Cryptocurrencies are around for 16 years to the moment, and I have been spending all my time around different technical (and not only) aspects of the movement for about 12 years. And I think all the people who stay around for such long time are mostly focused on making cryptocurrencies suitable for large-scale real world impact, not value extraction from online bubbles, and I am definitely not an exception.
In this post I would like to highlight how Ergo core protocol, its existing ecosystem, planned applications and some applications we may start to plan right now can have mass adoption and real world impact. For that, variety of possible technical solutions should respect some very basic principles:
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not blockchain, but cryptocurrencies. Blockchains mostly do not make any sense for non-financial applications
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every cryptocurrency as well as application protocol (L2 etc) should make sense not just technically but monetarily
And with that, lets imagine how transformative Ergo could be as politically and protocol neutral commodity and financial layer for everyone:
- commodity hardware based real P2P blockchain network with maximum possible performance (for such network, not few datacenter based validators).
done: stateless clients, nipopows and log-space clients to prune blockchain and its state without losing security, demurrage for garbage collection and ability to safely prune blockchain prefix after 4 years, to readjust block parameters via miners voting (to update the network towards progress in networking and processing)
to be done: sub-blocks to spread the network load evenly over time and improve confirmation time. Already in progress!
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(mostly) open-source and free DeFi stack - it is impressive how many dapps which are fully open-sourced and under free license do we already have ! Which is important for getting more developers in, for innovation through modification and composition, and for getting AI composing tailored contracts and dapps!
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programmable money for everyone - possibility to create digital coins protected by composition of cryptographic and logic statements, such as multisig, escrow, stealth addresses, etc… Unlike smart-contracts, programmable money are centered around needs of an individual or concrete collective. Programmable money also does mean p2pFi - interacting programmable coins. There are already some p2pFi apps available, and will be more!
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trustless derivatives, such as HodlCoin, and innovative algorithmic stablecoins: SigmaUSD, Gluon, Dexy
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concepts like Know Your Assumption (KYA), to give users convenient optics to examine applications and protocols
Things from above are already with us, and so we have many interesting applications and derivatives on top of native proof-of-work commodity ERG.
However, for real world needs, there is always need for more collateral, and also tools for monetary expansion and real-world usage. For that, the following tools are needed (bridges already with us):
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cross-chaining to bring assets from other blockchains to Ergo (and to bring Ergo assets to other blockchains) . Rosen bridge is working well here! More assets will allow for more collateral.
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sidechains (SigmaChains) with trustless pegging (aka drivechains on steroids) - to utilize different hardware classes and have different options for programmable money (including permissioned settings for corporate environments etc)
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real world assets (RWAs) tokenization - to have more collateral. Ergo contracts would allow for easily augmenting tokenized real world assets with algorithmic counterparts and other assets, as in Physical or digital gold: simple insurance on Ergo
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tools for monetary expansion , as ChainCash to create more money on top of blockchain assets collateral by combining with trust (and also by using personal , non system-wide risk assessment)
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and, on top of all the options above, offchain p2p programmable cash, to bring money created on top of high-quality blockchain and tokenized assets via transparent monetary expansion to the masses!
I think such a stack when done will conclude what the brightest minds in the space have been having in mind since 90s, thus I am calling it The Endgame For Crypto.