Three Future Scenarios for Cryptocurrencies
After the development of cryptocurrencies as a payment method and assets, the possibilities they offered did limit themselves to finance alone. In this article, we present three futurist scenarios of the development of cryptocurrencies and how it will change the digital world.
At present, many users of cryptocurrencies have a limited perspective and view them primarily as assets or a means of transactions with other parties. However, it is a strong possibility that in the future, cryptocurrencies could alter the concept of the internet altogether.
The Brave Browser and BAT: Online Ads for Brands that Want to Engage Consumers in a Better Way
It would be an understatement to say that the internet is not working optimally at this point in time. Businesses have an enormous financial incentive to capitalise on the information of users gathered through surveillance of their activities online and monetise this information through marketing campaigns. In this particular situation, users become the commodities being sold. This is, however, a vision that the creators behind Basic Attention Token BAT have in store, as they built a Brave browser. The Brave browser allows ad viewing and pays users an ERC20 token BAT directly to the inbuilt cryptocurrency wallet which saves time and effort. Hence, users are allowed to disable trackers but can still see ads based on their preferences without revealing personal information.
If Brave and BAT became growth-ready in the future, they could pave the way for a much more democratic internet. The collection of data for the purpose of advertising would become clear cut and there would be no more reliance towards a few tech giants. Such a case would require advertisers to work on Brave’s platform, where revenue is split between users, advertisers and Brave itself. Consequently, online advertisement might no longer depend on clickbait and SEO but useful and resourceful content which is customer-centric.
Further, as Andreas Antonopoulos so often pumps the DEX as other areas where Brave Finance is also working to expand further into DeFi, token swaps and liquidity incentives. In the end, Brave and BAT might impose some radical changes on how the web is used, with users having the say of what they experience on the web.
IOTA Dispersing Control of the Internet of Things
The galloping development of smart devices leads experts to the idea that by 2050 there will be connected to the internet 50 billion such devices. Such devices as smartphones and smart watches produce huge quantities of data which is usually sold to advertisers. This is like how browsing data is sold to companies that offer technology.
In the future, however, some networks such as IOTA may grant more control to the users. For instance, consider having a device that is donned with an IOTA Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) and when you buy that particular device, you are given public and private keys to use for activation. There would be all data produced by your device uploaded onto the IOTA network and you would have the option of monetizing that data by selling it to other entities. If you do, however, get to sell that data, then you would earn revenues in MIOTA, the ‘cryptocurrency’ of the network.
The IOTA network has been created with a low cost of data transfer in its operational basis. It is hence suitable for both companies and users. After IOTA’s chrysalis upgrade, the speed of transactions has greatly improved and the network is slowly being prepared for a phasing out of the coordinator, which is seen as a centralizing feature of the network. This improvement which has been tagged as coordicide will allow for a network that is totally permissionless and, more importantly, decentralized.
In an environment where IOTA has been adopted, users could automatically make payments to trusted third parties through their MIOTA wallets and in this way, make smooth data flow. This would take data control away from the networks and back to users, which makes IiT more user-focused and reduces the likelihood of personal data abuse.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): A New Order in Finance
The global recession of 2008 highlighted the weaknesses of the traditional banking structure which led to the development of Bitcoin and consequently popularized decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi technologies are aimed at replacing intermediaries involved in transactions, especially the banks, and thus increasing the efficiency and security for users.
Majority of the DeFi applications (dApps) run on the Ethereum network and are powered by smart contracts which self-execute when parties reach an agreement. These Applications facilitate rapid and inexpensive transactions in a transparent manner. DAOs participates significantly in the governance of DeFi projects allowing users to participate in decision-making and control the development of these projects.
An example of a popular DeFi application is the decentralized exchanges (DEX), like SushiSwap, which enables users to trade amongst themselves without intermediaries. Users who supply cryptocurrency assets into the liquidity pools become liquidity providers, and earn a reward. Users can also vote on matters affecting the future of the network by holding governance tokens like SUSHI.
Furthermore, prediction market projects such as Augur are enabling users to wager on events in the real world by utilizing smart contracts on the blockchain. The advantages of this system include a lack of a third party and clear and direct payouts.
Conclusion
We can expect cryptocurrencies to have a profound impact on finance and the world wide web in the coming years, how we experience the internet and our monetary transactions is certainly set to change. From using the brave browser and BAT to using IOTA and the web3 technologies that aim to decentralise IoT devices or the usage of DeFi in banking, there are significant changes ahead and all of them revolve around cryptocurrencies. These technologies are infant today but in the next few years will drastically evolve giving users complete control, transparency and freedom while interacting online.
