After the ICO boom of 2017, there are now hundreds of blockchain companies competing for investor and consumer attention in 2018. How can crypto-enthusiasts and the crypto-curious tell which companies are worth their time and money? One way is to look for disruptive blockchain tech firms. Two blockchain companies are breaking barriers.
Telegram
If you’ve spent any time in the blockchain world at all, you’ve probably already heard of Telegram. It’s a secure and ad-free messaging service. Telegram is now the preferred communication tool in the blockchain world. And, it illustrates how blockchain companies are breaking barriers.
Telegram has recently broken an important barrier: fundraising. Their ICO shattered previously held fundraising records when it made $850 million during its first round. It reportedly plans on raising $1.15 billion during its next round. This brings its funding total to $2 billion.
By comparison to the ICO that previously held the fundraising record, 2017’s offering from Filecoin made $257 million. Telegram has so far raised money entirely in private. It’s been selling tokens to invited investors rather than the public. This potentially signals a new era where private sales far surpass public ones for ICOs.
Telegram’s proposed project is ambitious. It’s been described by TechCrunch as “the next Ethereum.” A (leaked) whitepaper describes a platform launched from the Telegram messaging service running on an entirely new blockchain protocol. It’s called the Telegram Open Network.
How Telegram Works
Using “Gram” cryptocurrency tokens, the system will host a variety of apps and services. This includes data storage and peer-to-peer transactions. Telegram is proposing a complex blockchain ecosystem that will combine the worlds of Ethereum and WeChat.
Telegram’s familiarity with the blockchain world and barrier-breaking fundraising success has generated excitement. However, some blockchain developers are concerned technological shallowness and high valuation will be a brutal wake-up call for Telegram investors. No matter how Telegram’s proposal turns out, it’s likely to alter the blockchain world forever.
Nano Vision
While many blockchain companies are being founded to speed up Bitcoin trading or change niche industries, Nano Vision was founded in response to a huge problem in modern society. This problem involves healthcare data siloing. It’s a great example of how blockchain companies are breaking barriers.
Data siloing is when research generated by one institution is inaccessible to members of another institution. Two hospitals on the opposite sides of the world or even in the same city might be working on complementary projects whose combined findings could drive a healthcare breakthrough. If research teams from each hospital can’t access each other’s work, then that healthcare breakthrough is delayed. Then, both research projects fail.
In fact, failed research projects are depressingly common despite the massive amount of money the national economy puts into medical research. The clinical Leader reports that only about one in 10 drug trials make it all the way from Phase I testing to full FDA approval.
The long-term social consequences of this problem are tragically obvious. It means delayed treatments and cures. Hence, patients suffer or even die while waiting for them. There’s no way to ensure that all clinical trials are successful. However, there are ways to stop data siloing.
Addressing Industry Issues
Nano Vision proposes to do this through its Nano Sense platform. In partnership with Arm, one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies, Nano is designing and producing proprietary, tiny microchips. The microchips can be put in medical offices, research labs, and homes.
These chips will constantly gather molecular-level data and encode it onto the blockchain. At the same time, they can mint Nano Tokens. Crypto exchanges offer these tokens. Also, researchers can use them to access vast amounts of data generated by the Nano Sense platform. Holders can allocate them for specific research causes.
Of course, a mega-database is not on its own a magic bullet against data siloing. Researchers still have to be able to analyze and search through this vast amount of molecular data. That’s why Nano is building an AI component into their platform as well. A machine-learning AI program will constantly comb through Nano Sense data in order to detect trends and connections, pointing the way toward future healthcare innovation.
Final Thoughts on How Blockchain Companies are Breaking Barriers
These two companies are breaking barriers in very different ways. If Telegram’s success is sustained or even imitated by other ICOs, it’s definitively heralded in a new world of blockchain fundraising, one where ICOs are no longer the provenance of fringe cryptocurrency investors but instead command the kinds of funds normally reserved for established corporations or VC-backed Silicon Valley darlings.
This seismic change in the blockchain world could mean more funding coming to promising companies such as Nano Vision. They are proof blockchain companies are breaking barriers in a very different way. They are using blockchain technology to fix social problems that innovators struggled to find a feasible technological solution for before. Both companies are already breaking barriers.
These blockchain companies are breaking barriers. Which ones are you watching in 2018?
