"Disruptive technologies are like natural disasters. They come out of nowhere, are unstoppable, and leave a radically altered landscape in their wake. This is invariably bad news for the status quo but in the wake of their destruction, something magical happens. Nature abhors a vacuum and will endeavour to rapidly re-establish a complex and resilient ecosystem in the place of that which has been destroyed. From an evolutionary perspective, these disasters are opportunities to adapt and strengthen the system based on experience gained. From this perspective, disruption drives the evolution of natural ecosystems and it is no different in the case of technological and business ecosystems.
“The breakthrough of Bitcoin is that, suddenly, you can send something digital to somebody else, just as I can hand you a DVD or ten dollar bill if you are standing next to me, without the need for any kind of middleman. It sounds simple enough, but it is a huge breakthrough — and it has huge implications for privacy and for efficiency. Behind it all is something Satoshi dubbed the blockchain. The disruptive implications of an entirely new money system that achieves widespread adoption are, of course, enormous. But the tech goes beyond money.” — Dominic Frisbey
Bitcoin and, by extension blockchain, is widely considered to be such a disruptive technology. In a post on Virgin Entrepreneur, financial author Dominic Frisbey who wrote “Bitcoin, the future of money?” postulates that Bitcoin will do to banking what the cell phone did to telecoms. Cell phones radically altered the landscape by lowering the entry bar to telecoms for Billions of people, giving them instant access to a phone and pre-paid card. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are doing the same thing for the great unbanked. Suddenly they are able to send money anywhere in the world at low cost without having to jump through administrative hoops. In countries such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe where Government currencies went into hyperinflation, the general population quickly started gravitating towards cryptocurrencies despite the volatility of the crypto markets. Clearly, the seemingly wild swings of crypto are preferable to the rapid implosion of fiat.
There is a lot of speculation about which industries will be disrupted most by Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies but there seems to be consensus on banking, communications, gaming, news, advertising, and health being first in line to experience major Blockchain driven upheaval. This is open to debate though but whether correct or not, the point is that Blockchain is set to disrupt and, in several cases, is already disrupting incumbent industries. Let us assume this latter statement to be correct for the purpose of this article.
If we extrapolate patterns of disruption from case studies of technologies that successfully disrupted industries, it becomes possible to spot disrupters fairly early on. Three of these principals that have been identified by norrup are known as;
- Mainstream underperformance
- Niche/Emergent market performance
- The innovator’s dilemma
Considering that we are witnessing a major disruption in the process of unfolding, let us now narrow our gaze from the broad perspective of the industries being disrupted and limit our focus to the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger technology vertical, in other words, the disruptor. By overlaying the disrupting vertical with the pattern filters given above and focusing on Skycoin within that context, we should be able to spot disruptive elements embedded within the disruptive trajectory of Blockchain.
Filter 1. Mainstream underperformance
Disruptive technologies typically underperform established technologies in mainstream markets and underperform on the criteria valued by the mainstream consumer.
Since we are for the purposes of this exercise assuming the emergent Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Industry to be mainstream, I will evaluate Skycoin against well-established and successful cryptocurrencies as measured by a financial metric. Skycoin is currently rated at number 209 on Coinmarketcap in terms of Dollar based market capitalisation. While this is not severe underperformance given that Coinmarketcap lists in excess of 2000 coins, given the maturity of the Skycoin project, it’s scope, and the consistency with which it delivers, such a low rating indicates a tremendous undervalued asset that is performing well below it’s potential.
It would be safe to say that Skycoin is definitely underperforming in the mainstream.
Filter 2. Niche/Emergent market performance.
Products based on disruptive technologies are generally simpler, more convenient and cheaper to use than mainstream products and offers features that are valued by people outside mainstream markets.
Skycoin transactions are instantly confirmed and are free of charge. These characteristics render Skycoin both cheaper and more convenient to use than competing technology.
In terms of offering features that appeal to people outside of mainstream markets, the Skycoin ecosystem brings a plethora of innovative offerings to market, the value of which is hardly recognised by the mainstream crypto consumer at this time. These include a privacy-centric incentivised Internet known as Skywire, a turing complete Blockchain programming language known as CX, immutable distributed object storage known as CXO, a parallel inflationary currency generated by the base currency called Coinhours, and Fiber,a theoretically infinitely scalable Blockchain platform based on hyperthreading.
Filter 3. The innovator’s dilemma
Disruptive technologies will appear incapable and inferior to a firm or intellectual mind serving mainstream customers.
Skycoin has been on the receiving end of more than its fair share of criticism by mainstream crypto players commenting from their incumbent perspective. Most of them simply failed to see and comprehend the innovation that the project brings to the table. In extreme cases, Skycoin was even called a scam and suffered coordinated FUD attacks from competing projects.
Having used the pattern identification tools, the picture that emerges for me is one of nestled disruption. While Blockchain is going about its business of disrupting several industries, Skycoin is quietly incubating a tropical storm of immense proportions that will tear through the crypto industry to permanently alter the landscape for the better.