Great+Chain+of+Numbers+A+Guide+to+Smart+Contracts,+Smart+Property+and+Trustless+Asset+Management+-+Tim+Swanson

ather a Decentralized Autonomous Application (DAA) does. In addition we have put together a series
of external bounties, where we give away $100,000 each month to developers outside the organization
either working on specific milestones or just doing general innovation around the ecosystem. Thus new
programmers to this space could immediately be financially rewarded for looking through a list of
bounties and submitting solutions to them, or for being creative and building around the infrastructure.”
Gross sees this ecosystem eventually mapping the real world in a digital space: as self-reinforcing
entrepreneurial activity – continuously builds the ecosystem a new financial system will emerge that
serves as a bridge between cryptoledgers and the existing world. As part of this vision, a natural
outgrowth encompasses decentralized applications, bonds, asset backed coins, commodities, real estate,
betting and prediction markets that correspond to a smart property token will emerge. One on-going
project he highlighted in particular was an open-source omniwallet, which will eventually be capable of
handling and tracking the cornucopia of altcoins, metacoins, and even colored coins.
Yet getting there will obviously involve hurdles. According to Gross, “just getting the protocol
developed and robust will be a rewarding challenge. The infrastructure is not quite ready for large more
complicated projects and is undergoing massive development yet Mastercoin and all the other protocols
in the same space are still accessible due to the open-source nature. Any developer, anyone can come –
look at the spec, go into the debates, send in your pull requests, look at the code – and contribute
immediately. There is no need for a central brick-and-mortar building because if you contribute
anything that is positive, you will get rewarded for it. BitAngels is launching a fund soon that is going to
invest in protocols, development of DAOs and other “2.0” initiatives through hackathons where the top
winners will receive a $500,000 investment. 113 And through these efforts we will build a better financial
system, one that is decentralized and creates complete financial freedom. The impact of creating such
tools is obviously a matter of speculation but even a fraction of the pie is going to be really large.”
I also spoke with David Johnston, managing director of BitAngels, the first angel investment network
focused on digitial-currency startups, and a board member at the Mastercoin Foundation. 114 In his view,
“cryptocurrencies are more than a payment network, it is more than a new type currency or store of
wealth. It is a whole new platform and is a way for people to now make programmable money and that
gives rise to smart contracts. Now that this money is programmable I can put it into applications, I can
create other digital tokens. That’s what really gets me excited where anyone can build anything. In the
long-run we also plan to turn the entire project into a DApp, to maximize resources and improve
efficiencies.”
A DApp is short for decentralized application. The Mastercoin platform, like arguably every other one, is
still a work in progress and has gone through several iterations based on community feedback. It also
faces market competition from several others in this space such as Open-Transactions, Invictus (formerly
BitShares). As a consequence, it looks like a promising area for Christensen-style innovation.
NXT
Launched in late November 2013, NXT is a new cryptoplatform written entirely from scratch in Java. 115
The platform has the ability to natively track “colored coins” – tokens that represent a specific asset
based on their “color” (e.g., using a fraction of NXT to represent a car or house). It also includes a
decentralized asset exchange, which means you can buy and sell assets without going through a 3 rd
party. For instance, one of the problems that impacts centralized exchanges and online stores today is
that both your fiat and tokens are vulnerable to theft, hacking and other abuse. In one notable instance,
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