UNLOCKING IP RIGHTS NFTs

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ALL THE NEW TRENDS EMERGING EVERY OTHER MONTH? HAS ANYTHING CAUGHT YOUR EYE?

We are still in the early stages of this technology and it’s very normal that any emerging technology tries to find its use cases. In the beginning, Blockchain seemed almost to be the solution looking for a problem, now obviously we’re getting more applications that have potential to really address the issues in our society and I think NFTs is one of them.

I think the exciting part about NFTs is that you will see not only the creation of some digital art and some music content on the Blockchain but most of all - if you think about what this can unlock in terms of IP rights and the digitization of IP rights, you can actually give a value to that and make transfer of ownership way easier. I think that will probably be the real use case for it.

In the short term I think we’ll see some interesting stuff happening in the art space. We are working on very exciting projects with large corporate partners in the motorsports industry and also of course in the arts industry.

I’m very excited about the music industry, I think to digitise content and to give more power to the creators, compared to the platform owners who currently have all the power in the market, and in the value chain - I think that’s also a very interesting use case.

DeFi has become the latest growth area of Blockchain and Crypto/ Digital Currencies. By using the power of smart contracts running inside the Blockchain; DeFi allows for stakeholders of cryptocurrencies to earn additional rewards other than the traditional capital appreciation associated with the real-time value of the tokens.

These rewards are the result of both staking and farming activities which lock up the associated cryptocurrencies for a determined period of time and deliver liquidity to trading/exchanging/ loan/insurance financial activities running directly on the Blockchain environment. DeFi behaves exactly like a Neo Bank (Digital Bank) completely run in the Blockchain space - the same way applications run in a digital cloud environment like Amazon Web Services.

The most important area that needs to be addressed is security, security in the context of DeFi is often associated with Smart Contracts Security and DApps (Distributed Apps) Security. Both are written in code such as Solidity or Java Script; as with any code there are bugs (normally 1 bug per 1,000 of lines of code), and some of the bugs are serious flaws which lead to critical vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers to drain the digital wallets of smart contracts. The best way to address this is through regular smart contract audits. Smart contract audits combined with testing eliminate the majority of the visible vulnerabilities in the smart contract codefixing them before going live.

The second important area to be addressed is performance, Blockchain because of their consensus mechanisms and their distributed nature don’t always scale or perform well when too many transactions are scheduled in parallel. Especially Blockchain like Ethereum, popular with DeFi implementation and notable for bad performance when transaction volumes increase. This area is difficult to address since it often requires migrating to a Blockchain with better performance. Blockchains like Binance Smart Chain are fully compatible with Ethereum and are known to have better throughput capabilities.

The third to be addressed is the cost of transactions; the Ethereum network also suffers from serious shortcomings in this area. During normal periods transactions costs are effective and affordable, however when the network is clogged, the transaction costs increase dramaticallysometimes the costs are even higher than the returns of the associated trades. The costs of the transactions can be addresses by Layer 2 solutions or by Blockchains. Some Blockchains can deliver 0 costs or near 0 costs for the transactions and therefore are preferred by users of DeFi projects. Once again, Binance Smart Chain offers lower and more stable transaction costs while at the same time offering full compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts.

The fourth area to be addressed is the usability and the friendliness of the operating environment for non-technical users. The usage of DeFi wallets such as Metamask are not so easy to use for first time users or non-technical users. We need to develop more friendly wallets as well as more friendly DApps. We need to deliver better user awareness and training in the usage of these technologies.

Next to be addressed is governance, which allows for better transparency and participation of the members in the decision-making process of DeFi. One of the best technologies to enable this capability is the usage of DAOs.

The last area to be addressed by the DeFi is the integration with real world assets. In the DeFi space digital currencies are 100% synthetic assets that only live in the digital space. Any future growth and acceptance of DeFi will require a proper integration of these synthetic assets with real world assets such as: Gold, Real Estate, Listed Company Shares and Commodities (such as Oil). The wrapping of integration of real-world assets with digital ones will deliver much higher value to the DeFi and market acceptance. The integration will also delivery a lower degree of risk, better stability and provide both for fractional ownership as well better liquidity capabilities in DeFi.

The growing space for Defi is promising, with big advances in digitalization, friendliness, transparency, speed and liquidity, and value for its users. By addressing the current shortcomings of DeFi we can guarantee better acceptance of this technology in the current market place.