ArcBlock CEO: Why Blockchain's 'Just Not There Yet'

In his mission to build the "Amazon Web Services of the blockchain age," ArcBlock CEO Robert Mao outlines a problem that finds blockchain in a technological purgatory.

ArcBlock CEO Robert believes blockchain's utopian promises to disrupt, decentralize, and democratize are by no means hot air.

Just as the internet moved from methodology, to technology, to an all-encompassing platform, Mao explained, blockchain has been destined to carve out the same path.

Bitcoin, emerging as a trustless, peer-to-peer cash system piqued the world's interest in blockchain and gave it recognition as a groundbreaking technology.

If Mao's blueprints are indeed correct, the meaningful and mass adoption of blockchain cannot arise until the third and final stage of development.

"Even today, as a developer, you get excited with blockchain, you really want to build something and then you will realize what the reality is. One part is the vision, the other part is the reality. The reality is, building blockchain is really tough."

Expounding on this, he noted many hurdles awaited any blockchain developer wishing to build an application-right from the initial challenge of choosing which blockchain to build on, to then mastering the chosen blockchain's scripting language, protocol, and data structure, as well as other core operational nuances.

Originally starting out to build a group knowledge network for software development, ArcBlock chanced upon blockchain when searching for a means of incentivizing the sharing of knowledge.

Where cryptocurrency may have jumped out as an obvious incentive model, the team were paralyzed once again when attempting to select a suitable blockchain.

Through the platform's functional 'Open Chain Access Protocol' and 'Blocklet' microservice framework, developers do not have to commit to any one blockchain; instead, they need to work within an open-source, technology-agnostic environment where dApps can be built and deployed on any blockchain and/or cloud for serverless computing.