoric, and the other half (including Baldet and Lubin) sat there quizzically and silent. Lubin eventually clapped back, and got Song to agree to a bet for "any amout of Bitcoin" that he's incorrect about where Bitcoin and blockchain will be half a decade from at present.
In a conference full of paradoxes, the fiery exchange brought the otherwise unspoken debate at the heart of Consensus to the fore. Earlier Song walked offstage, he said he was excited to find the attendees in the crowd that were clapping and buy them some drinks.
Almost Rob Marvin
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/opinion/21165/theres-a-fundamental-divide-in-the-world-of-blockchain
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