I find the coolest part of my job is listening to ways our customers and partners are using our ecosystem technology– in many cases in ways that we had never thought of. Here’s a case that blew me away recent: Deploying TIDWIT Ecosystems instead of Blockchain!
Say what?!!! We had never thought about it in those terms really. Blockchain as a technology operates at much more basic level of computing and are usually single purpose (eg. crypto), whereas ecosystem platforms usually operate at a higher level, interfacing directly with users in different ecosystem apps as PAAS or SAAS. The simple fact that a customer had been contemplating developing an ecosystem solution on blockchain blew my mind! I know what it takes to build one and doing it on Blockchain borders on the insane!
Why? Blockchain as a technology paradigm does not offer any ecosystem solutions. There are no ecosystem apps developed on blockchain and any that may come close are too complex and costly to be worth it. More importantly Blockchain as a paradigm, by design offers no data privacy that corporation compliance are bounded by. In fact, by forcing corporations to share their blockchain ledgers across other corporate blockchain ledgers, Blockchain does the exact opposite. But the biggest shortcoming was it would just be too difficult to get the different multiple organizations to agree to develop from scratch a blockchain-based ecosystem and to share the astronomical cost.
Instead, what I learned is that a partner/client are deploying TIDWIT’s out-of-the-box ecosystem platform, which offered them instant ecosystem standard apps and features that easily connect to their legacy back-end systems. They can easily interoperate with others, have secure and private data in their own node, and can scale without the need to launch massive development projects. In fact they can spin up downstream nodes in a matter of minutes.
As it turns out, the nodal architecture of ecosystems opens up a world of opportunities helping partners and customers circumvent complex Blockchain development projects that might otherwise take forever, cost a ridiculous amount, and don’t actually deliver on what organizations are really looking for.
What do you know … You learn something new every day!
