The use of blockchain technology is rapidly proliferating, and it has already become a strong candidate to be the most revolutionary technology of this decade.
The first generation of blockchain technology came with the invention of bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. It depended heavily on a virtual ledger, which keeps track of all transactions and balances. Six years later, Ethereum was conceived as a means by which the technology could be given more advanced uses. Rather than simply acting as a ledger, Ethereum was designed to be a shared virtual “world computer”.
The Next Generation
Being tamper-proof and robust are the two defining features of these technologies, and the result is the invention of decentralized platforms that no longer require trust. Anyone who uses them can be sure the data being communicated is correct and safe. This is where the true advancements are.
The next limitation in blockchain technology is likely to be the ability to have artificial intelligence (AI) on demand. Rather than having to depend upon complex building blocks like databases or Amazon Web Services, it will be possible to create scalable business applications
DFINITY is the leader in this market, and is working hard to bring an advanced public decentralized cloud computing resource to market. Improved performance and unlimited capacity will help bring about a 90% cut in costs to the projects implemented on it.
Disruption Coming From DFINITY
With many of the other innovations occurring in this space, the innovation is in the reduced costs due to a more efficient method of performing the transactions. With DFINITY, the costs come in the reduction of IT resources required to set up and manage many of these services. Artificial intelligence is reaching a point where many of the most basic IT functions can be replaced by it.
There are two main directions by which DFINITY can go. The obvious route is to disrupt all of the current dominant players who depend upon their ability to be scalable intermediaries (eBay, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, etc.). This is nearly every single one of the most powerful companies to emerge in the last few years. There is even a potential for Google to be disrupted if it can be engineered into a clearly more efficient and benevolent resource. All of this is possible with the use of autonomous software that runs on a decentralized governance system that is capable of updating itself.
The non-obvious route for DFINITY to take is completely disrupting enterprise IT systems by cutting costs through the replacement of human resources. Amazon Web Services is a cloud service that is currently the dominant provider of cloud services, but if DFINITY could provide a similar service at a lower cost and not require the same level of human capital to manage and build these systems, it would decimate the incumbents.
As a company with unlimited potential in terms of capacity, the true priorities of the company are now more focused towards building security, speed, and scale. Their current aims are to achieve 1 million or more mining clients while also improving the performance to a point that is much superior to anything else available on the market today.
Finality is just one measure of the user experience and security, but by implementing Threshold relay chains, the current limitations may be addressed in a way that could bring the time it takes to finalize transactions down to 5-10 seconds. This would represent a significant improvement over the 10 minutes it takes on Ethereum and nearly 60 minutes on the Bitcoin network.
DFINITY and Their Mission
There is currently no whitepaper available for DFINITY, but it is expected to be made available soon. The mission of DFINITY is loftier than almost anything else in the cryptocurrency world, and because of that it has to run on a different timeline. Decentralized intelligence would allow the system to make arbitrary changes to itself in order to mitigate any misuse, while also fixing problems and optimizing the overall network experience. There is no current news about when the ICO will be but management originally planned for it to be in late 2017.
Based in Zug, Switzerland and run as a not-for-profit foundation, DFINITY will follow a different path from most of the other blockchain-based companies you will read about. Beta tests are underway, and the project is currently run by a large team of researchers that work full-time to try and bring this solution to market.
A company’s likelihood of succeeding isn’t just based upon the quality of the idea, but also the quality of the team. DFINITY’s team is top-notch and has a high degree of expertise both within the crypto world and the start-up world. Based on this, the future of DFINITY is bright, but will require a lot of work to get off the ground.
Disclaimer: The analyst does not have investments in DFINITY.
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