With time, everything around us evolves. While the natural world evolves slowly, the internet is evolving at an incredible pace. Before the internet, to spread ideas far and wide across the world, you needed to go through some type of middleman. Whether it was a publisher, the television, institutes of education, government agencies or the radio. The internet is the way to quickly connect peers and exchange information without a middleman.
While innovative, the rate of ideas trickling down through the web could only be based on who was visiting what web page or who had your email; the exchange was slow and tilted in favor of those who already had legitimacy. And over time, different gatekeepers have appeared that slow this spread of information: governments, corporations, and telecom giants.
Social media revolutionized the ability to spread information through accelerating the rate at which information is spread, relationships are created and legitimacy is gained. It also takes the power out of the hands of strong powers to corner the market or control the conversation directly.
Social media is the ultimate equalizer, giving an equal voice and platform to all participants. Some of the most notorious people on the planet rose to fame through social media.
The blockchain is an evolution of the internet: the next step of decentralization. Instead of only peer-to-peer transactions of information without a middleman, blockchain allows for pure peer-to-peer transactions of value without a middleman. The blockchain also restores anonymity, something the internet and social media could not maintain. If we have to categorize Blockchain’s evolution, then Bitcoin is Blockchain 1.0, Ethereum is Blockchain 2.0 and FAB - Blockchain 3.5.
Yes, I know you might be thinking, “what is Blockchain 3.0?” It does not exist. FAB is an evolution beyond that step, it really is Blockchain 3.5.
Blockchain technology has brought some fantastic innovations. Innovations such as distributed ledger technology, immutability, consensus protocols and more. But with these innovations comes the same issues that plagued the internet at its beginning: scalability and security before mass adoption.
Right now Bitcoin network can process 4 transactions per second while Ethereum network can process 5 transactions per second. These levels were fine when crypto was the domain of a niche crowd only using it for personal transactions. But now, there is an entire market of crypto enthusiasts and businesses looking to take advantage of the key benefits of blockchain to enhance their applications. At times, processing a buy of bitcoin can take hours; Ethereum has had trouble with handling enterprise apps for gambling and gaming. One business alone, Uber, processes 12 transactions per second, and PayPal process 400 per second. In the enterprise world, blockchain is synonymous with a turtle.
There are many examples to highlight the current inadequacy. if you are in the crypto community, then you know of the Cryptokitty disease. Those cute kitties forced projects to postpone their TGEs and ICOs. Can you believe it! During the crisis, I and many others were unable to move ERC20 tokens from MEW to exchanges and missed several opportunities. This episode showed everyone that without scalability Blockchain will end up being a short-lived fad.
At the heart of the blockchain, scalability issue is what makes it unique, the consensus methods. For transactions to be processed, there needs to be the consensus of the nodes in the network.
To tackle the scalability issue new generation blockchains are sprouting up with claims of incredible transaction speed increases up to thousands or millions of transactions per second. These are Blockchain 3.0. Most of these networks use different methods, such as the Tangle and Sidechains, to reduce the number of transactions to the foundation chain by combining them in a side chain. Some of these solutions have centralization issues and security issues. None have strategically tackled the consensus needs. Similar to the effect of Social Media on the internet and society, scalable blockchain networks will open the floor for more businesses and every day people to get involved in the peer-to-peer decentralized value exchange.
But they’ve already been passed over. FAB has all of the same scalability benefits through an Annex Chain method that reduces the number of blocks the Foundation has to create, but with the KanBan protocol, does not face centralization issues. It will potentially go up to over a million transactions per second. You must be wondering, “What is unique about FAB that makes it 3.5 instead of 3.0?” I’m getting there now, HODL my dear friend.
What makes FAB different is it is built for enterprises with an application layer. You don’t need to be a blockchain developer or hire one to build your application. The code in whatever language you want for any application. FAB will also have pre-built applications for Supply Chain and ECommerce.
Additionally, even with its side chain structure, the state and transaction information is open and available to all participants in the foundation blockchain unlike other solutions such as Lightning Network. Furthermore, a Proof of Production consensus method based on the use of the coin gives more incentive for holders to interact. This changing of consensus method is a major innovation for the project.
For these reasons, and many more Fast Access Blockchain is Blockchain 3.5
