A smart contract is an agreement between two parties that is evaluated and executed by code, thus making it trustless. The trustless execution is the unique aspect of the contract. It allows two parties to agree on the conditions of a contract without a 3rd party who are generally lawyers, to intermediate, validate and execute the contract when its conditions are met.

In reality, a smart contract is actually pretty dumb. It does not have any artificial intelligence and does not do well under changing conditions or dynamic environments. Additionally, once the smart contract is created and live, it cannot…

This post will discuss the differences and similarities between Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Blockchain technology has created a new way for companies to raise capital for their projects through ICOs by democratizing the well-established IPO process.

IPO

An initial public offering is a well-regulated process that private companies with a proven, sustained business model use to raise additional capital to build and grow their company. An IPO is traditionally performed by later stage companies to open up equity for their company to the general public. Companies wishing to go public must file an S-1 form with…

I attended the MIT Bitcoin Expo this past weekend and learned about the emerging projects in the space and how they plan to add value to the blockchain ecosystem. Here are some of the most interesting projects I saw.

Algorand: The Borderless Economy

Algorand was founded by Turing award winner, Silvio Micali and it solves the blockchain trilemma by delivering decentralization, scalability, and security. The promise of Algorand is to deliver a stable, decentralized, and digital economy for businesses to build solutions on top of its platform. It uses a Byzantine Agreement Protocol to reach consensus among users and also removes any uncertainty in…

Scalability is a big issue at the fundamental core of blockchain technology. How can millions of people use bitcoin to transfer funds between themselves if there is a limit on the number of transactions the network can process at any given time? The answer is they can, but true adoption of this payment system will never occur if the fees and processing time for these transactions is too high. This article will discuss some of the proposed scaling solutions for blockchain.

First Layer Solutions

First layer solutions propose to change a fundamental aspect of the cryptocurrency. For example, a first layer solution for…

On Saturday, February 23rd, the Harvard Blockchain & Crypto Club hosted an all-day conference featuring panelists and keynotes from various backgrounds in the blockchain space. The conference provided valuable insight from industry-leading professionals on where the sector currently sits, its bottlenecks and where its positioned to head into the future. Below are some points that interested me.

Liquidity = Value

Liquidity is defined as the degree to which an asset or security can be quickly bought or sold in the market without affecting the asset’s price. Cash is the most liquid asset while real estate is relatively illiquid as it is difficult to…

In this article, I will discuss some of the ways the financial industry can benefit from using blockchain technology. FinTech is a fast growing industry and has seen a wealth of new services and products over the past few years. These products enhance customer’s lives by improving the way they interact with digital money in terms of speed, security, and reliability. Implementing blockchain technology can aid these complex services in several ways.

The first benefit of blockchain technology is security. After the 2008 financial crisis, there were several regulatory measures put in place on banks like KYC and AML. Implementing…

This article will highlight the pros and cons of two of the most popular consensus algorithms for public blockchains.

Proof of Work

PoW is a consensus algorithm that rewards participants who solve cryptographic puzzles in order to validate transactions and create new blocks on the blockchain through a process called mining. The puzzles they solve require serious computing power and energy. PoW was first used by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies have since adopted this consensus algorithm.

One of its advantages is that it is the most widely used consensus algorithm today. This makes it reliable solely because it has been…

I listened to this a16z podcast about stablecoins and decided to research further into them. This is what I found.

First, let’s state exactly what a stablecoin is — a cryptocurrency whose value is tied directly with an asset that has a stable value like gold or fiat money.

Types of Stablecoins

1. Fiat-Backed Stablecoin

These stablecoins are backed 1:1 with fiat currency as $1 USD to 1 token. The most prominent example of one is Tether (USDT), whose value is $1 USD for every USDT token. The only way to legitimize that the currency is actually backed 1:1 is by auditing the authority issuing the…