Blockchain interoperability is vital as frameworks for integration and interaction between blockchain systems is very necessary
The advent of Bitcoin opened a huge door to endless possibilities. Since its introduction, blockchain — the technology framework behind it — has gained massive popularity across several sectors ranging from the financial sector to the health sector. Blockchain has been tagged the new future as its adoption has grown aggressively.
It almost appears an organisation would be missing out if it hasn’t taped into the potentials of blockchain. This is largely because blockchain indeed has a whole lot to offer with thousands of use cases and applications. The idea of decentralisation it brings — giving power to the people and eliminating forms centralisation and external control — is a catalyst to its global acceptance.
Draper Dragon recently held a private summit, where Larry Li, the Managing Director, opened the summit by giving an overview of Draper Dragon and its accomplishments over the years with list of projects the company has invested into. However, Eric Gu, Metaverse CEO who gave a presentation and also moderated a panel discussion along with blockchain engineers like Hao Ding, Ting Du of Quarkchain and Qinrong Yang of Basechain, took the audience on a journey through the development of blockchain technology and how the public chains have immensely contributed to the ecosystem.
According to Gu, Bitcoin pioneered the first public chain which paved way for a new era of the blockchain technology. Mastercoin later on proceeded to be the first ICO ever after its release of the document tagged “The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper” by the developer J.R. Willett.
The year 2013 saw the emergence of several other cryptocurrencies also called “altcoins” with over 70 altcoins in operation then. However, according to Gu, “at the time, among all the altcoins, most of them we have long forgotten today, a public chain stood out and greatly influenced the industry, and that public chain was ‘bitshares’.” Bitshares, founded by Daniel Larimer earned its relevance by creating the world’s first fully decentralised exchange. A development that also sparked the rise of different exchanges.
Rise of Public Chains
Ethereum is one public blockchain example that strongly enhanced the blockchain ecosystem by creating a platform for decentralised apps and smart contracts. Building on Bitcoin’s weaknesses, Ethereum rose to become the most adopted platform for decentralised exchanges. It’s ERC-20 soon became the standard within the blockchain ecosystem with several blockchain projects building their system following the ERC-20 standard. This opened doors for more possibilities and infrastructures in the industry.
With the rise of public chains and the drive to improve on already existing decentralized system, Eric Gu founded Metaverse in 2016, the first public chain in China. In June 2018, Metaverse completed the SuperNova upgrade, which allows the creation of Digital Asset and Digital Identity on the same public chain. Metaverse became the first public chain to have both Digital asset and identity on the same public chain. Gu, at the summit hinted that Metaverse will in future upgrade to the dual-chain system to solve the problem of TPS (Transactions per second) and having the consensus at the same time.
Also read: A look at the pivotal role blockchain plays in banking the unbanked
Ultrain is also another example which was created to support large scale businesses and industrial applications. Ray Guo, the cofounder was present as one of the speakers at the summit where he also gave his perspective on the development of public chains, he said, “public chain still has a long way to go and right now public chains cannot meet the needs of the public on TPS (transaction per second). It processes way less transactions than Visa or Mastercard. That’s something we as a public chain project need to work on.”
At the summit, Du speaking on enhancing public chains pointed out how Quarkchain does its part, “blockchain technology is still in a very early age and a lot of things are yet to be researched and developed. Quarkchain is focused on the public chain TPS development and we focus on raising the TPS to a higher level that can serve the applications and blockchain technology. TPS technology is not a result, TPS is a process.” Yang also hinted, “Basechain is focused on the fundamental public chain coding and algorithm. Our goal is to work on blockchain infrastructure including blockchain security, programming tools, community debugging tools and blockchain technology training.” These companies and several others are working on ensuring effective and efficient operations of public chains.
Several blockchain based companies are seeing the need to create their own public chains to further enhance the ecosystem. Exchanges are also not left out considering top exchanges like Binance, OKex and Huobi have recently announced their decision to start their own public chains. This is partly due to the realization that public chains form a vital part of the blockchain industry.
Advancing the Blockchain Ecosystem
“Every time there is a Consensus, there’s always a topic in focus. This year at the New York Consensus, the topic in focus was “interoperability”. I was deeply touched and I felt “interoperability” is a great concept. Hence, I’m happy to announce that we have completed the interledger between Metaverse and Ethereum.” said Gu at the summit.
Also read: Ethereum meets NEO at Consensus Singapore
Blockchain interoperability is vital as frameworks for integration and interaction between blockchain systems is very necessary. Metaverse is taking this largely into consideration and is making laudable moves in enhancing the ecosystem. This will enhance the possibility of sharing information and resources across the different blockchain systems.
Gu also commented on addressing another major service the Metaverse platform offers said, “BaaS system (Blockchain as a Service) will benefit a lot of blockchain projects. Current projects intending operate on a public chain would feel it very hard to accomplish due to the time required to build one. Building a public chain includes ‘network security’, ‘network consensus’, ‘digitising asset’ and ‘digitising identity’ and it all takes a lot of time. Thus, Metaverse initiated a BaaS to encourage different industries to join the blockchain without putting efforts in building their own public chain, but spending time to work on their own industry and have Metaverse worry about the blockchain technology.”
This way, organisations and industries with no background or technical know-hows on blockchain can successfully operate on the blockchain with Metaverse providing the necessary technical support. LUXCHAIN is also an example of blockchain based company offering the BaaS framework via creating Digital Assets of luxury products. This will open doors for more expansion and advancement in the blockchain industry giving everyone unrestricted access to the ecosystem.
In conclusion
Public chains have proven to be the core framework advancing the blockchain industry and to operations in different industries globally. We are now seeing at this point, that blockchain technology is beyond cryptocurrencies but a system that has the potential of simplifying yet securing everyday transactions. We are seeing the future unfold and public chains have contributed their part to this.
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