Kind of a Roadmap, Twice.
Back in December of ’22, I published a blog post titled “Future of Smart Contracts” where I laid out my thesis on why there is a strong need to rethink smart contracts, and the way we deploy and use them.
Rising regulatory pressure and new technologies will change the way we build and use decentralized services.
Due to the meteoric rise in popularity of general-purpose smart contracts, platforms have been forced to increase throughput by reducing the number of block producers and centralizing the formation of consensus to fewer and fewer nodes. By doing so, they are facing the necessity to comply with rules and regulations set by government agencies. In other words, the popular smart contract platforms are no longer offshore. They have been shored and are becoming regulated. To retain the desirable traits of blockchain systems like privacy, censorship resistance and achieve scalability, I must conclude that it is best to proceed with off-chain solutions.
Initial research on this topic was conducted for the purpose of said blog post, and shortly afterward I presented a concrete plan to the Peercoin Foundation, explaining my vision and asking for funding to pursue the idea. The blog post, and the general idea, were soon used to solicit a large donation that was received by the Foundation. Randy and I went out and found someone who liked the idea so…
