For the Blockchain Industry, the COVID-19 Clock Is Ticking
When the hype faded, the emerging storyline surrounded enterprise blockchains and the massive potential of this nascent technology to lead companies to the next generation of the net.
Consortium-backed chains, enterprise blockchain research projects, and assigned proof-of-stake networks were assumed to be shrouded in as"next-generation platforms," but they stumbled -- and in Steem's case, an awful fallout is ongoing.
2020 appeared like it would be a different year, however. Startups understood the path forward was all about crafting platforms around the significant crypto protocols to extract value out of them -- not bootstrapping whole networks.
The storyline of enterprise blockchains faded to the background.
More immediate concerns like electronic privacy, the convoluted (and endless ) inflation vs. deflation debate, haven asset speculation, and the hindrance of a novel virus took the point.
The storyline timetable has accelerated, and we've learned more than we did after 2017's meteoric run.
The future of privacy and its function are being departed, particularly as we grapple with a series of improvements emanating from the COVID-19 situation.
By way of instance, former United States Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, unabashedly announced that he believes there's already too much financial privacy in the world. Naturally, that increased outcries among a largely libertarian-leaning crypto audience.
Nevertheless, it was the culmination of many improvements flying under the radar as mainstream headlines mostly were laden with fear and hysteria during March. The authorities quietly unveiled the hyper-polarizing EARN IT bill to the legislative debate, trying to undermine encryption, which does not bend to government acceptance. Apple and Google jointly made a COVID-19 exposure-tracing Bluetooth program that made everyone uneasy. And the notion of a digital buck was introduced into U.S. Congress.
Crises are often a convenient veil for unpopular law, but the grassroots answer to each of the above was reassuring. When it's Facebook's privacy indiscretions, creepy online advertisements, or the privacy movement bolstered by crypto proponents, it is evident that people are placing a premium on privacy.
Financial privacy is still one of the vital frontiers for maintaining confidentiality. Blindly allowing the infiltration of overall transparency into financial matters isn't just about, but it's outright dangerous.
Digital currencies owned by authorities represent the culmination of their decades-long foray into electronic surveillance. Unsurprisingly, pushback against them at the U.S. has been influential among proponents of solitude, with the consequences of a cashless society broadly considered firmly entrenching the government's place to censor and control monetary railways.
COVID-19 triggered many unexpected developments, but among the very distinct has been its acceleration of the timetable toward an electronic dollar and diminished financial privacy. Hopefully, coming from the other side of the catastrophe projects focusing on complex cryptographic primitives -- e.g., zk-SNARKS, sMPCS, etc. -- will have a renewed vigor among their supporters.
And maybe, just maybe, that urgency could translate to the mainstream until it is too late.
Competing companies just don't need to join a community primarily controlled by a competitor, particularly one without solitude. Collaborations have been the standard, but are these endeavors leveraging the capacity of blockchain technology?
Those are questions that are difficult to answer at the moment and have the market for business blockchains grasping for some kind of staying power.
Some jobs may have discovered that the essential killer app, however. And such projects face an arduous task moving ahead, however. The path of deserted venture chains, such as supply chain management jobs, is a dark mark that will have to be whitewashed before any meaningful adoption is completely realized either.
Possibly the most obvious evolution of the crypto and blockchain sector under the mountain of COVID-19 headlines is the growth of stable coins.
Naturally, we will need to ask ourselves: Are crypto bucks mutualistic or parasitic into their host networks? Otherwise, we can concentrate on the more general story of the explosion in stable coin expansion in recent months -- it is a microcosm of the immersion of heritage finance aspects into people blockchains.
Platforms such as MakerDAO are, in fact, analogous to central banks with discretionary monetary policy for keeping a stable coin. DeFi lending has been blurring the lines between centralized and decentralized, and a different financial system of alternatives, perp swaps, hash rate futures, and other financial instruments are flourishing. Crypto dollars play a significant role in how a lot of these instruments are collateralized.
Crypto dollars have swallowed the majority of trades on Ethereum. Pair that with an increasing thirst for crypto derivatives, institutional intrigue and uncertain macroeconomic background, and the traditional financial world are transitioning to people blockchains from urgency.
The consequences of this blockchain and crypto lessons learned from COVID-19 continue to be amorphous and are only in their early phases.
Enterprise blockchains might be stumbling; stablecoins might be rising, but what is evident is that crypto has just been gaining traction, and permissionless stapled to privacy is in the center of the intrigue ushering in a new generation of consumers. The COVID-19 pandemic only hastened the focus on these narratives, which makes it the most opportune moment in history for the cryptocurrency sector to change its reputation into a thriving, innovative technology sector within the finance sector.
✍️Written By HamzaDanish
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Title: For the Blockchain Industry, the COVID-19 Clock Is Ticking