Blockchain technology has been steadily gaining traction in recent years. But, there are still many challenges to overcome. One of the most pressing problems is scalability. These days it’s not enough for blockchains to be secure and decentralized; they also need to be able to scale to keep up with the demands of the new global financial infrastructure. Fortunately, there are ways we can make improvements and move forward on this front. We spoke with Piers Ridyard of Radix about how they’re tackling these issues and more.
In early 2015, Ridyard mined the Ethereum genesis block and went on to start and exit a YCombinator company that built a decentralized deal-room for insurance companies.
There is something of an internal war raging within layer-1 blockchain communities these days, with Ethereum, Solana, Cardano and several others going at it on Twitter and Discord daily.
In a bit of a different part of the world but with a substantial fan base, there is Radix, a layer-1 blockchain currently in development since 2018. Radix benchmarked 1.4 million transactions per second (TPS) during tests in 2018, making it the fastest and most scalable blockchain to date.
Radix CEO Piers Ridyard joins Cryptonites host Alex Fazel on his podcast today. Ridyard has spent over five years in the cryptocurrency space, starting with mining the genesis block of Ethereum in early 2015 and building and exiting a YCombinator company that built decentralized applications.
This episode features Ridyard discussing his plans for Radix, the future of DeFi and public consensus, and how crypto benefits the unbanked in underdeveloped economies. Don’t miss it!
The Rise of Cryptocurrencies and DeFi
The highlights of DeFi Summer 2021 have just been the maturation and maturing of the space. There was like an explosion of early Cambrian ideas that came out.”There was a sudden understanding that it was possible to compose things together, and that’s when yield farming evolved.” There have been solid projects like Aave and MakerDAO that have been developed for quite some time. And then, this sudden understanding of composition led to yield farming.
Suddenly it went through this very speculative bull run in which capital and liquidity played an important role. And we’ve now started having more serious conversations about how it interfaces with traditional finance. It has also been difficult to get institutions involved because of the uncertain regulatory landscape and the uncertainty about what the SEC will do.
And regulators in every country are still trying to figure out a way to do this properly. The market is feeling a little bit like that, and it’s not the same because of the ICO boom in 2017, there was a lot of bullishness, but no real products came out of it, right. So people were like, But wait, when is this going to happen again? We’re gonna have a token, like banana tokens or Apple tokens, or something like labor marketplaces. But very few things get built.
The Future Of Money Is Here
“Layer one (network) is what you want because that’s what the internet is. We designed the internet to be robust and protected against nuclear war, where entire cities, continents could be destroyed. We also want the same thing for public ledgers.”
“There’s no reason you can’t have a permission system on top of a public decentralized ledger, you can have the best of both worlds, you can say I will be compliant with regulations. Nevertheless, my belief is the infrastructure on which it is based is the safest possible infrastructure, and as a result, it can be antifragile. So I see that there is a lot of institutional capital that wants to move that capital into DeFi”
“As a result of the massive amount of money that has been spent on quantitative easing and the subsidies provided by governments on the ways that COVID affected the global economy, there is a global yield famine. However, DeFi is fundamentally reinventing finance, and all that innovation is creating yield opportunities. All of these institutions are sitting there saying, “Wow, I really want to put some money in there!”
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Author
Chris Munch is a professional cryptocurrency and blockchain writer with a background in software businesses, and has been involved in marketing within the cryptocurrency space. With a passion for innovation, Chris brings a unique and insightful perspective to the world of crypto and blockchain. Chris has a deep understanding of the economic, psychological, marketing and financial forces that drive the crypto market, and has made a number of accurate calls of major shifts in market trends. He is constantly researching and studying the latest trends and technologies, ensuring that he is always up-to-date on the latest developments in the industry. Chris’ writing is characterized by his ability to explain complex concepts in a clear and concise manner, making it accessible to a wide audience of readers.
