What would a World Wide Web of Blockchains look like?
What does the world wide web look like?
Its a simple question but most of us probably haven’t thought about it. Millions of web pages all connected to each other. Links going back & forth. But what is the big picture? If we could observe this mesh, this network of web pages and links from a distance, what would it look like?
The Structure of the Web
Almost two decades ago, a bunch of computer scientists, asked this question and published their results: The web looks like a bow-tie.
The world wide web (www) is characterized by four components:
- A Strongly Connected Core (SCC): a highly inter-connected set of web pages all of which can reach each one another along directed links;
- Left Periphery: consists of pages that can reach the SCC, but cannot be reached from it; possibly new sites that people have not yet discovered and linked to.
- Right Periphery: consists of pages that are accessible from the SCC, but do not link back to it, such as corporate Websites that contain only internal links.
- Tendrils: contain pages that cannot reach the SCC, and cannot be reached from the SCC.
The Structure of a Blockchain Web
Though its early days in the deployment of Blockchains, it is interesting to ask what would a world with multiple Blockchain deployments look like?
This question has significance not only from a scientific curiosity perspective but also because it offers some insight to the debate between private vs. public and permissioned vs. permissionless Blockchains.
At Koinearth, we have been building solutions on Blockchains for a few years now and we believe that the Blockchain web will also look like a bow-tie.
It is probably best to think of a blockchain as a value transfer network. In a blockchain network, value can be represented as a currency, a credit note or any other financial instrument.
What are the kind of value transfer networks that we see in the world today? A supply chain is a value transfer network where goods, services & money are exchanged between business partners. A bank forms the hub of a value transfer network facilitating the exchange of money. The financial network of banks is yet another value network. A P2P sharing platform (e.g. Uber, Airbnb) is another kind of value network which enables a marketplace for a particular kind of good. In short, a wide variety of value networks exist.
What is interesting is that there is no single unified network. Blockchain purists would say that this is what a public blockchain was supposed to be — a universal ledger so that anyone can exchange value with anyone. It is a powerful vision.
Unfortunately, several considerations fall in the way of this vision. From a technology perspective, privacy & scalability of Blockchains continue to be challenge. But perhaps, the bigger challenges are non-technical.
Financial regulators around the world are trying to figure out how they monitor value transfers for purposes of taxation, law enforcement etc. Enterprises are not yet comfortable with putting their value transfer information on a public network, despite promises of cryptographic security. Some enterprises are forming their own blockchain networks with their business partners.
None of this is atypical. The history of technology teaches us that when multiple variants of the same technology compete, it is common for multiple variants to be adopted. Early on there are challenges of interoperability but over time this gets resolved as standards emerge and these islands of technologies get connected with each other; those who do not interoperate perish.
One interesting future path may be for the public blockchain to play the role of the inter-connectivity layer for private-permissioned blockchain networks. If this happens, the Blockchain web would also look like a bow tie — with a connected core of public Blockchain and peripherals consisting of private-permissioned Blockchains.
Towards a Bow-Tie Blockchain Web
The emergence of side chains is a good indicator that this future path is fairly likely.
This is also the approach we are adopting at Koinearth. Our enterprise-targeted solution, marketsN, allows enterprises to setup private blockchains with their business partners (e.g. supply networks). At the same time, we allow such a private Blockchain network to be connected with the public Blockchain. This hybrid approach allows trusted transaction records on the private Blockchain to be shared, in a trusted way, with anyone in the world.
We see this as a first step in the path to the Blockchain web. If we can connect private blockchains with the public blockchain — on demand, then two private blockchains can also inter-operate with each other. There is still a long way to go but the path is becoming clearer, one step at a time…
Check out our work at www.koinearth.com and www.marketsn.com
