The Future of Blockchain Infrastructure – David Atkinson
Listen to the full podcast with Nye here: https://evolvement.io/the-future-of-blockchain-infrastructure-with-david-atkinson/
In a recent episode of the Evolvement podcast, Nye’s guest was David Atkinson, a board member and commercial director of the Holochain project. David is a long-time proponent of technology, specializing in the principles of psychology to change behavior and thought patterns. Throughout the interview, David spoke in a very cerebral and abstract manner, pulling from this extensive background in technology and strategy consulting. He has spent a considerable amount of time living in desert regions and helping the natives create self-governing capabilities.
David is a strong proponent in “agent centricity”, which puts individuals, or agents, at the center of specific infrastructure. This is in contrast from a centralized position, i.e. a local government, creating rules and consensus. Holochain is making progress towards moving away from a consensus-based platform, which introduces a number of complications. For example, if each agent is acting independently, how do they agree and validate data? Several fundamental changes needed to be made to shift this paradigm, of which David is leading the charge.
“We put agents at the center … I saw the positive and negative impacts of governments, of corporations, of communities of individuals, and how when you have a group of people living 2,000, 3,000 kilometers away from where decisions are being made … rarely actually have any positive benefits to people on the ground”
To better understand what Holochain is, we need to understand a basic foundation of blockchain technology. In short, blockchain uses a distributed system to store a set of data: every node on the network keeps that dataset at all times. When any change occurs, each node has to update its dataset and confirm the new change. Thousands of computers working at once to check and double check these computations secure the network from bad data. But because all the nodes are in a race to synchronize this data in a secure manner, the speed of this network is limited to a certain amount of transactions per second. During the bull market of 2016- 2017, the Bitcoin network became maxed out and individuals had to wait hours, even days before their transaction would be accepted by the network.
The Holochain project is ambitious. Founded over a year ago, the projects goal is to create an entirely new infrastructure for decentralized applications. Perhaps most importantly, and confusing, Holochain is not a blockchain at all, but rather an environment of independent agents who manage their own cryptographic blockchain.
Holochain differs from a blockchain in that each device retains a unique blockchain, which (like BitTorrent) is passed to, and ultimately verified, by Holochain. As each node only has to process its own data, there is no practical limit to the number of transactions per second it can make. This results in unparalleled performance, akin to a basic web server. As nodes disconnect and reconnect to the main chain, a limited backup is stored and verified by Holochain. This allows the decentralized system to continue to operate as each node (phone, computer, car, etc.) interacts with the network. Additionally, these applications will be able to scale and evolve as the network and number of attached devices grow.
David and his team are building three projects that will synchronize to create the platform.
• Holochain - akin to Ethereum, or application framework
• Holo - the distributed hosting service for web pages and web-based applications
• Holofuel - the currency that powers the applications. Currently, the HOT token is used as the currency, which will be swapped to Holofuel in the future.
The Holochain framework underpins everything. When completed, it will offer a flexible way to power both distributed networks and applications. These applications will be as varied as the web-enabled apps that we use today. A few possible use cases are mobile wallets that hold digital collectibles, a Twitter-like service that can operate independent of central servers, or location-agnostic chat applications.
It is even possible to build a clone of the Bitcoin blockchain application and protocol within the Holochain ecosystem, which is already on the roadmap for a Holochain developer. Another major difference is that Holochain has no native currency; instead, it is designed to accept mutual-credit currencies and non-monetary currencies like reputation points.
“What if we built a framework for building distributed applications on top of? Now some of these applications could be like platforms like Ethereum or Stellar. Others are applications that we think more of as “apps” like Crypto Kitties, and then others are solutions to large scale problems”
Holochain is looking at different use cases that can work together on their decentralized network. Since the applications rely on the same ecosystem, they are able to communicate with each other. The layering of these applications creates a network of interacting applications. To the outsider, this may seem like nothing, but one must remember that this entire project will act independently of a central authority.
“As the world grows … we have the ability to create a distributed network of agents, … and that actually we don’t need these centralized enforcers, which existed for fantastic reasons, to do things like validate payments or run governance rules”
In terms of use cases, the flexible nature of Holochain allows it to act as a decentralized web server, similar to Amazon’s Web Services (AWS). Hardware is currently being sourced and assembled by the Holochain team, which will run on the Holo distributed hosting platform. These hardware nodes will allow users to host their own web services. The difference lies in that a web service on Holochain would be hosted by devices spread out across the network instead of being stored on a central server. Participants on the decentralized network would be rewarded Holo every time that service is used.
“We put that agent at the bottom, that agent underpins the entire framework”.
In terms of what the future holds David is encouragingly optimistic. He compares the current competition in blockchain to the internet browser wars of the ‘90s. While he is unsure as to what blockchains will be competing in the future, he does say it will be much larger in scope, or “The browser wars times fifty.” What David and his team are building in Holochain is unique. While other blockchain projects are creating and transacting on the protocol layer, Holochain seeks to break that mold.
You can find out more on Holochain at https://holo.host/ and https://holochain.org/
-Kaltoro