The Blockchain Space Will Out Innovate Every Other Market

BY LUKE HARRIMAN

The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 distilled a new strain of anger in people as they sat back and watched their hard earned savings diminish. This economic meltdown showcased how easy it was for the actions of the 1% to significantly impact the bottom 99%.

To Really Understand How The Fragmented Economic Machine Runs We Need to Rethink The Way We Look At The Economy.

Imagine a world where there are no clocks. Every time one of us need the time we must report to a central timekeeper. This timekeeper will tell you the time everyday. However, time isn’t measured in consistent seconds, it changes based on the timekeeper’s point of view about how time should be measured. Communication, coordination and planning would be impossible. The world would be in constant confusion. There would be analysts (Wall street) that would try to understand the Timekeepers (central bank) point of view, and advise those that need to know it (wealthy individuals). This is the world we live in. Not with time, but money. The Central Bank is a central value keeper that changes the value of money by printing it and changing interest rates that manipulate consumer behaviour. Just like inconsistent time, inconsistent money leads to uncertainty and hardship.

Satoshi Nakamoto, who is still anonymous to this day, was amongst those frustrated with the corrupt monetary system in 2008. Out of anger, Satoshi created a peer-to-peer cash with a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Work (PoW). This consensus mechanism doesn’t rely on a subjective point of view, rather, a consistent, objective input such as energy, to give real value to an output. This output was a digital, predictable and fair monetary system known as Bitcoin.

Satoshi’s vision started to gain adoption in 2017 when mainstream media caught wind of the project. Since then the idea of a predictable, accessible and fair monetary system has lead people to innovate the concept of blockchain to a whole new level. 1000s of projects are actively trying to restructure not only the peer-to-peer transfer of value but are determined to uproot and re-engineer the entire economic machine.

The asset class is exponentially growing, not only in price, but number of developers, users, projects and just about any metric you can find.

But how can a market in its infancy be so far ahead?

It is evident that the companies that execute on the best idea’s win. The ability to execute on quality ideas is the most significant variable that dictates the success of a company/project. Without ideas there’s no innovation, without innovation there’s no progress, and if a company stops progressing, it dies.

In my humble opinion, the creation and execution of quality ideas is the variable that is allowing exponential growth within the cryptocurrency market.

But how can cryptocurrency, as an asset class, create and execute on ideas so frequently? Good Question !

First we need to look at what sparks ideas. What makes us think of our ideas? Let’s think of ideas like flames.

They can be BIG or small.

They can be destructive or constructive.

No matter how big the flame gets it all started from a single spark. When you transition similar thinking into how ideas are created you realise that the ‘spark’ that generates an idea is some kind of stimulus.

Stimulus, whether it’s visual, auditory or kinaesthetic, is the root of all ideas.

This is why song writers chase experiences to stimulate an idea for their next song. Academics read an ungodly amount of research papers to stimulate an idea for their next breakthrough. All of the greatest ideas in history came from a single or multiple different stimuli. Thomas Edison wasn’t born with the idea for the lightbulb nor Elon Musk for Tesla. These incredible individuals at some point in their life were exposed to the right stimulus that provoked these groundbreaking ideas.

If it’s not evident already, I am inferring that the blockchain space has massive amounts of stimulus, relative to other markets. This stimulus is then fuelling the introduction of innovative ideas.

So where’s all the stimulus coming from ?

Open Sourced Code !

The open sourced nature of blockchain, means developers can read all the lines of code that run any given project. All developers have access to similar information and building blocks, creating a healthier form of competition, that encourages the constant creation of innovative products. It’s a perfect example of coopetition.

Idea — ->Code — ->Everybody's Stimulus — ->Idea — ->Code — ->Everybody’s Stimulus

This cyclical ecosystem makes one persons idea, everyones innovation.

“A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats”-John.F.Kennedy

For example, Bancor’s first introduction of liquidity pools was swiftly implemented into the newest of DeFi projects. Even though Bancor invested the time and resources to develop this breakthrough, the entire space benefits. The entire blockchain sector is, in itself, a functioning DAO working to solve the worlds mismanagement of money.

All developers are contributing to an open sourced toolkit.

In contrast, traditional institutions want to ‘build the biggest build in town’ not by doing so, but by ‘pulling all the buildings around them down’.

The Paradigm is shifting

Traditional institutions aim to rise up alone, sometimes by pulling everyone around them down. Blockchain based projects open-source their ideas to contribute to a “rising tide that lifts all boats”. This open-sourced code is giving blockchain developers the ability to produce new and innovative products that serve the wider community.

And it’s for this reason the blockchain space will out innovate any traditional competitor. They simply won’t be able to keep up.