More than anything else, the London Blockchain Conference 2023 is about companies building real public services using blockchain technology. On the final day of the conference, attendees were treated to a preview of two products that aim to change the way the world uses and thinks about blockchain.
Simplicity and utility with Vaionex
BSV Vaionex Stapler was on hand at the LBC 2023 business stage to provide an update on several projects the company has been working on.
As co-founder Robin Gounder took the stage, the company's work slogan flashed on screen in the background: solving blockchain's biggest problems.
"It's a bold claim," Gounder acknowledges, especially given how he frames the core issue - creating global adoption. The key to solving this problem, he said, is twofold: utility and simplicity.
"If there was no use, you would not integrate [blockchain] in the first place,” he said. "If you have an extremely complex system that provides little utility, you won't get any coverage."
The BSV blockchain already proves its usefulness by certain metrics. Gounder highlights the record of 86 million transactions performed on the BSV blockchain in a 24-hour period. The key to setting this record - and the key to continuing to set records like this - will be much more than just regular payment transactions. Transactions can be smart contracts, micropayments, stablecoin payments.
The reason why these transactions take place on the blockchain is fundamentally the timestamp: it is the essence of the blockchain. But the blockchain is much more than just timestamps (every database has timestamps, says Gounder). It's about the integrity of that data, those timestamps. The value offered by the blockchain is that this data can never be changed.
That's why Vaionex presents TimeSeal - named for the real benefit of blockchain - a tool that allows users to build blockchain applications in minutes.
“To create real utility, we cannot ask companies to join our blockchain platform. We have to do it the other way: we have to go to the tools they already use,” Gounder said.
The tool everyone already uses? Traditional databases.
"So what we've done is integrate blockchain into all the major databases," he added.
With one click, blockchain can be integrated into any database, meaning blockchain platforms are no longer needed. Neither, says Gounder, codes. The practical result is that the cost of building blockchain applications drops from tens of thousands to just $10.
Next, Vaionex Senior Bitcoin Engineer Cain Nussdorfer took over to talk about the STAS BSV smart contract.
"Everyone loves tokens, right? But the way we measure tokens on the blockchain is different. Layer 2 tokens, layer 1 tokens. What STAS tokens are is that are from layer 0. They are native to the blockchain.
STAS is, in essence, a smart contract that represents a token and comes in different models that can be used in different ways. STAS-20 is the token used by the Swiss franc stablecoin announced by Centi, for example.
STAS-789 is another innovative token that allows new data to be added to the token over its lifetime, adding new data with each successive transaction. It allows the creation of an auditable record of events within the token.
The first digital token exchangeable on a network was called 1 alpha. You can use any other digital currency to exchange it and get this token. A guaranteed stablecoin that you know can be trusted. Very different from Tether and other things.
Gounder also featured Relysia. Relysia is an application that aspires to be more than just a wallet, it wants to be an infrastructure in itself. It offers API and SDK packages to help users seamlessly integrate with the blockchain, supports STAS tokens and BSV tokens, and offers quality of life features such as pre-integration fees for each transaction.
“The idea is to be more than a crypto wallet,” Gounder said. "The idea is to be a competitor to PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL)."
Vaionex's Tegment gaming platform, which integrates with many of the most popular games currently being played, was also discussed. CS:GO and Fortnite have been featured, but the platform currently integrates with over 50 games to offer tournaments, leaderboards, and other integrations for players to bet and earn BSV.
Finally, Gounder discussed NFTana, a free and open-source marketplace for atomic trading on the BSV blockchain.
A new blockchain sustainability index with WEB3C02
Also on Day 3, Tokenovate CEO Richard Baker and SmartLedger Development Director Greg Ward introduced an exciting new development in the world of sustainability: WEB3C02.NET, a blockchain sustainability index that aims to provide a complete picture of the energy efficiency of digital asset projects. .
Baker says it's a much-needed innovation based on his conversations with companies interested in digital assets, where all typically come to him with the same question: what is the footprint of these projects?
This is not an easy question to answer precisely, at least using existing paradigms. Baker points out that digital assets are viewed differently in that they rarely measure their energy efficiency against their output the way you would when measuring emissions in other contexts.
But for blockchain, the outcome is everything: people generally don't care about raw power consumption as long as the outcome on the other side is worth it.
"Blockchain is an incredible opportunity for us in terms of value transfer and data integrity," says Baker. "We want to see that it gives us the exit on the other side that's actually going to give us something that society is going to say is worth it."
And when history moves to a world where blockchain is used for its real-world utility, a new way of looking at its energy efficiency is badly needed.
With WEB3C02, Ward says, "we're not just taking the raw power input, but we're taking into account the block size and transactional throughput of various blockchains."
Not only will this reset how we view blockchain in a vacuum, but it will help benchmark blockchain's energy efficiency against legacy payment technologies and systems.
Watch: What we need to do is gradually improve business processes
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