Skycoin’s Brandon Smietana Discusses the Role of Distributed Ledger Tech in WEB 3.0 – Finance Magnates

This is an interview with one of the worlds most creative and talented blockchain and cryptocurrency developers, Brandon Synth Smietana, the Co-Founder of Skycoin, whose company develops software and hardware for decentralized networking and data storage.

He was among the blockchain pioneers who took part in writing Bitcoins source code with one of the most mysterious personalities of our time, Satoshi Nakamoto. Skycoin, which was launched in 2012, has no rivals in terms of its ground-breaking approach and is tech savvy.

What are Skycoins flagship products; why is Skycoin so much more than just a crypto token; and why is its unique technology so important? We asked Smietana about all this and more.

Have you ever wondered why you need platforms like YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook? Do you realize that these companies control a huge array of your personal data? We give them our data. They control it, they monetize it, and they exploit us. They control peoples thinking, they rig elections, they manipulate what people see, what they hear, and eventually the objective is to manipulate how people behave. Its about controlling people.

Keep Reading

So, we went through this phase in the internet where everyone had a blog and it was decentralized. And then, we went to this phase where three companies, Twitter, Facebook and Google, control basically the whole internet and block off everything else. So, theres this illusion of this global internet and people playing by the rules, and that your data is only being collected to fight terrorists. In fact, they collect it so that one group of people can economically dominate the others, and that is what it is being used for.

In China, Cisco routers are banned, but you can buy a Huawei router. And, how do you know that the Chinese government didnt put a backdoor in that. And, when you buy an American router, you get an American backdoor. Of course, there are backdoors in all their communications equipment.

So, what Skywire is, is a neutral open-source standard for networking that will have open-source hardware. People can compile their own firmware and know theres not a Chinese backdoor in it, or have to choose between a Russian backdoor, a Chinese backdoor and the EU security backdoor. Businesses need to control their own infrastructure. They need to control their routers, their firmware and their file storage. They have to reduce reliance upon these third parties.

When we started 10 years ago, blockchain was about taking the power from the Fed and devolving it back down to the people. We were a social revolution; we were fighting the government. But, today blockchain means penny stock pump-and-dumps, moonboys and lambos, and its about getting rich quick.

We dont play these games. We still think we have to change the world for the better. Thats why all we do is aimed at creating an infrastructure for Web 3.0, which we were talking about long before it became trendy.

People think blockchain is about cryptocurrencies because they know Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the reality is that blockchain technology is much more general than cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is actually just database technology. So, anywhere we use a database, we can use blockchain.

But, the adoption of blockchain has been held back by the fact that blockchain currently requires half a million dollars to implement, maybe two million or four million dollars worth of mining equipment, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs. And, what that guarantees is that were going to have a couple big coins: the Bitcoins, Ethereums, EOSes, whatever

That leaves the other coins vulnerable from a security perspective. So, the question is: How do I get a consensus that is not based on proof-of-work? Because, basically, the problem with proof-of-work is that whoever has the most hashing power controls the network, and what that means is that whoever has the most money controls the network, because, if you have the most money, you can just buy hashing power, and then you own the network.

So, you know, the Bitcoin network we pretend like its decentralized, but the reality is that its controlled by whoever has the most money, and I wouldnt call that decentralization. And, if you look, I think theres three mining pools that control the vast majority of hashing power. And, theyre owned by the same guys, the same investors, all three of them.

And, then you have the question of energy usage. Do you really want to spend $50 million per year on electricity just to be able to do six transactions per second? You know, its basically overhead, and it doesnt add anything, so the question is: How do I get consensus without the overhead of all of this mining equipment? And, thats why we created Obelisk, because just the energy costs a huge amount.

We have to lower the costs for small businesses to create and run their own blockchains because theyre not going to spend $50,000 per month just so they can say their database is on a blockchain.

Skycoins Fiber is best described as an infinitely scalable blockchain network. In this sense, Fiber is more than a blockchain. This is a solution to the existing scaling problems that the largest blockchain networks using distributed ledger technology are subject to.

So, we have to dramatically reduce the cost of consensus by getting rid of proof-of-work and getting rid of proof-of-stake, and what thats going to enable is a network of 100,000 blockchains, or a million blockchains, or ten million blockchains. And, thats what we call Fiber.

There is a Web 3.0 aspect for consumer and business applications. You know, you decentralize your data, grab your data and copy it on the cloud. You dont really care who or where its hosted, right?

People who use Web 3.0 normally wont know theyre using it. When Web 3.0 is here, it will be when people are using it and dont know that theyre using it. Its going to be identical. The apps are going to look identical to what we have now. Its going to be exactly the same. The only difference is that there will be a different database in the backend.

No, its based on Ben-Ors protocol for decentralized coin-flipping. We want to have 100,000 blockchains, and we dont want to have all this overhead. It doesnt really make any sense. I would say Fiber its not really Obelisk. It was just the idea of getting your own blockchain for the decentralized internet. I think its really focused more for business use.

Look at the biggest coins. Look at the Binance chain. Theres no source code for it. Its not open source. No one knows what the hell its doing. Theyve released some source code, but, actually, the node doesnt sync. You run it, and it doesnt sync. So, the whole network is running on a server in Binances office, and thats where Binance tether, BUSD, and all these thousands of services are leaving Ethereum to go on the Binance Token.

Theyre leaving Ethereum for a closed-source platform that doesnt even really release its source code. And, if you run the source code, the node doesnt actually work.

We used to have consensus, right? And EOS went to master nodes, and they just ran 30 master nodes and completely controlled it. And so, its sort of this model now of faking it, faking decentralization because it has inefficiency, and it really doesnt add anything. Oh, yeah, were decentralized, but who the hell cares, right? People only care what the app does, they only care what the functionality is.

CX is Skycoins feature rich programming language, and it is what I think is best for blockchain. It is designed to meet the growing needs of Skycoins ecosystem that cannot be met by any other available languages.

If my blog data is on blockchain, I need a language that tells me who can update the data, how big it could be, what the format is, I need APIs for viewing the data, APIs for modifying the data, permission control, an application scripting language, and I need to do mathematical computations.

With CX, you can run any program on any computer in such a way that it will run on a blockchain database. The difference between Skycoins CX and Ethereum is you cannot run a video game on Ethereum, while CX allows you to run any application on a blockchain that you could run on your laptop.

Its a programming language. And, I wouldnt consider Ethereums smart contracting language to be a real programming language because its too limited. I want to do video sharing sites. I want to have Telegram, I want to do poker, I want to do 3D video games, I want to be able to run any app that I can run on my computer, and I want the data to be stored on a blockchain. And so, I dont want to be limited to just buying and selling a PNG for $100,000 and then changing the owner and then paying a $50 transaction fee to do that.

There are CX programs that would be on a blockchain, but some applications have data on the blockchain, and others dont. It has to be flexible enough so that it could be executed on the blockchain, but it could also be executed on a normal CPU without having a blockchain. It just depends on what youre doing.

Skycoin is just one of maybe 15 software products and software protocols that weve developed. I think its very difficult to predict crypto assets. Its very difficult to say whats going to go up, whats going to go down. You know, people see crypto as a sort of investment that theyre trying to make money on, and I think there are too many people like that.

I mean, thats the way they see it. You know: Im going to buy this because its going to go up. But, I think most of the people who bought Skycoin bought it because they like what were doing. They like this community that weve built. They like our vision for what the future of the internet is going to look like.

There are some people who bought it for financial returns, and I think, unfortunately, they were disappointed because if youre trying to get a pump-and-dump If youre going to this pump, youre going to that pump Youre going to this, youre rushing into these new coins, these new ICOs And, this coins here this week, and its up 50x, and then next week its gone, and you never hear of it again.

I think that our community is a bit different. We dont have a lot of moonboys in our community. We dont have a mu mu and lambo mu, and Im gonna get rich. I think theres a lot of people that are using our VPN service, theyre running Skywire nodes, theyre waiting for us to build this new peer-to-peer internet for local communities. Thats what theyre doing.

Skycoins price was $50 when we had no source code. We had nothing when Skycoin was at a $5-billion market cap. We were just starting out. We were just hiring people. And, now that we have like 18 hardware products, our VPN done, our programming language done, were making video game prototypes, were going into small business and corporate networking, were building out CX for programming education and for blockchain applications... Now that were doing all of these things, our token is at 20 cents.

So, how is it that when we had nothing, its a $5-billion market cap, and now that we have a lot more than a lot of our competitors five times over, those that have $800-million market caps But what are we at? $20 million now?

You know, Dogecoin has had no developers for the last 8 years but its market caps more than Ford. So, what does that say? I think the market is a bunch of moonboys going from pump-and-dump to pump-and-dump. The blockchain market today is a market that rewards marketing. If you want, you take your marketing team, you launch a new coin, and then, three months later, you launch another coin. Theres no market for old coins. Like, we talked to OKEx and they only want new coins. They dont want old coins. They want to do a pump, a massive marketing push. They want to dump at 50x, and then they want to do it again next month. And, thats really where the markets at if you want to make money. Its not in developing something over five or ten years.

This is an interview with one of the worlds most creative and talented blockchain and cryptocurrency developers, Brandon Synth Smietana, the Co-Founder of Skycoin, whose company develops software and hardware for decentralized networking and data storage.

He was among the blockchain pioneers who took part in writing Bitcoins source code with one of the most mysterious personalities of our time, Satoshi Nakamoto. Skycoin, which was launched in 2012, has no rivals in terms of its ground-breaking approach and is tech savvy.

What are Skycoins flagship products; why is Skycoin so much more than just a crypto token; and why is its unique technology so important? We asked Smietana about all this and more.

Have you ever wondered why you need platforms like YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook? Do you realize that these companies control a huge array of your personal data? We give them our data. They control it, they monetize it, and they exploit us. They control peoples thinking, they rig elections, they manipulate what people see, what they hear, and eventually the objective is to manipulate how people behave. Its about controlling people.

Keep Reading

So, we went through this phase in the internet where everyone had a blog and it was decentralized. And then, we went to this phase where three companies, Twitter, Facebook and Google, control basically the whole internet and block off everything else. So, theres this illusion of this global internet and people playing by the rules, and that your data is only being collected to fight terrorists. In fact, they collect it so that one group of people can economically dominate the others, and that is what it is being used for.

In China, Cisco routers are banned, but you can buy a Huawei router. And, how do you know that the Chinese government didnt put a backdoor in that. And, when you buy an American router, you get an American backdoor. Of course, there are backdoors in all their communications equipment.

So, what Skywire is, is a neutral open-source standard for networking that will have open-source hardware. People can compile their own firmware and know theres not a Chinese backdoor in it, or have to choose between a Russian backdoor, a Chinese backdoor and the EU security backdoor. Businesses need to control their own infrastructure. They need to control their routers, their firmware and their file storage. They have to reduce reliance upon these third parties.

When we started 10 years ago, blockchain was about taking the power from the Fed and devolving it back down to the people. We were a social revolution; we were fighting the government. But, today blockchain means penny stock pump-and-dumps, moonboys and lambos, and its about getting rich quick.

We dont play these games. We still think we have to change the world for the better. Thats why all we do is aimed at creating an infrastructure for Web 3.0, which we were talking about long before it became trendy.

People think blockchain is about cryptocurrencies because they know Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the reality is that blockchain technology is much more general than cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is actually just database technology. So, anywhere we use a database, we can use blockchain.

But, the adoption of blockchain has been held back by the fact that blockchain currently requires half a million dollars to implement, maybe two million or four million dollars worth of mining equipment, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs. And, what that guarantees is that were going to have a couple big coins: the Bitcoins, Ethereums, EOSes, whatever

That leaves the other coins vulnerable from a security perspective. So, the question is: How do I get a consensus that is not based on proof-of-work? Because, basically, the problem with proof-of-work is that whoever has the most hashing power controls the network, and what that means is that whoever has the most money controls the network, because, if you have the most money, you can just buy hashing power, and then you own the network.

So, you know, the Bitcoin network we pretend like its decentralized, but the reality is that its controlled by whoever has the most money, and I wouldnt call that decentralization. And, if you look, I think theres three mining pools that control the vast majority of hashing power. And, theyre owned by the same guys, the same investors, all three of them.

And, then you have the question of energy usage. Do you really want to spend $50 million per year on electricity just to be able to do six transactions per second? You know, its basically overhead, and it doesnt add anything, so the question is: How do I get consensus without the overhead of all of this mining equipment? And, thats why we created Obelisk, because just the energy costs a huge amount.

We have to lower the costs for small businesses to create and run their own blockchains because theyre not going to spend $50,000 per month just so they can say their database is on a blockchain.

Skycoins Fiber is best described as an infinitely scalable blockchain network. In this sense, Fiber is more than a blockchain. This is a solution to the existing scaling problems that the largest blockchain networks using distributed ledger technology are subject to.

So, we have to dramatically reduce the cost of consensus by getting rid of proof-of-work and getting rid of proof-of-stake, and what thats going to enable is a network of 100,000 blockchains, or a million blockchains, or ten million blockchains. And, thats what we call Fiber.

There is a Web 3.0 aspect for consumer and business applications. You know, you decentralize your data, grab your data and copy it on the cloud. You dont really care who or where its hosted, right?

People who use Web 3.0 normally wont know theyre using it. When Web 3.0 is here, it will be when people are using it and dont know that theyre using it. Its going to be identical. The apps are going to look identical to what we have now. Its going to be exactly the same. The only difference is that there will be a different database in the backend.

No, its based on Ben-Ors protocol for decentralized coin-flipping. We want to have 100,000 blockchains, and we dont want to have all this overhead. It doesnt really make any sense. I would say Fiber its not really Obelisk. It was just the idea of getting your own blockchain for the decentralized internet. I think its really focused more for business use.

Look at the biggest coins. Look at the Binance chain. Theres no source code for it. Its not open source. No one knows what the hell its doing. Theyve released some source code, but, actually, the node doesnt sync. You run it, and it doesnt sync. So, the whole network is running on a server in Binances office, and thats where Binance tether, BUSD, and all these thousands of services are leaving Ethereum to go on the Binance Token.

Theyre leaving Ethereum for a closed-source platform that doesnt even really release its source code. And, if you run the source code, the node doesnt actually work.

We used to have consensus, right? And EOS went to master nodes, and they just ran 30 master nodes and completely controlled it. And so, its sort of this model now of faking it, faking decentralization because it has inefficiency, and it really doesnt add anything. Oh, yeah, were decentralized, but who the hell cares, right? People only care what the app does, they only care what the functionality is.

CX is Skycoins feature rich programming language, and it is what I think is best for blockchain. It is designed to meet the growing needs of Skycoins ecosystem that cannot be met by any other available languages.

If my blog data is on blockchain, I need a language that tells me who can update the data, how big it could be, what the format is, I need APIs for viewing the data, APIs for modifying the data, permission control, an application scripting language, and I need to do mathematical computations.

With CX, you can run any program on any computer in such a way that it will run on a blockchain database. The difference between Skycoins CX and Ethereum is you cannot run a video game on Ethereum, while CX allows you to run any application on a blockchain that you could run on your laptop.

Its a programming language. And, I wouldnt consider Ethereums smart contracting language to be a real programming language because its too limited. I want to do video sharing sites. I want to have Telegram, I want to do poker, I want to do 3D video games, I want to be able to run any app that I can run on my computer, and I want the data to be stored on a blockchain. And so, I dont want to be limited to just buying and selling a PNG for $100,000 and then changing the owner and then paying a $50 transaction fee to do that.

There are CX programs that would be on a blockchain, but some applications have data on the blockchain, and others dont. It has to be flexible enough so that it could be executed on the blockchain, but it could also be executed on a normal CPU without having a blockchain. It just depends on what youre doing.

Skycoin is just one of maybe 15 software products and software protocols that weve developed. I think its very difficult to predict crypto assets. Its very difficult to say whats going to go up, whats going to go down. You know, people see crypto as a sort of investment that theyre trying to make money on, and I think there are too many people like that.

I mean, thats the way they see it. You know: Im going to buy this because its going to go up. But, I think most of the people who bought Skycoin bought it because they like what were doing. They like this community that weve built. They like our vision for what the future of the internet is going to look like.

There are some people who bought it for financial returns, and I think, unfortunately, they were disappointed because if youre trying to get a pump-and-dump If youre going to this pump, youre going to that pump Youre going to this, youre rushing into these new coins, these new ICOs And, this coins here this week, and its up 50x, and then next week its gone, and you never hear of it again.

I think that our community is a bit different. We dont have a lot of moonboys in our community. We dont have a mu mu and lambo mu, and Im gonna get rich. I think theres a lot of people that are using our VPN service, theyre running Skywire nodes, theyre waiting for us to build this new peer-to-peer internet for local communities. Thats what theyre doing.

Skycoins price was $50 when we had no source code. We had nothing when Skycoin was at a $5-billion market cap. We were just starting out. We were just hiring people. And, now that we have like 18 hardware products, our VPN done, our programming language done, were making video game prototypes, were going into small business and corporate networking, were building out CX for programming education and for blockchain applications... Now that were doing all of these things, our token is at 20 cents.

So, how is it that when we had nothing, its a $5-billion market cap, and now that we have a lot more than a lot of our competitors five times over, those that have $800-million market caps But what are we at? $20 million now?

You know, Dogecoin has had no developers for the last 8 years but its market caps more than Ford. So, what does that say? I think the market is a bunch of moonboys going from pump-and-dump to pump-and-dump. The blockchain market today is a market that rewards marketing. If you want, you take your marketing team, you launch a new coin, and then, three months later, you launch another coin. Theres no market for old coins. Like, we talked to OKEx and they only want new coins. They dont want old coins. They want to do a pump, a massive marketing push. They want to dump at 50x, and then they want to do it again next month. And, thats really where the markets at if you want to make money. Its not in developing something over five or ten years.

Read the original post:
Skycoin's Brandon Smietana Discusses the Role of Distributed Ledger Tech in WEB 3.0 - Finance Magnates