Blockchain Events
Drivechain could make Bitcoin’s Blockchain obsolete forever.
Is Drivechain going to replace Bitcoin’s blockchain technology?
Bitcoin is struggling. To win, we must meet two contradictory requirements. When billions of dollars are at stake, security is paramount. Paranoia and conservatism are necessary for security. Any Bitcoin software modification introduces a security risk. We should freeze Bitcoin’s codebase and never make modifications that don’t fix bugs.
This first criterion is being met by a creeping ossification, which is not a planned strategy but an incidental political reality caused by historical circumstances and technology restrictions. Every adjustment that affects consensus must be carefully considered. The Taproot soft fork, proposed in January 2018 and activated in November 2021, and the OP CTV debate are examples. We’re fulfilling the first criteria, perhaps by accident.
This unconscious “tactic” is costly. In the current unintentional ossification regime, we are subject to tremendous and possibly reasonable, risk aversion. If a choice is made and risk is taken, every Bitcoin user must bear that risk. Technological advances are either implemented slowly or disregarded. In such a regime, technology won’t advance.
Zero-knowledge cryptography and ring signatures won’t be included in Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s privacy won’t improve. Only Bitcoin’s rivals will be private.
Scaling will require Lightning Network and custodial solutions. Lightning has scaling constraints. It has limited onboarding capacity and UX issues. Some Lightning improvements, like SIGHASH ANYPREVOUT, will take years or never be implemented.
Not to mention experimental ideas and technology like Blockstream’s simplicity proposal. It enables better smart contracts on Bitcoin than on altcoins. Given the proposal’s intricacy, it’s unlikely to pass under the current approach. Bitcoin’s biggest rival will have smart contracts.
More. Bitcoin won’t implement privacy, scaling, or smart contracts, either. We’ll voluntarily or unwittingly provide our competition with future technological innovation. Our rivals aren’t ossified.
There’s room for improvement. If nothing changes, we’ll be decades behind in cryptography and computer science.
Bitcoin must adapt to its competitive environment to win. Bitcoin’s current situation doesn’t matter. Without a system, Bitcoin’s potential would remain fixed and rivals’ will expand. No matter how far ahead or behind you are, your competitors will catch up. In a competitive environment, not adapting rarely works.
Unless Edo’s tradition and isolation give way to Meiji’s openness and modernization, the British will arrive with ironclads, Gatling guns, and rifles, and you’ll be stuck with samurai swords and horses.
Change and security are “irreconcilable” needs. Only by separating Bitcoin into two layers can they be reconciled. Layer 1 must be ossified, with no non-security-improving changes (in all likelihood that would be the existing Bitcoin Core). Layer 2 must be a risk-taking sidechain that can implement arbitrary functionality.
A secure two-way peg must allow 1:1 fund transfers between the base layer and any Layer 2 sidechain. This two-way peg mechanism and blind merged mining should connect Layers 1 and 2.
Each user would decide individually and unilaterally how much technological risk to take. Any user can move funds into a sidechain and accept its trade-offs and hazards, or move them back to the base layer’s ossified security.
Individual risk-taking and trade-offs would replace the current method of communal risk-taking through community deliberation and all-or-nothing modifications that affect every Bitcoin user.
The Liquid Network already implements this notion. The custodial is faulty. To attack it, you must compromise five custodians around the world, which is better than Coinbase, but it’s custodial.
Liquid has minimal success. Liquid.net has 3,560 BTC in the network as of September 14, 2022. $71 million is 0.019% of the 19 million BTC in circulation. It’s better than nothing, but relying on an 11-of-15 multisig controlled by 15 functionary-formed firms around the world requires an unacceptable level of trust for an allegedly trustless distributed cryptocurrency, which explains why there’s only $71 million in it.
Drivechain is a non-custodial implementation of BIP300/301’s notion. Distributed and trustless, it requires a soft fork. The two-way peg is secured by paying miners to fulfill a fixed, simple set of functions. BIPs detail the mechanism.
This improves Liquid’s security. Liquid’s security is severely inadequate given the potential threats Bitcoin may face as it grows. To attack Drivechain, you must undertake a 51% attack over three months, while making it clear to every network participant that you’re attacking and giving them time to reply.
Drivechain reconciles our “irreconcilable” change and security requirements. We can ossify Bitcoin more completely than with the current “accidental political reality” kind of ossification, preserve Bitcoin’s trustless and distributed nature, and ensure that, in the future, we are the “British” with metaphorical ironclads, Gatling guns, and rifles, and our competitors and adversaries are stuck with metaphorical samurai swords and horses.
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DAVOS 2023: At #WEF23, policymakers and business leaders were eager to distinguish between distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies. Not crypto, but blockchain.
From climate solutions to humanitarian aid to moving on from FTX’s stunning collapse, the second day of the World Economic Forum’s 2023 annual conference saw discussions focused on the promise of the technology underlying cryptocurrencies, rather than the often speculative financial assets themselves.
The day opened with a panel of traditional banking professionals seeking to draw a line under the FTX issue, noting that, while the cryptocurrency industry is in crisis, other products founded on distributed ledger technology are not.
“It’s critical not to mix cryptocurrencies with CBDCs, stablecoins, and DLT… they’re all quite distinct,” PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman stated. Despite the bitcoin crisis, “the underlying tech has operated well,” according to Schulman.
“The promise of a distributed ledger is that it may be faster and cheaper to settle transactions concurrently with no middlemen. That is really significant.”
Importantly, unlike past waves of “blockchain, not bitcoin,” which generally referred to permissioned blockchains, the talks on Tuesday were OK with public ledgers such as Ethereum and the Stellar network. Lynn Martin, President of the New York Stock Exchange, seems to adopt a similar stance, citing the potential benefits of blockchain in making share issuance more efficient or allowing financial exchanges to be settled quickly rather than days later.
“Some of the technologies have now been embraced and used to truly make processes considerably more efficient,” Martin added.
Former Indian central bank governor Raghuram Rajan later repeated that promise of broader blockchain uses.
However, TradFi’s commitment to the industry may eventually be tested: When questioned, Schulman, Martin, and State Street’s Ronald O’Hanley all claimed artificial intelligence, not blockchain, was the most exciting technology.
Carmen Hutt, treasurer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, detailed such an application – a recently launched blockchain payment solution for distributing humanitarian aid in Ukraine – just across the street from the forum’s main congress center, in a historic church transformed into a neon hub for hosting discussions about the future.
Hutt revealed during a panel discussion hosted by CoinDesk chief content officer Michael Casey that the pilot project, which was launched in December using the blockchain platform Stellar network, is significantly more sophisticated than one might assume.
Donations via the blockchain promise “transparency and visibility,” and the Commission has a platform ready to send relief immediately, according to Hutt. “What an incredible offer… We can deploy $500 million today if we acquire $500 million. So this isn’t going to take weeks or months,” Hutt explained. (Later that day, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister praised the contribution of virtual money to the military effort.)
Further along the legendary “promenade,” industry heavyweights ranging from Solana and Ripple to the Global Blockchain Business Council teamed together to develop a climate project that would use blockchain’s transparent record-keeping to assist in improving carbon emissions and credit tracking.
Although authorities have mostly focused on the potential of crypto contagion to financial stability, a string of bankruptcies last year that wiped out billions of dollars in retail investments, most notably Sam Bankman-FTX, Fried’s may have underlined the need for a shift in their focus.
For the lone banker on the conventional finance panel, the events of 2022 must shift regulators’ focus away from the risk of lenders bringing down the whole financial system and toward the risk of individual customers being duped by crypto frauds. “It’s not that regulators have disregarded [financial innovations], but if it’s not going to generate systemic danger, I’m not sure why we should focus on it.” For More Blockchain News, Click Here.
Blockchain has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with applications spanning from new cryptocurrencies to their potential uses in various sectors, making it important for business leaders, industries, and regulators to have a deeper understanding of the technology and its potential applications.
While blockchain has yet to achieve widespread acceptance, it has the potential to drive significant digital transformative changes and generate new possibilities throughout the corporate landscape, from banking and finance to infrastructure and healthcare.
Blockchain is defined as “a distributed ledger that records transactions chronologically and publicly,” according to one source. Its database is shared across a network rather than being held in a single location, which enables a high level of information control and transaction transparency.
However, there has been so much hype surrounding blockchain on all sides of the debate, that it has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.
A study by Vorhaus Advisors, a Los Angeles-based digital media consulting firm, found that only 25% of people in the United States understand what blockchain is.
According to the same poll, 62% of people believe blockchain is the same as cryptocurrency, and 48% believe it is the same as bitcoin.
This lack of understanding of blockchain has caused confusion, skepticism, and fear about its use, which spreads across all sectors of industry and government, influencing not only business but also policy.
The fact is that blockchain technology has the potential to fundamentally alter how organizations and individuals trade products and information, and part of that revolution is already underway.
Blockchain has the potential to improve any business in which transactions require a permanent record and the confidence of many parties. Furthermore, it has the potential to dramatically simplify paper-intensive enterprises that require an accounting ledger.
Here are three real-world blockchain use cases to illustrate how adaptive, widespread, and disruptive it can be:
- Banking and Finance: Finance and banking have received the most attention regarding blockchain and for good reason. It’s an entirely transactional industry. For example, blockchain can convert paper-based functions such as letters of guarantee (documents provided by a bank that assure suppliers be paid for the goods or services they supply in the event that the payor is unable to pay) into a totally paperless, digital, and transparent process, helping to eradicate fraud and forgeries.
- Rethinking Healthcare: The pandemic’s unexpected demand for remote healthcare and other medical-related activities has moved the emphasis on delivering clinical treatment in a virtual or data-driven manner. As a result, the various medical data silos across healthcare providers can be integrated into a single shared blockchain network for secure and efficient data sharing.
- Supply Chain: Blockchain can also be used to improve supply chain management. A blockchain network can provide a single source of truth for the entire supply chain, from the origin of raw materials to the final delivery of goods to the customer. This can help to improve transparency, traceability, and efficiency in the supply chain.
In conclusion, blockchain is a powerful technology that has the potential to transform many industries, but it is important to separate the hype from reality. It is essential for business leaders, industries, and regulators to have a deeper understanding of the technology and its potential applications to fully harness its potential.
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According to the findings of a recent survey that was carried out by CasperLabs, it is anticipated that business adoption of blockchain technology will increase over the course of the following year in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.
This is the case even though there are knowledge gaps.
Despite the fact that the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries have undergone significant change over the course of the past year, people and companies continue to display an interest in the area.
The results of a recent poll that was conducted by CasperLabs and Zogby Analytics revealed that businesses had a particularly upbeat outlook on the potential applications of blockchain technology.
The questionnaire was sent to a total of 603 “decision makers” employed by a variety of commercial firms in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, in that order.
Almost all of the businesses that were asked about their usage of blockchain technology responded that they did so in some form, and almost all of those businesses (87%) also stated that they intend to make financial investments in blockchain technology during the next 12 months.
This phenomenon is especially widespread in China, where more than half of the respondents want to put money into blockchain technology by the year 2023.
According to Ralf Kubli, a member of the board of directors for the Casper Association, businesses are continuing to look to blockchain technology for solutions despite the recent turbulence:
“It is incredibly heartening to see businesses recognize that blockchain technology is not a threat but rather a solution,”
Companies who are now implementing the technology are reaping the benefits of two of its primary characteristics, namely security (42%) and copy protection (42%), both of which are proving to be highly useful for these organizations.
Those who work in IT-based operations are using blockchain technology for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to improving the efficiency of internal processes (for which 40% of users employ it), improving the efficiency of supply chain operations (34% of users employ it), and improving the efficiency of software development (30% of users employ it).
According to Kubli’s projections, the year 2023 will mark a pivotal turning point for the widespread use of blockchain technology, particularly in terms of offering practical answers to real-world challenges and producing long-term value.
In spite of this, a significant study shed light on the flaws that are commonly seen in CEOs of corporations. The vast majority of respondents (73%) feel confident in their comprehension of blockchain technology.
Despite this, 54% of those who replied continue to regard the words “blockchain” and “crypto” as being identical. In spite of the fact that the vast majority of respondents feel positive about their comprehension of blockchain technology, this is the result.
In a similar vein, it has been argued that the most significant obstacles to adoption are a lack of developer talent, a lack of tools, a lack of interoperability, and pessimism regarding the industry as a whole.
All of these factors contribute to a general sense of pessimism.
In spite of this, practically all of the people who took part in the survey stated that they would be more receptive to embracing blockchain technology if they had a better grasp of how their coworkers are utilizing it.
Education, in addition to accessibility, has been a challenge and a barrier for a significant amount of time for those people outside the space who seek to interact with the technology and engage with customers. This has been the case for many different causes throughout history.
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