This paid story is brought to you by Safebit
“Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain.”
“Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.”
Don’t allow such statements lead you to despair! Look at the progress we made so far. Bitcoin is an autonomous bank. Ethereum is a platform where anyone can build their own autonomous organizations. These are not fictional concepts but functional applications.
But, blockchain still lacks the escape velocity to take off. It wasn’t until Apple launched its app store, the mobile apps took off. The app store changed everything, it created a new market. They made it easy and simple for individuals/organizations to develop, deploy and sell apps. It was powerful to make teenage coders millionaires.
Blockchain has to acquire this escape velocity and we are waiting for a market leader. Presently blockchain has issues in the following areas.
User Adoption
Credits : xkcd
The concept of public/private keys, wallets, etc are difficult for the layman to understand and use. Humans are prone to mistakes, if one loses their private key there are no means of recovery. Managing one’s assets in different wallets is a pain.
Developer Adoption
Credits : xkcd
Programming blockchain applications require a different approach. If you consider Ethereum, reading data is free but writing comes with a cost. So one needs to write code that minimizes writing costs. Likewise, different platforms have different infrastructure and operational costs. These platforms evolve at a rapid pace. It’s difficult for a developer to learn multiple blockchain languages and be updated with the rapid infrastructure changes. Deploying natively on different chains for optimized costs is a hassle.
Business Adoption
Credits : xkcd
Crafting profitable business models on blockchain needs a new way of thinking. If you consider decentralized exchanges, most of them charge low service fee. An organization cannot sustain by charging such low fee. Issuing tokens can help organizations raise huge investment. However, tokens bring additional friction with respect to usability.
If customers want to use your companies service today and they don’t have your token, they have to wait until the trade order is filled. Presently the wait time takes days/weeks.
Hiring talent is another problem, experienced developers in this field are so scarce and expensive.
Reliability
Credits : xkcd
Network congestion is a common problem in blockchains. This problem would affect your customers who are trying to do transactions with your organization.
If you have important data on the blockchain and you are unable to retrieve it when you need the most, you will have a serious problem. Hence one must account for such issues and build some backup infrastructure that might have additional costs.
These are some of the technical, financial and economical problems blockchain faces. These are problems that hard to solve, but they are not impossible. Those who solve such hard problems are likely to leave a mark.
Our Idea
We are a bunch of idealistic and determined individuals based out of Israel who dare to solve challenges and empower blockchain innovators through our platform Safebit.
In the earlier days of software, it was a pain to deploy applications on different platforms. Java solved this issue by giving the ability to deploy applications cross-platform.
Safebit
Safebit is a cross-chain and cross-platform cryptocurrency wallet. We have a user-friendly interface that allows you to manage your crypto assets like you manage your Gmail/Facebook account.
It also has the ability to support hardware wallets like Trezor, Ledger, etc. Our APIs makes us highly extendible, anyone who wants to build a new wallet/applications can easily plug into our platform.
Credits : xkcd
Powerful APIs to Manage User’s Blockchain Accounts
Our APIs makes us highly extensible, anyone who wants to build a new wallet/applications can plug easily into our platform. It provides an experience similar to o-auth to manage user’s blockchain accounts.
Since we offer cross-chain support developers don’t have to go through the hassles of learning native language and infrastructure. We also provide libraries for developers that simplifies the process of writing smart contracts.
Our platform minimizes the need for costly experts. Any developer with good API experience would be able to make scalable blockchain applications using our platform. Hence saving time, cost and efforts.
Collaboration Network
Collaboration is at the heart of open innovation. Our platform makes it easy and simple for individuals and organization to collaborate with each other.
Identities
Instead of sending crypto assets to a public key, you can send it a user’s email Id or username. Since the public key address is too long and a hassle when it comes to transacting huge amounts. If the user sends the assets to a wrong person you can’t revert the transaction back. Sending money to a username or email id is much simpler.
Handshakes
Handshakes are similar to accepting a Facebook friend request. It allows users to build social and financial connections with each other.
Collaborative Identity
With collaborative identity, you can approve a transaction only if two people agree. The system can also be used to restrict functionalities of users based on their roles. On a Facebook business page, an admin has certain functionalities which editors and advertisers don’t enjoy. Collaborative identity makes it easy to configure the level of security as required.
You have several options:
1. Ignore blockchain until it’s too late. 2. Be a critique and gain short-term attention. 3. Be an innovator who would dare to solve hard problems and leave a permanent mark in the blockchain revolution.
If you choose the third option, you can join us to build the future together! Please connect with us on Telegram, Reddit & Facebook. Claps Please 👏. Thank You, follow Safebit and Hackernoon so that you won’t miss out on our upcoming stories.