BSV as 'utility blockchain' aims for use cases with trust
Wherever there's a business need for trust and transparency on a distributed ledger, BSV can take care of it, says BSV Association (BSVA) CEO Ásgeir Thór Óskarsson. On top of its underlying Layer 1 infrastructure, you can build any imaginable use case.
Ásgeir joined his brother, BSV Association CTO Siggi Óskarsson, for a chat about trust in the digital economy with Halborn SVP of Marketing Arabdha Sudhir, as part of Halborn's Flash Video series on blockchain topics. Halborn specializes in smart contract audits and security testing for the Web3, blockchain, and DeFi industry and is assisting the BSVA with security consulting.
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Siggi spoke of the more technical challenges associated with achieving BSV's million-transactions-per-second (TPS) milestone with the Teranode protocol implementation. Unbounded scalability on the base layer is the key to making blockchain a useful technology for enterprise and government-tier applications.
'If we have this massive scale, the way you would interact with the blockchain needs to be very different because you can't run your own node anymore.'
This involves creating user-friendly libraries to create transactions, as well as newer concepts like 'Overlay Nodes,' to ensure interactions with a blockchain network run smoothly and securely at these kinds of volumes.
'We want to have a blockchain that can serve the world, not just something that's for hobby projects,' Siggi said. 'We want the big corporations to come and try to break it. Massive, massive use cases, that's our goal.'
'We call ourselves a utility blockchain. We're not interested in the price going up; we actually don't look at the price anymore; we look at how many transactions are we processing, how many transactions can we process, and are we moving in the right direction in that area?'
The key problem we're solving is trust
Sudhir asked for the simplest version of the key problem BSV is solving. 'It's trust,' Ásgeir said. If you take a look at the world in its current state, and read company reports, there's a clear lack of trust. AI is creating a huge amount of extra value, but one negative side-effect is a further decrease in trust.
'You have this verifiable data on an immutable ledger; it's a public blockchain, so anyone can access it. To debunk a myth: you can still have privacy on a public blockchain; it's not just out there for anyone to see.'
The important thing is that the data remains verifiable and can be shared. Ásgeir gave the example of a supply chain with multiple stakeholders that all need to interact with the same data set. Any of them can access that data and act upon it, adding value. Much of the current focus is on decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoins with instant settlement, but that's just the tip of the iceberg for what blockchain can actually do, he added.
Siggi described data on a blockchain as a form of 'digital notary,' helping to solve potential legal problems at a later date and doing it for free. You could stand before a court and produce information from years ago, and since it's on-chain, it's still provably valid.
'We're really only just scratching the surface' of potential blockchain use cases, he added, and the main reason for this is that no blockchain has yet been able to achieve the kinds of scale necessary to handle enterprise applications.
'It's not about the scalability itself; it's about the use cases that are only possible because we can scale.'
It's more about business resilience, said Ásgeir. Verifiable on-chain data can protect a business' tech stack over decades, as it builds its forte and gains more clients.
'It's like a plethora of problems you're solving,' Sudhir noted.
Stablecoins and cross-border remittances are two of the most prominent areas where blockchain shines, Ásgeir said. BSV's first native stablecoin, MNEE, is already proving its advantage over other similar tokens with instant transactions and zero 'gas' fees to send payments. Other existing financial instruments, like derivatives, can be tokenized on a blockchain network to gain similar advantages.
But blockchain is no longer about 'being your own bank,' said Siggi, echoing an old Bitcoin meme. Blockchain can benefit banks by saving costs and helping them run more efficiently. Ásgeir again asked viewers to look beyond simple financial procedures, noting that blockchain has utility wherever there's a need for multiple parties to trust shared data records. The list of use cases there is endless, from government regulations to shipping and logistics, consumer retail, and corporate sustainability.
Instead of having a centralized (proprietary) database and asking everyone to just trust it without good reason, now you have this whole layer of trust between everyone.
'It's fascinating,' Ásgeir said. 'Ten years from now, who knows what kind of use cases we're going to find for blockchain.'
Watch: With blockchain, the utility is becoming more and more important
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