Category: Articles

When it comes to the future of business, there are few innovations that have captured the imagination more than the concept of smart contracts. Despite the misnomer -- the degree to which they are “smart” or even “contracts” is still a matter of intense debate -- businesses understand the need for autonomous processes that are unstoppable and always-on. At least so far as it doesn’t destroy user experience, the answer to “How much security do we need?” is almost always “More.” This is why it makes sense to look at the best way to provide secure smart contracts. Bitcoin has this answer.

Developers face many challenges when designing and implementing decentralized Blockchain applications. For example, many dApps contracts require reliable access to external data, such as price feeds. They also require decentralized storage for storing off-chain files to reduce on-chain storage cost. An autonomous dApp might store off-chain web pages and javascript code, and verify the authenticity of those files on-chain.

The blockchain ecosystem suffers from an adoption-curve crisis. At a certain point -- much like we saw in the history of the Internet itself -- this technology must make itself relevant to the most people possible on a larger scale. What we have all gained in security via the blockchain revolution, we have yet to achieve in terms of user experience. Nearly a decade since the Nakamoto whitepaper, we are long past the time when we need to start thinking about the latter seriously, lest all of this effort merely benefit a handful of relatively well-to-do enthusiasts who too often only make hand-waving promises of greater inclusion.

According to The World Bank’s Global Findex report “1.7 billion adults remain unbanked, yet two-thirds of them own a mobile phone that could help them access financial services.” The term “bank” as a metaphor for “financial services” is a persistent one. But, just as many emerging countries leapfrogged over landline telephones to mobiles for voice communication, so too may these “unbanked” people very easily glide past traditional institutions on their way toward modern, more personal, distributed financial service delivery models.