Sparkster – Imagine removing Blockchain’s barriers?

cryptocrayze (43)in #cryptocurrency • 6 years ago

What is Blockchain Technology?

Many people have heard of “Bitcoin”. At least now they have. Bitcoin and various other 1st generation cryptocurrencies have featured all over the headlines. But why? What makes them so profound is the underlying Blockchain technology.

This technology is the source that makes all cryptocurrencies so valuable. Without going into immense detail, it essentially a distributed ledger that can be programmed to record any transaction conceivable. Transactional information is not stored in 1 place but is simultaneously validated and recorded across a network of nodes.

The main benefit of this technology is its security. Considering the general digitisation of all things, sensitive information is often being placed online. Removing a single point of access (hence making it decentralised) renders it exponentially more difficult to hack because multiple encrypted nodes would require hacking simultaneously. Additionally the computing power required to hack all of the nodes makes it a very difficult and expensive task.

Sounds good, what’s the problem?

Unfortunately, not everything is golden. Blockchain technology must overcome some problems before becoming fit for global adoption. The two biggest issues have being:

Inadequate transaction speeds; and
The limited pool of Blockchain developers.

Transaction Speeds - Problem

Bitcoin can currently process about 3 transactions per second which may be fine for a few thousand users but not billions. If centralised transaction speeds – like Visa’s 24,000 transactions per second – are not matched (at the very least) then irrespective of Blockchain’s benefits, at best, it’s partially regressive.

Limited pool of Blockchain Developers - Problem

Blockchain technology is a relatively new concept, but the market is worth several hundred billion. Its demand and influence have already reached a global scale. However, this means that the demand also exceeds the maturity of the technology and consequently, the knowledge pool. Not enough developers exist to meet the global demand being levied on the industry. The complex nature of the code also means that this obstacle cannot be overlooked, but must be addressed.

What’s sparked my interest in Sparkster?

I guarantee you, Sparkster is more than just a quirky name. Sparkster are a company that seeks to make Blockchain technology more globally accessible through the creation of a massively scalable, plug and play platform. This company interests me because they’ve developed solutions to Blockchain’s biggest issues.

Transaction Speeds - Solution

Sparkster’s innovative design has allows them to achieve a game-changing number of transactions per second that is already unparalleled. Their use case allows them to remove some of the restraints placed upon other more general Blockchains. Clients prefer their data be kept private. This removes the need for the need for maintaining Global State.

For example, an insurer may want to make use of Blockchain technology when selling a car insurance product purchased by millions. The customers could be grouped into cells (e.g. by their initial age). However, customers do not need to view one another’s transactions. This means that the cells do not need to communicate with one another and can therefore operate in parallel. Hence, the company can benefit from the aggregate cell throughput. The lack of communication also means that unlike most other gridding solutions / Hadoop solutions, there is no overhead due to the dispersal and amalgamation of the task – meaning it scales linearly with the number of cells. This is the beauty of Sparkster’s design.

This allows them to shard their distributed Hash Tables in tandem with their decentralised cloud – designed to be a specialised Blockchain. This has them currently operating at 50,000+ transactions per second. Their current transaction speed transcends that of centralised institutions and yet, it is a long way from finished.

Additionally, Sparkster are aiming for 10,000,000+ transactions per second in the near future. This is highly possible given the aforementioned explanation about running multiple cells in parallel. The biggest limiting factor is the number of cells, which is theoretically… limitless! Consequently, this means there is no limit on the number of transactions per second achievable.

Limited pool of Blockchain Developers - Solution

Before Sparkster’s inception, it’s soon to be Founder, Sajjad Daya, used to be in charge of an ecommerce startup in the UK. However, every problem that arose seemed to be associated with the software solutions being:

Too complex; and
Too expensive.

Sound’s familiar right? Its supply and demand – simple economics, let me explain.

As stated an earlier section, the industry is booming. However, the “demand” has proved to be huge for such a new industry – as the “supply” of Blockchain developers is small. The few Blockchain developers that do exist, are usually expensive resources. Thus solutions may exist, but the cost of funding a fleet of specialists is usually a price that’s too high to pay for small companies.

However, Sparkster have decided against waiting for the general appreciation of industry knowledge. Instead, they created a platform that requires no prior or future coding ability. Sparkster’s plug and play platform allows people to build in “plain English” – through a design that’s extremely simple to use. Having personally completed the 6 walkthroughs on their website, I can happily verify just how true it is.

More importantly, they do so without hindering users from the Blockchain technology facilitated benefits. The platform uses Blockchain technology “under the bonnet” whilst hiding all complexities from the user. This means that from day 1, new users can start build, design and publish functional applications / processes. You can have these processes run a variety of ways such as the click of a button, the completion of a form or even at the receipt of a tweet!

A practical example

These things are often spoken about in a vacuum so let’s consider a classic, Spreadsheets in the context of a business. Most businesses cannot seem to function without them, so how Sparkster function alongside them:

Sparkster is highly adaptable – this means that you don’t need to change your processes to accommodate to Sparkster. They’ve already performed the hard word to ensure that business integration is seamless. The spreadsheets can stay, however, they will be extremely enhanced.
Sparkster is great for automation – Sparkster allows monotonous spreadsheet orientated tasks to be automated, which reduces the operational risk attached to manual processes.
Sparkster does not require specialists – this means, no more black boxes in your business. Sparkster’s easily understandable design, reduces key man risk, arising from techy implementations.
Sparkster is fast – the high transaction rate allows them to ensure that multiple people can work on spreadsheets collaboratively, in real time – hence avoiding multiple versions of the truth.

Conclusion

As per usual, this is not financial advice, and you should consult a financial advisor before investing. That said, in my personal opinion Sparkster’s posseses an exceptional architectural make-up and presents a wonderful solution. Thanks for reading!

By @CryptoCrayze

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