On Synchronization
I am here to tell you that we have just entered a golden era of decentralized software systems and web applications.
There has never been a better time to be a builder, an architect, an artist, a designer or a web developer.
We are entering a digital renaissance that will bring us beyond the cloud. This is known as Web3.
It All Started with Bitcoin
Bitcoin is answers.
It is truth. It is veridical. It's the collapse of the wave function. It is a pure mathematical certainty.
Ethereum is Questions
Ethereum is questions.
What can we build on top of Uniswap v3? When's the next NFT drop? Who do you that knows Solidity? Why didn't my transaction go through? Whats in the dark forest? Only when we question, can we advance society.
Erhereum is this giant public good, a global mycellium that allows us send money, earn, create organizations, prove ownership and it's only the beginning.
But now we need to answer the next question...
How can we synchronize state?
How do we traditonally sync or coordinate in the physical world?
X, Y, Z, T - I'll meet you at WeWork on 40th and 5th, 3rd Floor at 8am.
This seems to work in the physical world.
What about in the digital world?
Twitter? Facebook? But are these really a neutral state we can leverage as a common frame of reference, anymore..?
CRDTs??
What about in the enterprise world?
API Gateways? ETLs? Zoom?
Yet we still have this gap..
We are still missing the mycellium, we need our bulletin board; our common frame of reference to verify that my system "does indeed" match your system.
How does this concept of shared state affect the enterprise software world? Is it speed of execution? Is it trust or the petrified nature of the blockchain? Is it contracts and assets?
When I first started on this journey the concept of programtically codifying the outcomes of business contracts such as SLA, MSAs etc. was very fascinating to me.
We write Solidity, we save trees and now instead of pen and paper we get keys and nodes.
I was working in the Salesforce ecosystem on middle office applications (Configuration Engines, Contract Management software) and saw that different customers using the same app from the same company couldnt share or synchronize sales and financial data...
Org 1s data doesnt automatically reconcile with Org 2s data.
How could a b2b app be only single party?!
And if each app is custom implemented then how could these organizations ever be able to have their CRM & ERP systems talk to each other?
Enter Blockchain and Ethereum.
What if we could build mulitparty b2b apps that are logically centralized but organizationally decentralized on Salesforce?
How can we make Salesforce a multiparty workflow platform?
Step 1) Let's build a middleware that connects to Salesforce to Ethereum.
So we did that and then we built a Salesforce interface that speaks to the Ethereum Mainnet (Ropsten) and allows me to develop smart contracts and transfer tokens from Salesforce.
Step 2) Talk to customers.
We spoke with customers who wanted to automate and execute all kinds of multiparty workflows using Smart Contracts or even build their own networks based on consortia or other standards.
Insurance Brokers and Providers
Machinery Dealers and Leasers
Suppliers and Merchants.
But we ran into some problems with these engagements:
1) Who writes and owns the contract logic?
(circuits library)
2) Who operates the nodes in the network?
(nuetral mainnet)
3) How can we protect the input data on public networks? (privacy)
4) What can Ethereum do that a traditional RDBMS cannot do?
(Tokens, NFTs, DAOS and Baseline).
Fast forward 5 years. Present Day.All of those questions have now been answered.
The problems have now been solved by leveraging zero knowledge proof circuits and the public ethereum mainnet in a novel mechanism for state synchronization over the internet called the Baseline Protocol.
Instead of sending data to the blockchain we can verify proofs on the public mainnet about the state of our systems. Instead of creating new silos to manage our intercompany processes, we use this mycellium as our common frame of reference.
We have mathematical certainty that our client has interacted with the same shared workgroup and global bulletin board and because of that we can verify that it has been baselined!
So what happens when businesses use this shared, nuetral mycelium and this new mechanism to synchronize state over the internet?
We enter the golden era, a new rennaisance and a new world.