Bitcoin 20’s – ecat.media – Medium
Starting the 2nd decade of Bitcoin’s existence there are a lot of cats out the bag about what Bitcoin stands for and what might be the ultimate purpose that Satoshi Nakamoto created it for. We have come a long way since the days of “digital gold” and mere “transfer of value”. Today Bitcoin is more than what it used to be described as during the last decade.
Like the early days of the internet, there are a lot of new innovations happening all over the Bitcoin space. New platforms and applications are being made on a daily basis. The discussion is no longer limited to tokens and smart contracts. Things that may have sounded crazy and impossible a year ago are no longer perceived that way.
With the rise of the cap on transaction outputs such as op_return, there has been a massive burst of creativity in the type of software designed to leverage the Bitcoin network. Not so long ago wallets were the dominant forms of such software but now wallets exist as components of more complex software. In the coming months, with the elimination of the blocksize cap, building on top of the Bitcoin network will become less complicated.
With all the changes happening around Bitcoin there are a lot of questions about where it’s headed in the coming decade. The answer to that question is utility. In the majority of human creations utility is what encourages people to use them. Everyone using Bitcoin does so because it enables them to do things they were not able to do before. In the coming decade Bitcoin is the sleeping dragon that will capture a large part of the 5 trillion dollar IT industry.
Bitcoin was designed to be an electronic peer to peer cash SYSTEM. A system that can regulate software communication by introducing monetary value. We predict the protocol to resemble a universal computer language that will be used to regulate logical calculation across the internet. When it comes to logical constructions such as software platforms, this aspect of Bitcoin is like a software gaining a superpower. The superpower to increase the effectiveness of software so that its reach becomes global and it reduces the infrastructure necessary to provide the service to a bare minimum.
Let’s start with a simple and effective example of what Bitcoin can allow us to do so we can create effective platforms that will result in a more efficient interconnected network.
You might be familiar with CDNs. content delivery networks. They are in charge of delivering content that you need and are designed to reduce the load on the internet backbone. These networks can deliver content to your location from the most efficient routes. This will allow service providers to avoid clogging their networks from redundant use and keep those routes for essential use cases. Bitcoin’s network is designed in such a way that it can host such networks inside its protocol effectively eliminating the need for redundant CDNs. Examples of redundant CDNs are the networks that deliver js packages that power the web pages you visit inside your browser.
By hosting those packages on Bitcoin blockchain and taking advantage of the immutable aspects of Bitcoin ledger, one can reference them with a txid eliminating the need for checking the hash to see if you are using the correct library. We have the advantage of keeping a version of these packages to be referenced later without the need to worry about them not being served in normal CDNs. This allows for a more stable model for hosting more functional and wholesome websites on Bitcoin.
Using the unique transaction id you can always check to see if you are using the correct library and have the advantage of keeping a version of each of these packages and make sure your webpage never breaks in the case that traditional CDN company goes out of business.
We have been researching a variety of models and approaches to such networks. Currently, there are a very large number of platforms and projects being built on the Bitcoin network and we can confidently state that we have just begun to scratch the surface of this sleeping dragon. Bitcoin is here to change a lot of things regarding how we use computers to interact and also the way we conduct business with each other.
Published at Fri, 07 Feb 2020 19:40:07 +0000
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