Highlights from CasperLabs CTO Medha Parlikar’s AWS Roundtable Discussion on blockchain and DeFi.
Watch the full conversation here.
There is no ceiling to DeFi’s total addressable market
The market cap of existing cryptocurrencies exceeds $1.5T, and it’s growing at such a dizzying rate across a broad spectrum of new products, the proliferation of blockchain-enabled services, and in the size of the user base. The adoption curve is accelerating, and we are still early. More people and financial institutions are just beginning to wake up and take notice of DeFi.
Despite the frenzy of the DeFi space and media attention on blockchain, realistically the industry has likely achieved less than 5% market penetration rate in terms of user adoption. Given the seismic implications of blockchain technology, we anticipate tremendous growth as individuals and enterprises alike explore existing use cases like DeFi and begin to develop brand new products and markets.
The past is immutable, but the future is unwritten
The Casper Network has taken a “future proof” approach to implementing blockchain technology through upgradeable contracts. In other words, the Casper Network remains committed to the Web3 fundamental of an immutable transaction history, but also supports the ability to update smart contracts and other on-chain applications over time without the need for a hard reset. Upgradeable smart contracts allow for mainnet-deployed contracts to be changed and updated by their developer(s) as needed.
The CasperLabs team builds on the Casper Network because we believe this approach — an immutable past, but an unwritten future — is critical to accelerate enterprise blockchain adoption. The future needs of a company and its customers are unknown. In order to stay adaptive, businesses therefore need the ability to enable a certain amount of mutability on your contract states on the blockchain.
We believe this is a critical step in the journey of enterprise blockchain adoption. The blockchain ecosystem has a responsibility (and opportunity) to meet enterprises where they are. One of the best ways we can do that is provide businesses with the ability to update, change, and modify their technical solutions as they need, precisely as they do now.
AWS is integral to enterprise blockchain adoption
A wide range of businesses rely on AWS for their infrastructure needs. This makes sense! AWS is a dynamic and active ecosystem in which enterprises can rapidly prototype and experiment with all types of technology, including blockchain. There are currently nodes running on both Casper’s testnet and mainnet via AWS. By partnering with AWS, CasperLabs is making it easier than ever for businesses to spin up their own Casper node and begin developing and deploying new applications on Casper.
At this stage in the ecosystem of enterprise blockchain adoption, most businesses prefer to run private or permissioned networks, rather than build and deploy on a completely public network. AWS is the natural extension by which they can quickly do that within their own infrastructure models. In other words, our partnership with AWS allows Casper to more seamlessly integrate into businesses existing structures, and provides a larger platform for the Casper Network to demonstrate its real-world value.
