Intro
Blockstack says it's an open-source and developer-friendly network for building decentralized apps and smart contracts. Blockstack Proof of transfer is a new consensus mechanism which is launching as Blockstack 2.0 Mainnet in Q3 tentatively.
It uses Clarity smart contract language instead of Solidity which is a famous smart contract language used in Ethereum and ethereum like blockchains.
Right now testnet is running and I am hopeful that Blockstack 2.0 Mainnet with proof of transfer consensus mechanism will launch before September end though exact date will depend on testing and maybe pushed further if they find any significant bugs.
Stacks 2.0
Stacks 2.0 will bring new consensus mechanism Proof of transfer and use both Bitcoin and blockstack network for security. Bitcoin will provide security as proof of work and blockstack will use Dpos mechanism through stakers and delegators.
Basically it will transfer BTC from miners to stackers , and miners will get 500 STX per block. Blockstack mainnet is trying to bring best of both worlds, security of Bitcoin Blockchain and smart contract and proof stake capability of blockstack Blockchain.
I don't know how successful it will be because price of both Bitcoin and STX will come into play. But looks like a nice thoughtful experiment whose success will only time will tell.
Dapps in Blockstack
There are already many dapps available in blockstack and unlike ethereum it seems to have more general purpose dapps opposed to ethereum which have more financial or gambling dapps. Blockstacks provide a private Decentralised ID through which you can login to any dapp in blockstack ecosystem without compromising your privacy.
You may find Decentralised blogging, hosting, email, music streaming and many other great dapps in blockstack ecosystem.
You can find the complete list of wonderful dapps available by clicking below
Competitors
- Ethereum
- Tron
- EOS
- Tezos
- Harmony One
- Elrond
- Quarkchain
- Neo
- Ontology
- Hedera Hashgraph
- Solana
- Avalanche
- Algorand
- Cardano
- ElastOS
- Cosmos
- Polkadot
- IOST
- Waves
Price
As Mainnet 2.0 is near we are seeing considerable price action from traders and investors and i think it will see more upward trends as Mainnet comes near.
Pros
Already many dapps are live which are mostly useful and not related to just gambling, trading etc but real useful dapps such as dmail, airtext , xordrive etc.
Decentralised ID system, in which you make an ID once and then can use on any dapp is a great feature.You control your ID it's stored with you not with the apps like Centralised ones and give you full control over your privacy and your data.
The only disadvantage may be if you don't backup your private key of your identity or it's get stolen you may face problems , so it's always better to have backup or some smart solution as having custody of identity and funds in own hands is both a huge advantage plus also drawback.
The Blockstack Network stores application data using a storage system called Gaia. Transactional metadata is stored on the Blockstack blockchain and user application data is stored in Gaia storage. Storing data off of the blockchain ensures that Blockstack applications can provide users with high performance and high availability for data reads and writes without introducing central trust parties.
The good part about this is that Blockstack is not dependent on third party storage services unlike ethereum ,eos which will need this party storage such as IPFS , Sia ,storj ,filecoin etc.
Cons
Adoption Wise it's still somewhat below like competitors Ethereum, Tron ,Eos ,Tezos etc. Though I don't think it's winner take all market but I think either blockstack needs to pursue aggressive marketing once its able to develop initial traction or find a niche in which it can be leader as challenging very well established dapp platforms like ethereum is gonna not be easy.
The good thing I like is that it has many actual use case dapps absent in other platforms.
Conclusion
The blockstack seems to be one of the major contender in decenetralized apps ecosystem. They already have many general purpose dapps live in there platform and just need a marketing push to bring users to there platform , yes I found the performance of the dapps slightly slow compared to centralised apps but still it is quite faster than blockchains like ethereum and with no gas fee.
There is huge competition brewing in this space and ultimately it will benefit users. Blockstack 2.0 mainnet will push the competition further in the overcrowded Blockchain arena.
Have you tried any blockstack dapp yet , let me know in comments
You may also like
Disclaimer : This article is not an investment advise. Kindly do your own research before investing in any project.