Bloq founder Jeff Garzik: Cross-blockchain smart contracts allow Bitcoin to enter the fourth stage. "Coin Weekly" Issue 91: 2016.05.09-2016.05.15

Jeff Garzik is one of the most respected developers in the Bitcoin industry. He has been a Bitcoin Core developer and has worked for several companies such as BitPay . Recently, he founded his own blockchain-as-a-service company, Bloq , to ​​serve enterprise clients who want to develop products on private, public or federated blockchains .

Garzik expressed his opinion in a recent discussion with Bitcoin Magazine, and in his elaborate model, blockchain technology is currently moving from stage three to stage four.

“The first phase is the first use case of digital currency, blockchain technology.”

Garzik explained that this means that in the evolution of blockchain technology, the first stage is obviously Bitcoin. Bitcoin appeared in 2008 and has attracted the attention of a large number of people, from financial institutions to hackers.

According to Garzik, Bitcoin has already passed the second stage. The second stage includes those who study how to apply digital currencies (or tokens) to the process of transferring money between banks. Financial institutions are studying this aspect to make modern money transfers more efficient.

While credit and debit cards are great, people lament the need to still pay by paper check or wire transfer, which can take days to process and are expensive.

As Garzik puts it:

“The second stage is digital assets, where financial institutions can put digital assets on the blockchain.”

“The third phase is smart property. Putting physical assets on the blockchain, whether it’s airplanes, ships, real estate or something else.”

This phase has been theorized for years, and mainstream media is no doubt focusing on how IoT and blockchain can be combined to power the future of cities. This boils down to using blockchain to manage property.

Smart property refers to ownership determined by a blockchain with smart contracts. Smart property can also include company shares, software or access rights to computers. Smart assets simplify ownership procedures, reduce opportunities for fraud and lower intermediary costs.

Nick Szabo first introduced the concept of smart assets in his 1998 paper ‘The Idea of ​​Smart Contracts’.

Garzik believes that the core of the blockchain industry is Bitcoin technology, which is currently moving towards another exciting stage: the fourth stage.

Garzik said:

“Phase 4 is about connecting everything together into a cross-blockchain smart contract network that protects assets and matures assets. It really goes beyond the simple need for cryptography to manage and protect assets. With some interesting things happening in the Ethereum community and some of the technologies that are similar to smart contracts emerging, I now think we are moving from phase 3 to phase 4.”

Bloq recently released its blockchain operating system, called BloqEnterprise, which is designed as an enterprise-grade blockchain backend that can provide customer services. This multi-pronged blockchain software solution is designed to allow companies to create, update, customize and analyze their own public, private and permissioned blockchains.

In November 2015, Garzik co-founded Bloq with Matthew Roszak.

Garzik said:

“Open source is key to rapid innovation, as the early days of Linux and cryptocurrencies have proven. But for a technology to be used by Fortune 500 companies, it needs to be a reliable, enterprise-grade solution. You can’t sit there and wait for unpaid volunteers to come up with updates. Red Hat solved that problem for the Linux market, and Bloq will solve that problem for blockchain.”