Blockchain technology can revolutionise industries by making them more efficient, secure and trustworthy via blockchain. This is the view of Paul Chiari, Founder of Metastreme, who was speaking at the recent Blockchain in Business Conference in Sydney.

One segment MetaStreme focuses on is the agricultural sector, which has limited connectivity to mobile and broadband networks. Chiari believes that better data sharing via blockchain throughout the supply chain can help to drive efficiencies and reduce waste, leading to a more sustainable future.

He suggests that the use of IoT and low-power wireless technologies has made data collection in remote areas more cost-effective, allowing farmers to collect and use data to improve their processes and maximise returns. Chiari also sees the potential of blockchain technology in encouraging data sharing among stakeholders, creating a standard interface for both value and data exchange.

By implementing a single ledger of events that captures data from every step of the supply chain, information can be obtained that can lead to improvements in food safety, food fraud prevention, continuity of supply, and better consumer education.

Showcasing the utility of blockchain

To showcase the utility of storing data on and utilising a blockchain, MetaStreme developed a proof of concept application called WeatherSV, which gained widespread popularity and was broadcasting over 100,000 transactions per day.

Interestingly, the app later proved to be helpful for the entire ecosystem. This high traffic also exposed bottlenecks and taught the team valuable lessons about scaling Bitcoin applications. As a result of the application’s success, the team was able to negotiate with miners to reduce transaction fees, making data-based high-throughput applications more viable.

The collection and utilisation of climate data by many industries for internal operations, if shared more widely, could create higher-resolution climate data and prediction models. The team is currently working on direct integrations for weather stations and the data market to enhance the collection and dissemination of this climate data.

The pain points that blockchains can address

The benefits of blockchain technology for businesses are vast, according to the founder of MetaStreme. One of the primary benefits is the ability to handle trust issues without relying on multiple third parties, as all parties can independently verify the same version of events from the timestamp publicly provable ledger. Bitcoin is a single protocol that can handle both data and payments, providing a foundation to build a new, more secure internet of the future.

Chiari also points out that the Bitcoin protocol can be used to increase trust and veracity of data while reducing the need for third-party arbitration. A blockchain-sharing ledger can be used to easily prove the veracity of data originally collected, and any updates or changes to that data over time can be fully ordered to audit it on the ledger.

Micro and nano-transactions can unlock a new world of commerce, allowing products and services to be feasibly priced at cents or even fractions of cents. This can disrupt subscription content delivery models with pay-per-article, per megabyte, per minute, or per tweet. Chiari believes that these tiny transactions are also key to unlocking a world of siloed data by incentivizing its dissemination through a standard interface, allowing better database decisions to assist in solving many of the challenges the world faces today.

Publicly verifiable blockchain brings new levels of transparency and ease, making it possible to track and trace the authenticity and provenance of virtually any product on the planet. Blockchain is increasingly seen as the best technology for this purpose. The technology provides a foundation for a more secure and efficient system that can revolutionise the way businesses handle trust issues, payments, and data.

The challenges of applying blockchain solutions

Chiari also mentions challenges and issues that enterprises can run into when trying to implement blockchain solutions for their businesses. At the same time, he presents solutions that MetaStreme offers to solve these issues and challenges.

Blockchain development is a highly specialised and complex skill that is not easily understood by a typical application developer. Although there are tools and libraries available to bridge the gap, they are largely insufficient for enterprise applications. As a result, projects can end up consuming a significant amount of time and money without meeting expectations.

However, MetaStreme aims to simplify blockchain development by providing a very simple API that requires virtually zero knowledge of blockchain development to integrate. Essentially, MetaStreme provides blockchain as a service, offering a robust, reliable, and highly scalable transaction engine that builds broadcasts, and reports information broadcast to the blockchain.

Furthermore, building and testing applications with MetaStreme is zero-risk and 100% free as it operates on a test network. Once an application is ready for the live network, MetaStreme offers very affordable monthly subscription plans for the provision of its service.

Another challenge that businesses face in adopting blockchain technology is price volatility, which makes many use cases unviable due to the high network transaction fees. Moreover, the reputation of the crypto sector has taken a hit due to recent events, which only reinforces the negative sentiment around the technology.

To address these issues, MetaStreme has developed a solution that cuts through the complexities of blockchain technology and enables applications to utilise it with zero involvement in the crypto world.

MetaStreme offers custodial wallets for funding and transactions, which means that businesses can easily accept payment without the need for cryptocurrencies. Moreover, the platform autonomously handles UTXO (unspent transaction output), making it more viable for enterprise-level applications that may be broadcasting millions of transactions per day. High fee rates often make it difficult for such applications to utilise micro-transactions, as the fees are often exponentially higher than the value being transferred.

To address this, MetaStreme offers a scalable blockchain capable of processing millions of transactions per second, ensuring that all transactions are processed promptly and not leading to congestion, which then leads to higher fee rates. By aggregating throughput from WeatherSV and other applications, MetaStreme has been able to negotiate stable transaction processing fees directly with miners, which is a significant advantage for its customers.

Running full nodes?

The final challenge that Chiari mentions is the need to run a full node, which means maintaining a complete copy of the blockchain, which can be a significant burden to operate and verify millions of transactions per second. Chiari here explains the difference between the original version of Bitcoin and one of its forks, Bitcoin Core (BTC).

He noted that Bitcoin Core developers believe in keeping the box small and using off-chain scaling methods. The Bitcoin SV camp, which includes the creator of Bitcoin, Dr Craig S. Wright (aka Satoshi Nakamoto), believes that Bitcoin can scale virtually indefinitely and proposes the use of simple payment verification (SPV) as a method to verify transactions without running a full node.

Chiari emphasised the importance of having methods to prove the existence and veracity of transactions in addition to building and broadcasting transactions at scale. To address this challenge, Chiari presents MetaProof, which is their SPV offering service available within the platform. The Liteclient SPV node is suggested to replace full nodes as a foundation for any scalable blockchain applications moving forward.

Paul Chiari also touched upon the challenges of price volatility, reputation, and high network transaction fees that reduce the utility of blockchain systems. To address these issues, Chiari suggests using a custodial wallet for funding and transactions, which enables easy acceptance of payments and other payment options without the need for crypto. The ability to aggregate throughput from various applications using their services has allowed for stable transaction processing fees for their customers.