As Ivan was pointing out that the Internet is a set of global protocols that has allowed the world to work on the same platform, yet informational silos have been created on the internet. My question is, are we not seeing a similar thing happen on the blockchain? Yes, blockchain is the universal protocol for value, like the internet was the universal protocol for information. However, with the competition of platforms like Ethereum, EOS, Cardano, are we not seeing similar silos being created once again on top of the blockchain? Will there be only one winner, or will we not just see different companies continuing to compete and run side by side on the blockchain like Apple and Microsoft? Am I getting this all wrong? Obviously I am a newbie, so hope to learn!!
I would say we are crating silos in a way. But it should still be easier to connected them as they are just protocols and not databases run by people.
Example: My bank does not have all fiat pairs. I cannot trade my croatian kuna for egyptian pound or vice versa. With DeFi we can easily trade many coins/tokens and all that is needed is for someone to provide some liquidity in the pool. I can even exchange some ETH for some erc20 tokens that are not listed on any exchanges. And for all other blockchains, we have backed erc20 tokens. So it is way much easier to connect everything, once money and information is just an internet protocol. Just like everyone uses TCP, UDP, bluetooth and all other protocols.
I don’t think we will only have one winner. Some blockchains will be used more and some less.
I would also agree that, for now at least, there are many competing protocols. In some areas like DeFi there is a lot of interopability, but this is still limited (for now) mainly to the Ethereum ecosystem. There are projects like Cosmos building protocols to connect blockchains together. Eventually I think most protocols and tokens will be seemlessly connected via a common 2nd layer protocol. Each protocol has it’s strengths and weaknesses and dApps will use whichever makes the most sense for that specific task, probably using more than one.
Andreas Antonopoulos talks about this in “One Network, Many Chains” (also on youtube if you want the video of the talk):
https://aantonop.com/one-network-many-chains/