People building and disrupting spend all day focused on fixing and building what isn’t working well and what’s not yet finished. It’s easy to forget what has been done – the foundation for the rest of it.
We set out to lift blockchain adoption from where it is – currently stuck at 20% and often just toys of crypto degens – to the technology everyone can rely on for everyday financial infrastructure. We’ll know we’ve done our job when institutions trust public blockchains for other people’s money. No bank, government, or enterprise wants to be the one where the CIO has to tell the CEO that the North Koreans stole $50M this morning due to a solidity re-entrancy attack.
We also don’t think the playbook that’s been run repeatedly by other projects of pumping and dumping via FOMO (and perhaps more illicit means as well) will ever result in creating something trusted, credible, and enduring. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” as Albert Einstein said (allegedly).
Blockchains are a complex topic to master, and very few have the incentive to understand all the elements needed to create a holistic smart contract public blockchain. Fortunately, those entrusted with other people’s money – like CIOs at major banks – have the incentives to see through the spin and into the strengths and weaknesses of various technologies. The electrical footprint of Proof of Work is large, and scaling it up 10x or 100x doesn’t seem wise. Solidity and EVM do not have a track record that inspires confidence in their secure use on public blockchains.
So, what have we done?
While other chains have done proofs-of-concept or small one-off projects, the Chia blockchain has banks, governments, and enterprises using Chialisp, CLVM, and the Chia blockchain in production.
The World Bank, the governments of Singapore and Bhutan, Ecoregistry, the United Nations, Verra, and others use the Chia blockchain to create an auditable global data repository to bring transparency to voluntary carbon offsets. More than 75% of the annual carbon offset registration is now represented in CAD Trust on the Chia blockchain. And we expect that number to continue to grow.
We’ve built the foundation for the evolution of blockchain from experiments to enterprise development. Even one of our “small projects,” selling real carbon to real customers like Melonn and Sumitomo Corporation of America on-chain for retirement on-chain, demonstrates the end-to-end auditability and ease of settlement to actual carbon market participants. We believe that there will be carbon offsets for sale on the Chia chain, 24×7, via Offers this calendar year. This is the first step to building a deep, liquid, globally decentralized market for voluntary carbon offsets.
As more governments, banks, and enterprises use the Chia blockchain, we believe we’ll put an end to the persistent misconceptions about the value and usefulness of blockchains. Once trusted brands and institutions adopt the best decentralized and secure technology – it will become clear which projects will be core internet infrastructure and which will be added to the dustbin of abandoned blockchains.
Walking, then Running
However, companies and governments putting real money at risk takes time. Our customers in production, and their use cases, make it just that much easier for the next real-world use case to adopt the Chia blockchain. And we’re not a 9-year-old smart contract blockchain. Our mainnet isn’t even 3.
I can appreciate the irony in the fact that the way we can most reduce the need for trust in the world is the need to build trust in the first place.
“Cypherpunks in Sportscoats” is a series penned personally by CEO Gene Hoffman. Through these writings, Gene shares his insights and the vision guiding Chia.
Edit 2/2/2024 3:35pm: Fixed typo.
