THE blockchain revolution is struggling. The much-vaunted technology behind bitcoin promises to enable trusted transactions without intermediaries, so why have the overwhelming majority of new blockchain projects failed? One problem is that there is no longer a single blockchain: the past few years have seen an explosion of different proprietary versions.
Now a London start-up is adding yet another to the pile – but unlike its predecessors, this one is meant to connect them all. The creators of this meta-blockchain think it could restart the blockchain revolution.
Over the past few years, groups from governments to supermarkets have tried to make good on the promise of the blockchain. A real estate start-up recently completed the first home purchase on the blockchain and US supermarket Walmart is beginning to use it to verify the provenance of its groceries.
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However, the different blockchains are not necessarily compatible. Walmart has heavily invested in its proprietary type – but its suppliers may migrate to any of a dozen others, all incompatible. This could be one reason why of 26,000 blockchain projects launched in 2016 are now defunct, as a recent analysis by consultancy Deloitte revealed. “The overall value of the blockchain system is limited if two parties can’t transact or transfer assets,” says blockchain specialist Tyler Welmans at Deloitte.
What is needed is some connecting technology that allows the movement of incompatible data across different blockchains – much the way TCP/IP made it possible for different systems to use the internet, enabling it to thrive.
Quant Network believes it has created the equivalent technology for blockchain, says Gilbert Verdian, co-founder of the company, which is filing a patent next week for what it calls the Overledger. He says this allows the same transmission and ordering of data over all current and future blockchains. “We can match data across any ledgers,” says Verdian.
A version of this already exists for cryptocurrencies. Known as an atomic swap, it allows people to swap incompatible cryptocurrencies by assigning an exchange value. “The overledger seems to be a straightforward extension of the original atomic swap idea,” says Emin Gun Sirer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. But instead of only supporting currencies as atomic swaps do, this works for any .
Interoperability could come with its own problems, says Mark Staples at Australia’s CSIRO. “Governance is particularly tricky, because two connecting worlds will likely operate under different policies,” he says. Not everyone wants their blockchains to be open. A government might legitimately want to put a fence around its own information.
However, no one will be forced to sign up and for those who do, this is the first credible solution to a problem that has been called the of blockchain.
This article appeared in print under the headline “The blockchain to fix all blockchains”
