Interoperability: The Key To Crypto's Future

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Technology always starts out a bit fragmented. However, as time passes and development takes place, systems emerge that enable interaction among the different players.

For example, do you know the system one is using when you get an email? Does it matter what network that person is on? The answer is often no. One can read an email whether it was sent from Gmail, Yahoo, or a private server. The same is true for SMS. When one receives a text, the mobile network is not important. All can communicate with each other to deliver what is needed.

That is not the case presently with cryptocurrency. We see the different networks operating on their own. They do not communicate with each other. This is a problem for large scale, maximum growth.

Thus, we have an industry right now that is fragmented.


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It is vital to remember that cryptocurrency is nothing more than data. In this way, it is similar to an email or text. There is nothing more than data transferred from one node to another. Of course, with a blockchain, all those transfers are monitored and recorded in an immutable way.

We can see how much less effective email would be if we were only able to communicate with those who were on the same network. What if you could only email those who were on Gmail like yourself? That would exclude all private servers or competing email services.

Of course, this was something that was common for the early Internet. AOL tried to establish was basically was a closed system whereby only people within its network could communicate.

This ending up failing as the idea, hopefully, is preposterous to most people. Yet we accept it as natural in the world of crypto networks.

In fact, we not only accept this, we even go so far as to promote the idea of tribalism. People take their stand and proclaim how their network is the greatest. Bitcoin maximalists are known for this yet they are far from the only ones. We are now seeing a lot of Ethereum maximalists appearing who believe that all future digital activity will be done on that chain.

When asked about which chain will be heavily used in the future, my reply is simply "all of them". We are going to need the bandwidth that all offer. It is impossible to run everything on a chain like Ethereum. No matter how much scaling it does, it will not be able to transfer that data we have now, let alone what will be created in the future.

Thus, we are looking at a situation where all the capacity for both bandwidth and storage is going to be required.

For this to occur, we need the networks to communicate with each other, either directly or through out applications. We are starting to see some of this where projects are setting out to develop their systems on different blockchains. This is crucial for success going forward.

The ability to swap tokens seamlessly, easily, and for a low cost is vital to mass adoption. People are not going to want to take the time to figure out what network each wallet applies to. This will really become an issue when tokenization becomes mainstream.


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For example, let's say someone is recommended an exercise application by a friend. This is one where the person can earn tokens for certain activities. He or she goes the the Apple or Google store to download the application. It loads and the person is ready to go.

Oops, there is a problem. Before starting, one needs to sign up. This means getting an assortment of keys in addition to the ones already held. Being somewhat advanced in this area, the person does it.

Getting active, the person earns the tokens. Now what? This is not a token he or she is familiar with? It is not traded on any major exchanges. This is not found on Ethereum using Uniswap. Nor is it a BSC token.

So our industrious, exercising crypto advocate has to hunt down the blockchain it is on to see how to swap the tokens for something he or she values.

We can only imagine this process when dealing with merchants. Hit upon a website where one wants to buy something to see an assortment of tokens that are accepted. What if this individual isn't on those networks? How does he or she transact?

This shows how much work still needs to be done in the future to achieve a state whereby cryptocurrency can actually function in a realistic manner. We would not tolerate this fragmentation from the Internet yet we still think it normal in crypto.

Complexity is not an advantage when it comes to mass adoption. People do not like stuff that is extremely difficult to use. Hence, the next major challenge of the crypto world is to make things a lot easier. Ease of use is a priority.

The majority of users do not care what blockchain (network) their transactions are stored upon. They only want to utilize the application. This is why the idea of promoting a blockchain makes little sense in my opinion. Does anyone really care where this website (or any for that matter) is hosted? Of course not. That back end stuff bores people.

Blockchain, at its essence is very boring. We might not believe it since we tied the tokens to it, hence it is monetized. However, set that aside for a moment and how interesting are things.

Consider the basics of Hive versus Ethereum. How much does transaction per second turn you on? Are you thrilled to ponder block sizes? What about total traffic for a day? Let us not forget the amount of memory to run the different nodes.

I don't know about you, but I can hardy contain myself. This is stuff that is going to come up with the family at the dinner table. Hours could be spent on in depth conversation.


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Certainly, there are some who this appeals to. However, most people do not care about this. Nor are they interested in protocols or anything else of this nature. Trying to promote this idea is misguided from the start.

People only care what they are using and what is in it for them. They download an application, game, or hit upon a particular website and they want to engage. Where all the stuff is happening on the back end is not relevant to them. They only care that it works.

Thus, we are going to see the entire industry have to focus upon interoperability. Those that do not are going to be left on an island by themselves. Just like AOL had to abandon the idea of creating its own isolated system where everyone was locked in, the same is true for the world of crypto.

Outside of developers, the focus of branding has to be upon what the users are interested in. This is the applications. Those that build a brand which enables people to interact on the networks they see fit is what will hold broader appeal. That is where the outreach can come from.

To achieve this end, we need to think about interoperability. Enabling cross-chain interaction is vital. There is no reason why these networks cannot co-exist. In fact, they have to. There is no way to scale up to mass adoption level with fragmented systems.

It is the key to crypto's future.


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Bang, I did it again... I just rehived your post!
Week 54 of my contest just started...you can now check the winners of the previous week!
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This is why I’m extremely bullish about Thorchain, an exchange that facilitates cross chain swaps in the most decentralized way, all one needs to do is to connect their decentralized wallet and perform the swap operations, while the system is not perfect, it is the best we’ve seen so far, coupled with the dev plan’s. Eventually, thorchain positions itself to be the underlying infrastructure that will make swaps as seamless as possible in the most decentralized way, I perceive that when it is more developed, anyone will be able to send their preferred token while the recipient will receive the value in their own native token, with neither of the parties knowing which blockchain or tech handled the transfer in the background.

One thing I love about being early in all these is that I get to know each building block from the scratch, unlike those who will never know what Thorchain is or does, I get to know, I get to know the part Cosmos is playing, I get to know where Hive fits in, I get to be more excited and actuallly know more stuff that will be important going forward.

And I agree that interoperability is the future from this point, it’s also why I think DOT is a big deal. Judging by all this, chains that allow for interoperability will play a very important role in adoption of this Blockchain technology

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That is very true. It is a project that is looking to fill a major need. There will be others to follow and some that might eclipse what Thorchain is doing. We simply do not know what innovation is going to come. What we do know is that it is needed.

A lot of code still to be written before this is even close to mass adoption.

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It will be interesting to see the politics of blockchain bridges in the future because I'm sure some blockchains will become best buddies while other arch rivals

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That could although politics tends to get overridden by technology. The ones creating the interoperability are not going to care about the politics of the separate chains. They will simply make their applications interoperable, using whatever chains they want.

The idea of blockchain maximalist comes from the tokens. Remove that from the equation and focus upon the technical build cases to make it easier and more efficient for users, and we see a completely different scenario.

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interesting and market these days is very scary I am currently in 200$ loss

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Get use to it. Crypto markets go up...and they go down. And they can do both directions very quickly and voilently.

Your $200 loss could go to a $200 gain and a $300 loss in a matter of a day.

So get use to volatility.

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I don't see crypto-verse evolving significantly more without a high emphasis on interoperability.

I also see interoperability from another angle. A way to use less stressed blockchains when the situation imposes it. Maybe for a fee paid by the blockchain which needs the service. But it may be a way to spread the load in the crypto-verse while the ever growing scaling issues will be tackled.

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A way to use less stressed blockchains when the situation imposes it.

I agree with this and a point I omitted from the article.

You are correct. I think what ultimately happens is the applications will be multi-chain and they will opt for the one that has the least traffic at that given moment.

It is a way to make everything more efficient.

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Bridges..we need bridges..wait isn’t Leo building a bridge?.:) Your right there will not be one chain to rule them all. It is better this way. Fees get too high we can always switch to a low cost chain like Hive.

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...wait isn’t Leo building a bridge?

Yes they are. And Actifit is putting their token on BSC too.

We are going to see a lot of this over the next year. It is the next phase in evolution for these applications/projects.

Since Hive has one of the most cost effective systems to run, we will see the reverse happening too. People will want to have some access to Hive since transactions are fast and fee-less.

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As Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, it was also the first example of simple smart contracts. However, due to its nature, bitcoin is used only for money transfer purposes.

Ethereum smart contracts are leaving bitcoin at this point. By using the Ethereum code structure, developers can develop smart contracts that can serve many different purposes.

Any user can create a smart contract using ethereum infrastructure and put it into use. (In early 2018, there were reports that the ethereum-like smart contract period will begin in the bitcoin blockchain, but we can say that it is still in the trial process.)

Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin explains how smart contracts work at a blockchain summit: "Contracts are converted to computer language and recorded in blocks. Contracts copied into distributed ledgers keep parties 100 percent anonymous. ..) stand by. When the time comes, it takes action to fulfill the transaction and if the necessary conditions are met, the transaction is successfully completed or canceled before completion.
You may read more WHAT IS BLOKCHAIN ? https://ecency.com/blockchain/@profix/what-is-blokchain

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Why are you spamming this article with your posts?

If you want to be successful on Hive, it is best NOT to do that.

Comment sections are not your personal advertising board for your content.

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Well said.
Such mentalities show how early we are on the grand scheme of things with blockchain. Without interoperability blockchain wouldn't be complete. Goes the same way as with almost any gadget. I don't care about the circuits in my phone and operations behind the screed. All I care is I want to see is my apps working, transfers made, content shown up and so on. Interoperability is definitely a part of mass adoption for crypto and a must for such currencies to become the currency. When you no longer need to cash in and out of fiat you need to have ease of use for exchanging all sort of cryptos.

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I do need ease of use in my life. If I have to have a set of keys to remember every time I want to do an exchange I will just quit using that wallet or exchange. Just my thought on the matter.

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Not uncommon to what most other people feel about things. It is something that we will not deal with: difficulty.

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Every project that is working on this one aspect will see a lot of capital flowing through the in the upcoming future. Let's connect the world through Blockchains!

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I think free is always something that we want but we generally know it isn't free. For example stock trading being free but they sell your order flow. So I think there are always cons for things we consider free. However low fees are always what we want. They are ideal and are appealing to many users.

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here our bridge on leofinance will do better when it launch, because as edicted say, always people do not need complicated mechanism or a lot of step, to interchangued diferent tokens between a blockchain and other, of course a lot ot people botherin a lot with the technical things and prefer the simple as you say, a lot of my friend when i explain hey men come to hive, and leo and now cub, they say me what there is a lot of things to do o prefer facebook, and i think well if they like to waste their time in other social media that do not give valur for your time well is their problem.
but unfortunateli a lot of people do not bothering in try to learn a little about this.
a lot want to winn money, but they do not do nothing to auto teach them and try to get the enought knowledge to do this posible.

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Debemos ir a al margen de los adelantos tecnologicos, es decir avanzar a medida que avanza la tecnologi,a no quedarnos detras, porque nos volvemos unos analfabetas tecnologicos, y en la actualidad lamentablemente o afortunadamente sobran las herramientas para que no nos arrastre este mounstruo, y hablar hoy en dia de criptomomedas es un tema que todos deberias conocer... excelente post

We must go to the margin of technological advances, ie advance as technology advances, not to stay behind, because we become technologically illiterate, and today unfortunately or fortunately there are plenty of tools to not drag us this monster, and talk today of cryptocurrencies is a topic that everyone should know ... excellent post

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well, I am glad leofinance is tolling that line with their different projects. i am not big on the tribalism that exists within the crypto industry. it is senseless to me and defeats the purpose of this technology.

We are all developing in different directions. but the end game would be to connect/interlink. this would make the entire industry stronger.

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There are still those idiotic "Maximalists" around who are not set for the future or prosperity of our civilization. I used to hear that @dan was not a fan of SMTs and wanted there to be only one token. We have now seen how much greater everything can be in a multi-polar world with many tokens even within the same blockchain doing the same fudntion of rewarding content.

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