The exchange value of a commodity is not identical to its price, but represents rather what (quantity of) other commodities it will exchange for, if traded.
_{- Karl Marx}

Introduction

From Trade by Barter to use of coins to paper currency, man has needed to work in cooperation with his neighbours and exchanged one good or service for another in order to gain utility in life.

With time comes civilisation and advancement in how things are done. Markets were created and trade blossomed. Soon man began to trade in more than food and precious materials. We began to see trades of things with sentimental value such as information, pictures, music. This is known as the Internet of Information era.
It wasnt long before this centralised market reached a saturation point of satisfaction due to the influences of middlemen such as banks and government.

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin and the blockchain. This sparked off a new revolution of cryptocurrency offering advantages over conventional fiat. This became the the Internet of Value era.

In the Internet of Information, people send information and programs using algorithms.
In the Internet of Values, people send value over the internet using smart contracts.
Fusion believes that by 2025, blockchain application will become mainstream and will be integrated into the capital market system.

Comparing IoI to IoV

But while the blockchain is still very much untapped to its full potential, it currently lacks complete financial functionality to link different communities and cryptocurrency, and so far has failed to bridge the gap between centralized and decentralized organizations. Users still have to use exchanges or online markets to convert from one cryptocurrency to another or fiat. One can't help but ask, are we returning to centralisation?

Problems Limiting Internet of Values.

Interoperability - Value exists in different blockchains, organisations and data centres. Each has its own unique nature and protocols. How do they communicate?
Scalability - Most tokens have static functionalities and can't do much outside their specified blockchain.
Usability - A sad realisation is that apart from transfers and ICOs, these crypto currencies are hardly used for anything else. Meaning that for an upgrade, their financial functions are very much incomplete.

In a nutshell, despite all the advancement the blockchain has brought, the complexity of the market has still forced us to return to a centralised point of contact (Exchanges) in order to switch from one token to another or for fiat.

Some attempts have been made to boost interoperability (Eg side chains) but it yet remains a daunting task.

This is where Fusion comes in.

What is Fusion About?

Fusion aims to establish a platform-level public chain that will connect all kinds of values, provide financial functions, communicate diverse tokens and bridge the centralised and Decentralized organisations to bring about Internet of Values as soon as possible.

By controlling private keys using distributed nodes, Fusion aims to map tokens to a public chain. This is called Tokenization. This will enable them achieve the function of multi-token smart contracts.

The blockchain won't need to run any heavy application software, but will simply allow all the tokens to interact via its generated layer of management. This will allow it fulfil diverse cryptofinancial functions.
This will fix interoperability and also provide interfaces with centralized organizations and off-chain datasources to improve the scalability of the Internet of Values.

So If user A (Mr John) is a baker that sells online and accepts Bitcoin, user B (James) who only has Ethereum in his wallet can still click to make a purchase. Lets say he wants to buy some cakes worth $50, the system automatically exchanges $50 worth of Ethereum for Bitcoin and transfers it to Mr John's Bitcoin wallet. James will not have to go through the hassle of transferring to an exchange (losing transfer fees), manually exchanging the Ethereum for Bitcoin (losing exchange fees) and sending the Bitcoin (losing transfer fees again).

Fusion is way more versatile than this and can also be applied to multiple transactions linked by multiple smart contracts that bridge the centralised and Decentralized organisations. This is called the Multiple Triggering Mechanism.

Let's take this example.
Mr Phillip is a programmer who gets paid in Bitcoin. He receives an email online from a charity claiming to sell T-shirts to raise funds for an accident victim "Jeffery". Mr Phillip wants to make a big donation of $1000 but doesn't have the time or chance to verify the story.
What does he do?

1. Using the Fusion platform, he generates multi-smart-contracts to do the following transactions.
2. A script checks to see if Jeffery is registered in the hospital by accessing his shared records.
3. When verified, $1000 worth of Bitcoin is automatically converted to dollar and paid into Jeffery's account.
4. the money paid into Jefferrys account triggers an invoice and the corresponding number of T-shirts is sent to Mr Phillips address(also retrieved from his shared records).

As you can see this transaction cuts from Decentralized (cryptocurrency) to centralised (fiat) as well as other organisations(hospital and postal service).

This is the synergy that Fusion is offering. A platform that utilises cross-chain, cross-organisation and cross-database input to achieve interoperability never before seen on the blockchain.

To know more about their project, visit their website here

You can read their whitepaper here or peruse the summary if you prefer a simpler presentation.

You can also interact with the team on
Twitter | Telegram | GitHub | Reddit | Medium | LinkedIn | Facebook | Bitcointalk

This is an entry for the @originalworks contest here
Images were adapted from the whitepaper.

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