How do we bring blockchain to the masses?
An ever-increasing number of people working in the tech scene are passionate about the potential of decentralized technologies to change the world. What’s more, this dream of a decentralized future has inspired an entire generation. According to a recent study 30% of millennials would prefer bitcoin to government stocks. Another study concluded that around 70% of Bitcoin holders are young men, who cite a distrust in government and institution as a motivator for their fascination with digital currency. But what’s missing in this picture? That’s right, all those other people.
What made the internet truly popular?
Let’s take a trip back in time. On the October 29th, 1969, Arpanet was the first real network to run on packet switching technology when computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time. In effect, they were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet. They were supposed to send the message “Login” across the network but reportedly, the link between the two colleges crashed on the letter “g”. Fast forward to 21 years to 1990 and Tim Berners-Lee writes the code for the World Wide Web based on his proposal from the year before, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs. Yet it was only when the first widely downloaded Internet browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993, that the Internet became easily accessible to non-techies.
While we’re not suggesting it will take 25 years for blockchain to reach gain mass adoption, it’s clear that the internet would never have changed the world if the world hadn’t got on board. It’s true that cryptocurrencies can currently be utilized with relatively approachable mobile wallet apps. More involved solutions like hardware wallets solve real problems and are, without a doubt, feasible products for early adopters.
However, none of this is cutting it, assuming the goal is to reach the wider population. The reason behind this is simple: the industry may have built graphical user interfaces around annoying technical details, but the details are still annoying. In fact, very few people in the world actually want to think about public and private keys, and how to handle and store them.
Experts setting expectations
Using Blockchain-based technologies shouldn’t be any more technically involved than using a mobile banking app in 2018, or connecting a debit card to PayPal in 2006. Decentralization is a lovely idea that can bring real change to unbanked populations that are downright abandoned by traditional financial institutions, and we in the industry need a hit that’s certain to drive our friends, neighbors and family to blockchain tech in droves.
It turns out, forward thinkers in the industry agree with us. During the recent New York Blockchain Week we got a few interviews that are spot on. As Jake Brukhman of CoinFund puts it: “The average mainstream user is not going to be buying Ether on Coinbase […] I think [they will] go to their mobile phones and earn cryptocurrency”.
That is to say, we believe that cryptocurrencies can be stellar replacements for what we currently think of as customer loyalty reward programs or market research. We also believe users should be compensated for their data and the time they put into mobile platforms.
Vansa Chatikavanij, Managing Director of OmiseGo, also agrees on what’s currently missing: How to make it accessible to normal people?
How we’re bringing blockchain to the people
Zippie’s goal is simple: to ensure that amazing blockchain projects like OmiseGo don’t just reach enthusiasts, they reach everyone. Thanks to the ever increasing ubiquity of the smartphone, an estimated 6.1 billion by 2020, smartphones are the obvious tool to use.
In the last decade, integration of online services and easy-to-use smartphones have made the internet a seamless experience. Everyone from consumers to big companies and developers expect their data to be stored on reliable servers rather than a hard drive that could fail any minute, making cloud application a USD 70 billion industry.
The global average selling price for smartphones has been below USD 350 for five years and you can now pick a 3G smartphone for 40 dollars. What’s more, between 2004 and 2012, the average price of laptops dropped from USD 1400 to below 500 by the end of 2011. Ease of use, popular services and affordability made “computer networks” a thing that billions of people now use for everyday tasks without thinking much about it.
This is why we plan to get our tech on as many as possible, as shown by our recent partnerships with Blacture and Borqs. Importantly, our tech is even easier than as signing up for a social network — except social networks don’t really give you coin for using them.
Our programmers and designers are working hard at making the use of our token a simple and integral part of both mobile and desktop experiences. We’re engineering new ease of use technologies such as the Zippie card. With all of our announced products shipping to growing customer segments in the upcoming months, we’re at the forefront of bring blockchain to the people happen.
Our grand vision is that blockchain becomes as every day as families paying for holiday shopping with crypto, if not this year, then the next. And we believe if we succeed, every blockchain project succeeds too. If you do too, why not join us turning grand visions into everyday reality. Our families, our friends and even our grandparents will, eventually, say thank you.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about our project, be sure to head on over to our Telegram channel, where our CTO and developers are, as ever, happy to help. You can also follow our progress and join our community on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube.
