No Time for Bear Markets! BCH, Blockchain Devs Too Busy Building the Future
December 17, 2018 by Jon Southurst
The market may be down in late 2018, but a determined contingents of developers are still busy building the new digital economy. That’s the message of Hong Kong’s Global Blockchain Developer Conference (GBDC), an event hosted by BitKan and the Satoshi Foundation to hear the latest technical details on a range of projects.
Also see: Facebook to Go Full Steam Ahead in Blockchain?
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Blockchain Development Ramps Up – But What About Bitcoin Cash?
GBDC is an officially blockchain-agnostic event, and featured speakers representing projects like bloxRoute, USDO, Blockfreight and Zcoin. However many in attendance were there to hear about Bitcoin Cash — what’s new, how it should expand, and how the community plans to keep it relevant in the wake of its November chain split.
Several of the highest profile speakers represented the Bitcoin Cash community: BTC.top’s Zhouer Jiang, Bitcoin ABC’s Amaury Sechet, Bitprim’s Juan Garavaglia, investor David R. Allen, and Bitcoin Unlimited’s Peter Rizun provided those insights, while others talked about everything from DApps to stablecoins, general security and other blockchain applications.
A Network to Fund and Assist Software Development, and a Commerce Layer on BCH
Of particular interest to BCH was Allen’s introduction of the fledgling FVNI Development Society, a not-for-profit organization that creates a network of stakeholders to support new projects and help find funding for software development.
Garavaglia presented the latest on Keoken, a second layer protocol to facilitate multi-asset business transactions and smart contracts, with its own native token called “Keo”. Keoken also has a governance structure whereby Keo token holders choose 21 delegates who decide on proposed changes to the protocol.
Sechet spoke about implementing secure zero-confirmation transactions with Avalanche (more on that later), while Bitcoin Unlimited’s Peter Rizun discussed how Bitcoin can support billions of users with SPV technology.
Other Projects from China and Elsewhere
Contributing to blockchain project diversity were speakers like Poramin Insom of Zcoin, who introduced a new privacy technology called “Lelantus”, comparing it to similar procedures used at rival coins like Zcash and Sigma.
BloxRoute’s Aleksander Kuzmanovic talked about scaling, CoinAll’s Katherine Deng talked about how to onboard new coins and tokens to exchanges, and Blockfreight founder Julian Smith introduced his company’s technology for digitizing shipping freight manifests on a blockchain based network.
No Time for Celebrities, These Are the Ideas
As for BCH, the good news is there’s still plenty of development happening, and teams working on fresh ideas that could serve useful in the future crypto economy. However this event focused on technical enthusiasm surrounding those ideas, rather than excitement.
Regular keynote speakers like Roger Ver and Jihan Wu stayed away from proceedings; a sobering but perhaps necessary reflection of the times — attention needs to turn away from the distraction of famous faces and back to the ideas themselves.
It’s a tough time for cryptocurrency and blockchain in general, with an ever-expanding range of concepts chasing a hesitant investor pool amid plunging fiat values. But what most outside the industry don’t realize is that new technology is still being developed at a fast pace — something that will surely contribute to any future rise in digital asset prices.
Have you heard of any interesting new blockchain technology projects recently? What impressed you? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Images via Bitsonline, Jon Southurst
