Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin, talked about inter-blockchain communication at the Blockchain Summit in October 2019:
“I find it astounding after all this time that people still try to follow this idea of ‘winner takes all.’ One coin to rule them all. One chain above all else. We’re coming for ya. The flippening,”
The market has the conviction that one day, one of these networks will surpass Bitcoin’s $170 billion market cap.
The Ethereum network would the next one in line, but even so, its market cap is at only $19 billion. But according to Antonopoulos, “The data just doesn’t support that hypothesis,”
We might have multichain in the near future
According to Andreas Antonopoulos, we will have many useful distributed blockchain in the near future.
The CEO of Bison Trails, Joe Lallouz believes that
“We’re going to continue to see blockchains get built with very specialized ideas in mind,”
“Mass adoption will be more likely in the future of interconnected blockchains,”
Bitcoins have value and the Ethereum network operates smart contracts.
The blockchain space is expanding, as the Loom network reached out to Tron and Binance chains and Summa is providing interoperability solutions. A lot of investments have gone into Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) solutions and can eventually reach a consensus position in the industry.
Some may argue that the solution is already here and it’s the lightning network.
Bruce Fenton, founder of the Bitcoin Association and the Satoshi Roundtable, stated:
“Personally, I believe that the rising tide lifts all boats and that many projects can benefit from the efforts of each other,”
Keld van Schreven, a co-founder of crypto investment firm KR1, argued IBC yields an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.
“Without IBC we will just have a limited horizon of possibility,” he said.
If the industry decides to shift towards IBC, it could be some sort of enlightenment moment, and it can ever lead to a more united ecosystem.
But building this inter-blockchain communication system is much more complex than speaking about it.