By Pushpendra Baghel, Head Solutions and Technology Advisory Group, 3i Infotech
October 14 2018: Satoshi Nakamoto was said to have become very disillusioned with central banks and governments handling our money and facilitating payments. This was in the backdrop of Lehman Brothers going down and great recession of year 2008 when Bitcoin was born. It’s almost a decade since Bitcoin first came into being. The idea was to create digital currency and global payment system which is free from any government control.
Major Promises
Well, we still don’t see Bitcoin (or any other crypto currency) being used in mainstream buying and selling.
What went wrong?
For example, internet has moved to where it is today with many generations of evolution.
Telecom Networks → Packet Switching Networks → ARPANET → TCP/IP (OSI) → Internet
The above is the simplistic view of evolution path of internet. This however was not simplistic, if we go back in time and explore the history of internet. ARPANET is one which succeeded but there were many more networks. But ARPANET was successfully able to solve problems and grow around the open standards. Open standard was very crucial for one single network to be where it is today.
I have listed few problems with Bitcoin technology which has prevented it to become mainstream. It is so encouraging that there are other platforms which have already solved these problems. For example, the hashgraph technology which is essentially a consensus algorithm, seems to have solved many problems.
The only problem I see with hashgraph is that it’s not an open standard but patented technology. This limits everyone to contribute to the growth of hashgraph as universally accepted standard.
I see Hyperledger Fabric as a very favourable ledger technology for enterprise adoption. The most promising part of the Hyperledger Fabric is its architecture. It is modular and ready for further evolution based on open standards. The consensus algorithm for hashgraph could also be used as consensus algorithm for Hyperledger Fabric.
I believe there are two things that should happen for blockchain to get the maturity of internet.
I am overall very optimistic about blockchain and also about this becoming mainstream in near future.