The Many Potentials of the Blockchain

The blockchain technology is nearing perfection on all fronts of scalability, security and immutability, and many are waking up to the potential use cases of the cryptocurrency industry. Popular utilizations of the blockchain's features has already been demonstrated in the booming market of Decentralized Finance and NFTs in particular.

It's quite amazing to think that a 9-page long paper is all it took not just to lay the foundation of electronic cash, solve the double-spending problem, but build an entire industry through it. In more ways than one, the proposed blockchain architecture in this paper can be likened to a supercharged, refined version of the typical P2P networks rampant at the time, only with more functionality, more security and exponential scalability for rapid exchange for value-retaining assets. No central figure of failure exists in such an infrastructure, and no one user is entrusted more than their peer in this model.

The evolution of the Internet was for the ultimate purpose of facilitating the transmission of information around the world, without borders. Never in our history of humanity have we been so connected without restriction or barriers with such ease like this before. In the grand scheme of things, the internet is just a step towards the technological revolution, and Bitcoin, coupled with its underlying foundation described above, is but the natural next step of that: Facilitating the transmission of value around the world. What's more, the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies is uncannily similar to that of the internet's.

Now, almost a decade after solving the double-spending problem in a trustless way, the Cryptocurrency industry is large enough to threaten the traditional model of finances, particularly through the recent rise of Decentralized Finance.

DeFi

The traditional model of finance is one where banks are an entity that are one and the same with the government, where rigorous regulation takes place.

The resultant output of this structuring is bloatedness, inefficiency. The human element, coupled with the negatives of a centralized authority, always results in faults and mistakes, delays in transactions and constant chasing of the bank in cases of anomalies such as a hacked account, funds missing, and other such problems encountered.

The P2P infrastructure eliminates all of this haggling, overlayed by the smart contracts governing DeFi, providing basic deposit and lending and a plethora of other financial instruments in a decentralized manner, most important of which is the self-custody of assets.

But in its current state, in no way does DeFi form the be-all answer to the question of unauthoritative, digitized financial banking. The general air of untrustworthiness, coupled with certain issues and security concerns regarding flash loans bar DeFi from becoming a more streamlined use case of the blockchain. All of this is in addition to the volatility of each DeFi projects' token.

the only way I can see the DeFi truly prospering is through native tokens being stable in value as a stablecoin, think PancakeSwap but with a stablecoin instead of CAKE. IRON Finance attempted a similar endeavour through a two-token mechanism, soft-pegging IRON to the USDC stablecoin as collateral alongside TITAN. While the team behind it describes the collapse as a 'bank run,' though that's quite debatable whether it was an intentional rugpull or an organic market movement.

The DeFi landscape, though, is still in its infancy. As more projects churn in and out of existence, the last of them standing will be buoyed to the top, and the market will shift from favoring high yield and unrealistic APRs to a more robust security of funds in place. If they bolster security in a clever manner, CUB Finance has a real shot at becoming one of the more desirable projects out there.

NFTs

The NFT market, likewise, saw parabolic rise in value of late. Essentially, the mode of operation works by simply tokenizing anything that is digital, be it a picture, file, music track, and a lot of other forms of media.

This is huge. Through this, we can come to a grand conclusion that P2P can essentially reform the internet as a whole, not as a decentralized network of server owned by corporate, but through a distribution of nodes that enable the transfer of data without filter nor unfair rules to adhere to.

How many times is WhatsApp going to mix and match its terms of service to infringe on your privacy? Just how long are we going to let the social media conglomerates harvest our data to turn a profit? The P2P infrastructure is one that will be born not out of innovation, but necessity and frustration at the centralized model and its many restrictive regulations. P2P will be at the forefront when the web finally segregates and moves on to the blockchain, where data is safely and irreversibly stored, where you are truly free of regulation.

The immutability and transparency of the blockchain is, in this market, utilized extensively both in assigning permanent ownership to the buyer, and providing a way to verify said ownership through the public blockchain ledger.

NFTs, contrary to popular belief, can be used for many more forms of media than just pieces of artwork, and it certainly goes beyond simply auctioning and assigning ownership to buyers. An entire web interface can be made on top of the public ledger as the backend housing information, and display it on the web interface frontend. Such an example is Twitter and it's soon-to-be counterpart Project Blank.

Conclusion

I think we will ultimately bear witness to a great fracture in the web, with more countries pulling away their presence from the wider web. We've already seen Donald Trump's big move in that direction when he dished out a ban on the chinese platform Tik Tok. As time goes on, P2P will gain immense interest as the desire for a lawless and unregulated internet landscape builds up.

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