Welcome to a Low-Friction Long Tail of Crypto Projects Full of Leapfrogged Adoption

People love to take sides on all kinds of issues. Maybe even especially so in crypto, where you have people debating the (usually technical) merits of one project vs. another.

On our end, we think that the cryptosphere is a big place with a lot of projects and no crystal balls. In 20 years we’ll look back and connect the dots as to how the space evolved — but right now we’re still connecting them.

And it is refreshing to hear others who think the same, or in other words keeps it real :)

A couple of important crypto players did just that in podcasts over the last few weeks:

First, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire touched on all kinds of things with Anthony Pompliano, one of which was that there is no “one size fits all” crypto project. The space is full of projects that will live and die. He hopes that Circle will solve some — not all — of the challenges in this new ecosystem.

Second, Andreas M. Antonopoulos went on the Ark Invest podcast specifically to address supposedly competing crypto narratives e.g. Bitcoin vs Ethereum. Generally, he respects the design tradeoffs that different blockchain projects make and doesn’t like to take sides — or think that his opinions will really make a difference in whether the market adopts one or the other crypto tool. He also made a few specific points in this respect that tie in closely with the BlockStamp project:

• He believes we may be moving towards a cryptosphere where this is something like a “reserve cryptocurrency” that is widely recognized just about everywhere and some “special purpose crypocurrencies” that are used to accomplish specific things. You might imagine, for example, how you can take “general purpose” US dollars or euros just about everywhere in the world and expect to be able to exchange it into “special purpose” local currency. (Interestingly, Circle has launched a US dollar backed stablecoin that makes it easier to move in and out of multiple crypto “sub-ecosystems” for investment opportunities, etc.)
• He also mentions how it is a mistake to assume people are totally rational about using crypto. There is friction involved, i.e. human factors like how easy it is to acquire crypto, use applications without needing to understand code, and network effects influencing how many other people are using the crypto. Moving forward, a lot of progress in the space is going to be around reducing this friction.

In other words, there is a long tail of crypto projects in the blockchain ecosystem, with plenty of diverse sub-ecosystems around each of them.

All of that provides some interesting context for the BlockStamp project in a couple of ways:

First, there are three specific reasons that people would visit the BlockStamp sub-ecosystem.

We’ve written about them all before. But just to recap:

• BlockStampers can play radically fair roulette and lottery games on BlockStamp Games, a casino platform that runs entirely on the BlockStamp blockchain.
• BlockStampers can seal small amounts of data into the blockchain as timestamps or even entire files with sizes up to 1 MB. Doing so provides proof that this publicly available data existed at a certain point.
• BlockStampers can register their web domains on the BlockStamp DNS as a censorship-resistant alternative to the ICANN DNS, which is a centralized Achilles heel for freedom of speech on the internet as we know it.

We’re not trying to be all things to all people. These are just three of the virtually unlimited use cases, applications, and pipe dreams you can find out there in the crypto space. But what we’re doing we’re doing right.

Second, the project has made reducing friction a priority.

At BlockStamp, we believe that everyone should benefit from the project — regardless of whether you know code or not.

To date, we have launched:

• a user-friendly online interface for the BlockStamp Games platform.
• A user-friendly online wallet from which users can access every live online BlockStamp application

We also have plans to launch:

• A WordPress plugin that uses BlockStamp’s timestamping capabilties to protect content creators against plagirism
• A tool that lets users easily switch between DNSs to choose their best internet(s).

Probably the ultimate zero-friction blockchain application will be for users who do not even realize they are using blockchains. But before we get there, we’re doing our best to make conscious blockchain use as pain-free as possible!

As a final point, optimistic ideals and feature upgrades are great. But we think pain and a lack of alternatives will better determine which long-tail crypto sub-ecosystems gain popularity faster or slower.

A popular example of leapfrogging is that mobile phone usage tends to grow exponentially faster in Africa and other less economically developed areas simply because there are no better alternatives. There were no landline systems to replace.

We see something like that happening in the cryptosphere as well.

For example, today you can buy public transport tickets with bitcoins all over Argentina, which might has one of the — if not the — world’s worst historical track records with inflation. Argentinians, even those in a public institution like the transit authority, seem to be happy to adopt cryptocurrencies because they have less to lose, basically! The existing alternatives are too painful in the form of lost currency value.

The alternatives to BlockStamp applications are perhaps not as painful as a chronically untrustworthy national currency — not yet anyway. But they are pretty painful and will get more painful as the space changes over the next few years:

• Today there are plenty of “pay-to-play” online casinos i.e. with house edges. But they will seem too painful as awareness of our “non-profit, fun only” alternative grows.
• There are also a fair amount of blockchain timestamping applications out there already. But they just aren’t that intuitive — and will seem clunky compared to what we’re going to launch soon.
• And there’s a similar story with blockchain DNSs. They’re out there already, but they aren’t so easy to use. Moreover, world governments / big businesses haven’t made using the ICANN DNS as painful for free internet speech as we believe they will :-/

Of course we’re looking forward to our project’s gaining popularity everywhere. But we’re actually expecting it to gain popularity fastest where the alternatives are the most painful!

About BlockStamp:

BlockStamp is a multipurpose Bitcoin blockchain fork developed to promote liberty, transparency, and sovereignty in areas of the digital economy where these fundamental values are most at risk. BlockStamp hosts a radically fair gambling platform, a digital tool for transparently sealing data, a censorship-proof internet Domain Naming System, and the BST crypto coin.