About a week ago Cardano’s Director of Afican Operations tweeted a crypto moon-landing like tidbit that largely went unnoticed by crypto media. We here at LIDO Nation think this was as epic as man landing on the moon for the first time. The very challenge is not one taken up by any other crypto projects, and we know about a lot of other crypto projects. Of course, we can’t know every single crypto project. After reading this article, if you know of another project trying to solve the same problem, please let us know in the comments; solving the “cash” problem in crypto is a requirement for replacing our current monies.
I just saw an offline transaction demo for #Cardano including #Ada and other native assets that kinda blew me away. Support for any android phone of the last 5 years. A few things to work out but the use-cases are crazy. Go @InputOutputHK
Blockchain and cryptocurrency are all digital. The very premise of blockchain is the idea of digitizing (tokenizing) physical things to protect the right of ownership from any one company or government. The most trending street name for crypto is “internet money.”
What is Cardano Cash? As a feature of how Cardano is designed, Cardano transactions almost always only need very little information. If you were going to send your neighbor Ammon 800 bucks for his car in ADA, this is how that transaction would more or less play out. Your computer (or phone) will tell the Cardano network: “Here are three three things that I currently own. Here’s my proof that I own these things. Combined these things are worth 900 bucks. I want you to put these three things into a pot, then create two new things. One worth, 800, and the other 100 (kind of how a cash register might work at a store). Change the owner of the 800 bucks to be Ammon, and make me the owner of the remaining 100 bucks.” Typically when you do this on your phone or computer, your device would be talking to all the computers around the world that make up the cardano network across the internet. Cardano cash is the idea of, instead of being forced to talk to the entire Cardano network to send Ammon is 800 bucks, what if your phone only needs to talk to Ammon’s phone.
This is challenging for a few reasons. One challenge is, how does Ammon phone know that you really own the three things you put into the transaction pot? Generally, verifying that you own the things that make up 900 bucks is what the computers on the Cardano network do. To solve this, we will need a way to transfer all or some of the things you own from the network to your phone or some other device. So your collection of things will be deleted from the Cardano network (or frozen), and moved to your phone. As part of this transfer, the network will need to give you some kind of certificate that Ammon’s phone knows how to verify. With the certificate, Ammons’s phone can say, yes, these things are authenticate; yes, you own all three of them. Ammon’s phone will need to verify that once you send him thing worth 800 bucks, you destroy your copy so Ammon is the only owner. When you or Ammon are ready to, at a later date, you can transfer the things you own from your phones back to the Cardano network.
Does that sound like how cash currently works? You can go to your bank, take out cash. Pay someone. They can look at it and “verify” that is real, that you didn’t make it in your basement. They might give you change if you give them three 20 for something that cost 50. And you can both go back to your bank and deposit cash when you please.
This is an oversimplification but this is essentially the crypto cash challenge. Cardano is saying that they’ve run a successful test. This is huge! This means that people can still get the same privacy they get from cash now, while gaining a lot of new features. Crypto, since it is “digital” is much easier to travel with. Regions around the world that do not live on the internet 24/7 can have crypto! This means small businesses can accept secure payments for zero dollars transaction fees. Let me say that again. This means that small businesses can accept secure payments with zero fees.
The other challenge of crypto cash, and probably the hardest, is the hacking problem. How do we prevent the software on your and Amon’s phone from being hacked? Otherwise, you might have someone hacking that phone to basically keep a copy of “cash” they’re spending and never run out of money! How do we securely update the software? The tweet mentioned phones from the last 5 years because these newer devices have something called Trusted Hardware Environments. When you deploy code to these devices, they practically guarantee that the code cannot be changed once installed.
What happens when you lose your phone? The same thing that happens when you lose your wallet! We’re excited to see the development of Cardano Cash and will keep our ears peeled to the multiverse for development and any and all milestones.
No comments yet…