Road to Mass Applications
Article credited to cryptomandate and provided by EOS GO
Intro
Two weeks back I wrote a detailed article about EOS transitioning from gambling to gaming dApps. That article covered the journey of dApps in the EOS ecosystem since the blockchain’s inception in June of last year. In this article I’d like to follow up on that and talk about the future of Mass Applications (mass dApps) and how we get there.
If you missed the previous article, please go have a quick read (6min) then continue with this one, for to better understand the future, one needs to know about the past and the present. Article in question – ‘EOS shifts from gambling to gaming dApps’.
Awesome! Now that you’re up to date with the history of EOS’ dApp ecosystem let’s get right into the future of dApps that is Mass Applications.
Mass Applications
A tough road ahead
Blockchain is good for many use cases and applications. However, there’s one major limitation that all blockchains face today that prevents them from being able to support mass applications. Bitcoin, which is over ten years old now, experienced this limitation at the very end of 2017. Ethereum, which is over four years old, has also experienced this same limitation in the past. This limitation is the single most hurdle that all blockchains are trying to jump over in order to be the first to cross that mass application finish line.
You might know or at least have some idea of what I’m alluding to here. But before I point out what it is I’d like to highlight the instances where this limitation played a noticeable factor.
Back in 2017, towards the very end of the year, Bitcoin was experiencing a huge surge in demand due to its growing popularity amongst the mass public. Bitcoin was all over the mainstream news in the second half of 2017 and by December of that year the price was breaking one all-time high after the other. It seemed everyone who knew about Bitcoin was buying it for themselves and their loved ones as sort of a Christmas present. Two months later though its price dropped nearly 70%!
Also around the same time but on a separate instance, a popular gaming dApp on the Ethereum blockchain called CryptoKitties experienced high transaction volumes. The game involved the breeding and trading of digital assets in the form of kittens/cats with each selling for varying prices depending on their rarity. At its peak (Dec 2017) these digital cats were selling at an average price of $100 each, it got so bloated that one genius decided it was worth it to put up a huge record sale of $118k for a single ‘cryptokitty’. At its peak the gaming dApp accounted for almost 20% of all of Ethereum’s total traffic. That too quickly came to a tragic crash!
Bitcoin and Ethereum’s rise in value was caused by a common growing demand for cryptocurrencies in 2017. Likewise, both their consecutive crashes were caused by a common limitation in scalability. The thing is because these blockchains weren’t initially designed to facilitate a great number of people all at once, it caused their networks to stall almost to a halt as the number of transactions were too much for the blockchains to bear. These are two separate blockchains and even though they are completely independent from the other, they still couldn’t handle their individual traffic. The cause of the 2017-18 crash was the result of blockchains’ inability to scale. When blockchains stalled people panicked and sold their entire holdings. It was practically a rush out to the doors as it seemed like the infrastructures were about to crumble down on them due to the pressure.
I point out these instances as they are responsible for the bear market that we’re still in ever since then. Many people lost a lot of their hard earned money, along with their trust on cryptocurrencies and blockchain when everything came crashing. The blockchains weren’t as fast as promised, not in their experiences and cryptos were too volatile of a ride for many to stomach. So they cashed in their chips and weren’t home, vowing never to return to this blockchain place again. Can you blame them? Many of these folks are parents, students, working men, with bills and responsibilities to mind. Blockchain became an unnecessary and expensive liability which they paid for, for quite some time. An expensive lesson for both blockchains and its users.
Blockchain’s still have a long way to go if they ever wish to regain the trust they lost from the public back in 2017. It was hard enough to convince family members to give blockchain a try the first time around. Fool me twice? Not going to happen! A lot of education has to be provided about this new technology especially to those who can’t afford to lose the little that they have. I mean those are the very same people that blockchain is supposedly meant to help right? The people who have very little access to wealth opportunities in the traditional system. Getting there takes time and will require a lot of support from institutions who can afford to take financial risks on behalf of their customers and the communities in which they operate.
EOS.IO
EOSIO (EOS blockchain) is the most scalable operating blockchain in the world. It is light years ahead of its nearest competitors and looking to further that gap considerably. Ironically though it is also currently facing a familiar issue faced by its predecessors before it, and it’s the old scaling issue. A project by the name EIDOS has resulted in a large consumption of the blockchain’s resources, making it difficult for the average user to carry out simple transactions. Even though EOS has sold itself as the better alternative to the likes of Ethereum for dApps, one can’t help but have a feeling of déjà vu to what happened just two years ago in those Bitcoin and Ethereum cases mentioned earlier.
However, having said that, EOS is leading the race to mass scaling and still looks to be the first to effectively support mass applications. A much anticipated dApp in the EOS community is Voice, a social media platform that many believe will be the first dApp to reach mass adoption. The dApp will be designed to easily integrate with many other applications within EOS. It brings new features that will be of great value for all kinds of projects, dApps, websites etc. thus prompting participation. Learn more about the platform: ‘VOICE – A secret revealed’. If successful in its pursuits Voice will be blockchain’s first mass application, opening the door to many more, assuming that the EOS blockchain will scale quicker than the platform grows.
Earlier on I mentioned the importance of having institutional support to help grow blockchain and bring it to the masses. Block.one is one such institution whose main focus is to do exactly that, and as quickly as possible. Block.one is greatly invested and fully dedicated to growing the EOS blockchain by building useful tools, software and dApps on it. In fact, they recently announced their intentions to participate in the blockchain’s governance through the voting process, to help ensure the quality of custodians is maintained and improved where possible. This type of support and organizational structure lacks from other blockchains which is one of the things that allow EOS to quickly adapt and implement the necessary changes in order to move forward as soon as possible.
EOSIO is currently working on an upgrade to EOSIO 2.0 which the community developers and Block Producers are testing out before it is launched on the mainnet, hopefully before 2020. EOS was already the best performing blockchain when it first launched in June 2018 and now a year later with the introduction of EOSIO 2.0, it is set to become 12x faster. EOSIO 2.0 will be 6x faster than EOSIO 1.8, an upgrade that went live on the EOS mainnet just under a month ago! You just can’t argue with the progress of this blockchain.
With it EOSIO 2.0 introduces EOS Virtual Machine. EOS VM is a WebAssembly specialized for blockchain applications. It will provide for a more efficient use of resources, namely CPU and RAM. That should help alleviate at least some, if not most of the pressure caused by EIDOS and other similar projects.
Conclusion
As much as there are different blockchains, all competing to become the first to actually scale to support mass adoption, this is still somewhat of a collective yet decentralized effort to make that a speedy reality (excuse the pun). When one blockchain accomplishes that feat, the others are sure to follow. It’s just a huge advantage to be the first one to get there and depending on the pace that was set, it may take years before other blockchains catch on. Judging by that, EOS is my best bet to getting there first and then of having the ability to properly capitalize on the marketing opportunities arising from that. Every organization, business, application and users will want to ride on the fastest freeway, and as further incentive, EOS is a freeway without tolls.
Mass applications are coming to blockchain, it’s only a matter of time. And if you know that then you know something that 99% of the world population doesn’t know. Just knowing isn’t enough though, you’ll need to align yourself with the blockchain that’s going to get there first. Whilst other blockchains are working to catch up to previous versions of the EOS blockchain, EOSIO continues to break new barriers and setting up higher standards. I believe that it is EOS that’s going to win the race to mass applications (mass adoption), and it’s a little too late for anyone to catch up at this point. But don’t take my word for it.
This was a fun article to write because I got to take some time to fantasize about the future a bit. We all know blockchain and the volatile world of cryptocurrencies can be a bit stressful at times. Some positivity and a quick break are very beneficial for our own sanity. Hopefully this article provided just that. Continue to learn about this great tech while there’s still time to do so, also a little diversification never hurt. I hope that things turn out the way you’d hoped.
Until the next one, thank you for reading!
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