Blockchain vNext — a series

The landscape of next generation Blockchain technologies is huge and diverse. So are the possibilities to create innovative solutions. Yet many platforms are hard to understand and some of them not very mature. In my last story I laid out different reasons why I’m personally quite excited about what’s currently happening in this space.

Next generation Blockchain technologies will be diverse. Foto by Mina-Marie Mitchell, found on Pexels

Now I want to use this series of stories to dive into some of those clusters of upcoming Blockchain technologies and platforms. I’m no deep Blockchain insider yet and quite new to the topic. So I’ll do my best to use my curiosity and write from a fairly neutral perspective. I’ll go on a learning journey and take you with me — if you want.

I’ll judge the technologies and platforms from a user’s point of view. User in this case might mean “end user” or a development team which is trying to use these technologies in order to create prototypes for novel solutions.

Blockchain is a technical area. So we won’t get along without a glimpse of technology. I’ll try to explain technical pros and cons on a high level of abstraction. But there is more:

Currently I see three interesting dimensions to judge the benefits and drawbacks of Blockchain technologies:

1. Technology: Blockchain technologies bring new life into decentralized computing and solve problems differently, which opens up new possibilities. Yet they introduce a lot of drawbacks in comparison to established technologies. So the technological dimension is important.
2. Funding: There is a huge financial hype going on regarding funding Blockchain startups via ICOs. So it is interesting to see if considerable funding is already pumped into certain Blockchain clusters. This will put a lot of pressure onto these communities to deliver value as soon as possible.
3. Impact on society: Many of these technologies have an immense potential to serve democratic societies in different ways. Some of them have the target to create new communities or break monopolies. Others want to put you — the citizen — back in control of your data.

I’ve got a background in computer science — so I have a natural curiosity to understand dimension 1 (technology). In the end this is the foundation. Nobody should e.g. invest money in crypto currencies built upon Blockchains without having a rough understanding about what’s going on underneath.

Everybody is talking about dimension 2 (funding) — so it is simply not possible or utterly useful to discuss the potential of Blockchain technologies without that dimension in mind.

My ultimate motivation to write this series is dimension 3: impact on society. This really fascinates me. Call me naive — but I think these technologies could make this world a better place.

I hope that these three dimensions will help readers to get a better holistic picture about the potential of certain upcoming Blockchain clusters. At least it is my personal way to judge them. So let’s take this little research trip together, if you want...

Teaser: The first Blockchain vNext cluster I’m going to write about is FileCoin and its foundation IPFS — the InterPlanetary File System. Sounds intersting? You bet! I think it is a great example to begin with, because it’s quite easy to grasp its potential benefits over centralized services like DropBox or Skydrive.

Part 1: FileCoin and IPFS – reinventing storage
Part 2: Ocean Protocol — democratizing data markets
Part 3: Lisk — a Blockchain ecosystem based on JavaScript
Part 4: Project “Shift” — unstoppable content

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 277,994+ people.

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