Good point on the privacy factor. But regarding scale and speed, I would say that we there isn't a need for scale and speed right now or in the future. I don't really care to pay for my coffee with Bitcoin. It's as if there was a need for lamborghini or rolls royce to figure out how to make their cars 100,000x faster. It just wouldn't happen. Not everyone can afford lambos and rolls--only rich people buy them and the rate and the price is just fine for them. As with Bitcoin, it'll be for people with lots of money doing business internationally and needing a medium to transfer the funds. At that point, I wonder if privacy is even necessary or warranted because if you're transfer large amounts of money, it's a bad idea to do it for illegal reasons (hence the need for privacy).

I'm probably going to get a lot of sh*t for this, but I just wanted to put my thoughts out there and get your feedback. Here's what I think will happen in the future (3-5 years).

- Alt-coins will die off. I don't see a need at the moment and in the future for these types of coins. As sad as it sounds, your local government and companies have you deep within their grasp when it comes to transacting for day-to-day usage. Venmo, Square Cash, FB Messenger, even iMessage are way better at sending your friends a few dollars (for free!). Why do I need to send my friends a Litecoin or whatever coin backed by random devs who are working on this in their spare time. Companies have leaders and hundreds and thousands of programmers to make sure your money (localized) transferring experience is a good and cost-effective one. The blockchain doesn't add much here.

- Decentralized apps will die off. I'm a little bit more unsure about this but it simply doesn't scale. Ask experts out there and they'll tell you that a centralized app can do the job better, if not the same, as a decentralized one. Your bank's web portal is a "centralized app" and it works fine. Amazon is "centralized" and it works fine. Etc, etc.

- Bitcoin will be the only thing left standing. Why? Because bitcoin is bitcoin. It was the first and it's the most recognized and there is already tons of momentum. Yes other cryptos will rise but people will always go back to Bitcoin. People will say that the Bitcoin network is slow and expensive to send money. Well, the way I see it is that Bitcoin will simply by used for people in the middle to upper class with lots of money to store it. It will be used to send money internationally. It will be used to perhaps buy a house, and what not. It will NOT be used for day-to-day transactions, which is perfectly fine. Bitcoin will be like Gold, except digital. Transferring BTC might be slow and might be $20 or $100, but that's OK when you're transferring $20,000+ internationally or make a large purchase.

Would love to get some feedback. This is just an opinion... please don't bash me. I'm open to learning what other cryptos will have to offer in the future. But please try to debate against for yourself for a moment. Are YOU having issues with how things are now? Can the problem really ONLY be solved by blockchain technology?

Thanks for reading!

Great question! Let's get technical!

First, reference our Whitepaper to get a good overview of our mission and how we plan on getting there.

At the Ethereum level, we will basically be using our Ink smart contract to drive our Ink transaction states:
https://paywithink.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Ink-State-Diagram.pdf

Our smart contract will be responsible for:

- Creation of transactions by the buyer
- Acceptance of transaction by the seller
- Handle disputes between buyer and seller
- Request mediator interaction if necessary
- Allow mediator to determine the outcome of the transaction (where the Ink goes)
- Allow buyer to leave feedback on the transaction once it's completed
- Linking accounts/addresses so that reputation aggregators will be able to combine reputation between 2 or more accounts/addresses.
- Authorize an agent to create/progress/complete transactions on your behalf. This is useful more marketplaces (like Listia) to make transactions on behalf of our users.

The functions outlined in the state diagram are the actual functions we've implemented on our smart contract. Once we get closer to the launch, we will be publishing our smart contract on GitHub.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Very excited to be a part of this project. Ink is one of the few projects that, upon release, will be backed by an established company and marketplace. Our users will be transacting with Ink directly when they buy and sell on Listia. This brings adoption, usage, and liquidity to Ink immediately. The many ecosystems that will spawn off from this project will be amazing as well: feedback/reputation aggregators, mediator registry, and policy registry.

Looking forward to bringing Ink to life!