2019 was a remarkable year for blockchain technology, a lot of things, some unexpected, happened, however,  it’s time to focus on 2020. Here we have tried to predict whats awaiting the Blockchain industry. So, let’s look at the most expected events that will reshape the blockchain ecosystem in 2020 and beyond?

Scale Up

Since the beginning, Blockchain scalability has been an issue that has been a hurdle in its global adoption. Since then, there have been many new blockchains that call themselves “Ethereum killers”, but so far, EOS or Tron haven’t got as many developments as Ethereum did. So, the general audience awaits the Ethereum scaling. Currently, the Ethereum team is working on various projects that should help the Ethereum scale. The Ethereum 2.0 project, with Proof-of-Stake and sharding. The transition will happen presumably at the end of 2020. The merging of the old chain into the new one will take some time but eventually, it will become one chain. It will be a huge improvement for the Blockchain ecosystem, the transaction speed of the network is expected to increase from hundreds to thousands of transactions per second, which will enable more developers and companies to launch commercial dapps on it.

Another solution is the second layer, Plasma. OmiseGo is working on Plasma that is pretty close to launching it on the mainnet. Now almost everything: the integration with Ethereum is complete, and the white label wallet is already done. There are many large companies that are planning to use OmiseGo framework – Shinhan, Nomura, Burger King, blockchain startups Hoard, Cred and Brave. Plasma technology will allow anybody to use the blockchain network, secured by Ethereum blockchain, with almost no costs, with a throughput of thousands of transactions per second. A powered scaling for Ethereum, that will bring the adoption of the network. 

Another scaling project is Lightning Network. In 2020, there will be increased activity in the network, and the overall number of applications, using it, is also likely to increase.

Fintech

For the banking industry, the blockchain has already been studied comprehensively thanks to cryptocurrencies.

Now banks are looking for ways to implement Blockchain into their system. Modern query processing speed is not enough. The same Swift copes within three days. A few years ago it was overwhelming. Today the need to achieve a result is in a few hours, or even – seconds.

Ripple Network is used by around 40 banks, including MUFG and Standard Chartered. In 2016, ReiseBank examined the capabilities of the blockchain through RippleNet, around $ 1000 transaction was completed in 20 seconds.

But many are unhappy with the partial centralization of the Ripple network, the alternative of Ripple Network is Stellar, which provides complete anonymity of transactions. But the main drawback for the banks is bounding to cryptocurrency. Thus, the banking industry is more focused on the independent implementation of the blockchain rather than being tied to any digital coin.

Decentralized finance

DeFi is the alternative running parallel to the existing centralized financial banking system. It basically includes lending platforms, security tokens issuance platform, and the decentralized banks. 

Among lending platforms, there’s SALT, which is already fully functional now. On SALT, you can secure the cryptocurrency and receive a loan in USD, paying a certain interest until the loan is paid off. It’s a great option for investors, they can store their crypto while using the value of their portfolio for other goals. In addition, you can leverage your portfolio by taking a loan and buy more crypto to profit more on the growth of your assets. 

Polymath’s Security token allows any company to register and issue special ST20 tokens on Polymesh blockchain. It’s an alternative to all existing ways of issuing and storing stocks, and in the future, the amount of tokenized assets will continue to grow, as it’s cheaper and almost absolutely secure. 

Crypto banks are crypto wallets that provide a decentralized service, that doesn’t require you to send them your crypto.  Bitwala, one of the famous crypto banks is located in the European Union. Like any ordinary bank, crypto banks support BTC and ETH, as well as debit cards. 

Interoperability

In 2020, enterprises will increase focus on operations, deployment flexibility and interconnectivity between networks. The new decade has intensified the requirement for interoperability between the many blockchain networks and the various protocols that have been launched will intensify. 

There are already several networks that cover identical or similar functionality, including trade finance, invoice factoring, shipping documentation. Participants in these networks understand whether, and how, these the chains will be interacting, more reasons to believe that the future will involve more focus on getting the network to interoperate.

As a network expands, nodes will distribute across multiple cloud providers, this will be applicable even when a network leveraged its managed blockchain offering from a service provider. Cross-blockchains pilots are expected to be seen live in 2020. The move of Hyperledger Besu to Linux Foundation Hyperledger, is a definite sign that permissioned Blockchains might start to intersect. There is thorough research conducted on how digital assets on various chains might co-exist. 

At QuillHash, we understand the Potential of Blockchain and have a good team of developers who can develop any blockchain applications like Smart Contracts, dApps, DeFi, DEX on the any Blockchain Platform like Ethereum, EOS , Stellar and Hyperledger.

For further discussion and queries on the same topic, join the discussion on Telegram group of QuillHash — https://t.me/quillhash.