If you’re reading this site, you’re probably already aware that blockchain technology has the potential to transform a wide variety of industries. In an ideal world, blockchain would be making lives easier for almost everybody, because virtually every business can benefit from an immutable, trustless ledger and inviolable smart contracts.
The problem, of course, is that we don’t live in an ideal world. Blockchain technology could be disruptive in almost every industry, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to implement. It’s one thing for a software firm with an army of coders on its payroll to move its systems onto the chain, but what about (for example) a wine merchant?
A wine merchant could certainly benefit from blockchain tech, which could be used to do things like track shipments and inventory, confirm the authenticity and place-of-origin of wines, and handle vendor contracts in a seamless, trust-free, automatic way. But how could a a wine merchant with no team of blockchain developers hope to switch their systems over to the blockchain? And even if that merchant did have the time and money to accomplish that, how could they get their vendors and clients onto the same system?
Dragonchain is a blockchain solution that aims to be the answer to those questions.
Dragonchain 101
Dragonchain is a commercial blockchain platform that’s designed to make integration for businesses as easy and painless as possible. It runs on the Ethereum blockchain, but allows businesses to create custom sidechains.
It also offers a number of unique features aimed at solving the problems businesses face when they try to integrate with blockchains – features that aren’t easily available or accessible to businesses trying to launch directly on the Ethereum chain.
Choose Your Own Programming Language
First, there’s the software development problem. Switching to blockchain for business purposes almost inevitably will involve some custom code, but many blockchain platforms require programmers to learn a new language before they can even begin.
Dragonchain, in contrast, allows for integration while enabling developers to stay in their existing development environment (including Java, Python, Node, C#, Go, and more). This means there’s no need for additional training, and no need to hire expensive and difficult-to-find blockchain specialist devs.
Choose Your Own Consensus
Second, there’s the problem of efficiency. Blockchains provide a trustless ledger through complex systems of network consensus. That’s great, but the process of achieving consensus can be time- and resource-consuming for the blockchain network. In many business cases, being able to validate a transaction quickly may be preferable, even if that means there’s a slightly higher level of trust required.
Dragonchain’s platform offers a spectrum of consensus solutions so that businesses can optimize their systems for their own needs, using lower or higher levels of trust depending on the nature of the transaction. For example, a transaction involving the business’s own data could use a relatively high level of trust (since the business presumably trusts itself), while transactions with outside vendors might use higher levels of consensus for a more trustless experience.
Choose Your Own Currency
Third, there’s the problem of currency. Many blockchain platforms operate via complex token economies, but for a business, figuring out what you need (and what will work) before you’ve even started using blockchain can be quite difficult.
Dragonchain offers a currency-agnostic platform that allows businesses to operate with or without tokens. Companies that want to run their networks via their own customized token economy are welcome to do so, but companies that would rather get some data on how their system works before trying to implement any kind of economy can do that, too.
Choose Your Level of Contract Privacy
One of the chief advantages of traditional smart contracts is that they’re public: that means everybody knows the details and it’s easy to verify the rules of a contract are fair. But in some cases, this solution isn’t ideal for businesses, who may need to transact private data or set up contracts with clients that they don’t want to be completely public.
To solve that problem, Dragonchain offers customization and privacy options, allowing businesses that need extra privacy to benefit from the automation of smart contracts without having to make their sensitive data public.
The DragonFund Incubator
Another important feature of Dragonchain is the DragonFund Incubator, a blockchain startup incubator that will offer promising blockchain projects access to resources including legal, technical, marketing, and economic advice, economic modeling, and more. Projects can raise funds through ICOs on the Dragonchain platform.
The Dragon Token and the Slumber Score
Dragonchain’s tokens are called Dragons (DRGN). Their most basic function is as a license for interaction with Dragonchain’s commercial services (in other words, you need Dragons to be able to do some of the cool things you can do on Dragonchain). But for everyday investors, Dragons offer additional value via the access holding the tokens provides to ICOs on Dragonchain.
A user who holds Dragons in a wallet (not on an exchange) has what’s called a Dragon Slumber Score (DSS). DSS is simply the number of tokens held multiplied by the amount of time they’ve been held for. Making a transaction with a token “awakens” it and resets the “time held” counter, lowering one’s DSS.
Having a higher DSS confers benefits like access to early sales or higher purchase limits for Dragonchain ICOs. The specific benefits will vary based on the particular ICO in question, but every ICO will come with some kind of benefit for Dragon holders with high DSS scores, so there’s always incentive for users to hold their Dragons, keeping them off the market and thus lowering the overall Dragon supply (which, at least ideally, raises DRGN’s value).
Dragonchain’s Prospects
There’s no doubt that the ideas behind Dragonchain are sound – blockchain implementation is a real problem for many businesses, and Dragonchain makes it easier.
The project also has a pretty impressive pedigree, having begun life as a project under the helm of Disney before being spun out into a unique entity. The core management team, unsurprisingly, includes a number of Disney veterans, and its advisory board includes a former assistant director of the FBI.
The caveat here is the one that’s so common among blockchain firms: it’s still early days for Dragonchain, and some of the features described above haven’t been fully implemented yet. But with brains from Disney, a solid idea, and a good bit of the tech already up and running, I wouldn’t bet against Dragonchain.
