Ethereum

June 6, 2018 by admin

Blockstack’s Dapp Store: today’s version of the Yahoo! directory

Dapps, a.k.a. decentralized apps, have up till now been hard to find on the Web. But the blockchain browser company Blockstack aims to change that with its new directory, Universal Dapp Store. This could be a turning point for dapps, because Blockstack has the heavyweight backing to popularise the use of distributed apps. The company counts Fred Wilson’s Union…

April 5, 2018 by admin

Zilliqa one-ups Ethereum by implementing sharding

In my post yesterday bemoaning the slow progress of Ethereum’s scaling solution, Pete Abilla tweeted this response at me: Richard – I dig you, ever since your @RWW days. But bro, how can you miss the only – THE ONLY – blockchain project with a working sharding solution: @zilliqa. DM me and I’ll get you…

April 4, 2018 by admin

The misty realm of Ethereum scaling solutions

It’s been an ongoing bear market for cryptocurrencies in 2018, including for the top two coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum. The main causes of bear sentiment seem to be worldwide regulation issues and other concerns around legitimisation (for example the blanket ban on crypto ads by Facebook, Google and Twitter). But another factor is the continuing…

March 14, 2018 by admin

EOS: another purported Ethereum killer yet to go live

Being an Ethereum killer is a trendy thing in the blockchain world currently. What is an Ethereum killer? It’s a public blockchain that aims to be the primary platform for decentralized apps (DApps). While I’d like to say there’s room for more than one blockchain platform for decentralized apps, the reality is it probably is…

March 8, 2018 by admin

Cardano is a long way from being an Ethereum competitor

Cardano (ADA) is one of several Ethereum challengers currently occupying the top ten of CoinMarketCap. While all blockchain projects are ambitious, Cardano is especially so. It not only wants to displace Ethereum as the primary blockchain developer platform, it wants to do so via a very long, complicated product roadmap that will be rigorously peer reviewed by…

March 4, 2018 by admin

The status of Status after its $100m ICO

When I first wrote about Status in mid-2017, it had just completed a $100 million ICO. At the time I described it as “a kind of next-generation Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.” But in reality, there was no way to tell for sure since there was no actual product. Since the ICO, Status has obviously spent…

February 28, 2018 by admin

Blockchain speeds & the scalability debate

I’m writing a series of posts about blockchain infrastructure, and in particular how it impacts on blockchain and crypto startups. In Part 1, I discussed blockchain size and the key differences between Bitcoin’s blockchain and Ethereum’s. I concluded that blockchain size doesn’t have a significant impact on startups; it’s only relevant to miners and others who…

February 26, 2018 by admin

NEO’s quest to be The One

Ever since Ethereum took the blockchain concept that Bitcoin introduced and built an app platform for blockchain, several others have tried to do the same thing. One of the most prominent “Ethereum alternatives” is NEO, an open source Chinese project that hopes to build a “smart economy” using blockchain technology. Like Ethereum, NEO has built…

February 22, 2018 by admin

Does blockchain size matter?

My goal with Blocksplain is to track blockchain and cryptocurrency startups, which some are calling “Web 3” companies, and explain how they fit into the emerging blockchain ecosystem. But in order to understand the potential value of these startups, we first need to understand how the ecosystem itself is progressing. That’s my aim in this series…