Owning (And Sharing) the Rails: Are We Working Towards an Interoperable Future?

- One billion crypto users will be reached in 2025, says David Johnston, Morpheus

- Solving the interoperability issue is an urgent necessity

- There is a “Bitcoin renaissance” happening among developers

As the crypto industry has shifted from competition to greater collaboration among blockchains, the need for scalability and interoperability has come to the fore. But to attain mass adoption and fulfill industry’s goal of reaching one billion users will take around 1.2 million transactions per second (TPS), versus the current TPS of 1600.

“We have seen an explosion of blockchains with the goal of scaling to this big user number. But in that effort, we have created a larger problem. We fragmented the user experience, as well as assets,” said Robinson Burkey, Co-Founder of the Wormhole Foundation, during a panel hosted by Anthony Day, Head of Strategy and Marketing at Midnight.

David Johnston, Open-Source Contributor at Morpheus, pushed back on Burkey’s comment that the one billion goal is a “pie-in-the-sky” number, predicting that the goal will be reached this year.

“If you look at the growth, it’s been doubling every year, and we’re at 500 million wallets installed right now. The urgency is there to solve the interoperability issue right now because the masses are coming,” he said.

Muneeb Ali, Co-founder of Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer-2 (L2), highlighted the role of L2 solutions in Bitcoin and their potential to enhance Bitcoin’s programmability and scalability. He believes that there has been a “Bitcoin renaissance” in the past few years among developers.

“What attracted me to Bitcoin 10 years ago and attracts me to it today, is that we know that Bitcoin is going to be around – it’s durable and simple,” he said. “While Ethereum still has this culture of experimentation and pushing the envelope on a bunch of these things, now that is happening on the Bitcoin side.”

The panelists also discussed: the need to improve data and information sharing across different blockchain networks; the potential of tokenization and institutional adoption of blockchain-based assets as a driver for further interoperability; the need for a more favorable regulatory environment that encourages innovation and cross-border collaboration in the blockchain space.

In terms of one thing that could encourage interoperability and broader adoption of blockchain the next year, Johnston said that, in all the abstraction, it is critically important not to lose self-custody. “The entire basis of the industry exists and will be valuable as long as self-custody exists,” he said.

Ali hopes for a regulatory thawing, which is partly coming true in the US. “A lot of innovation and technology still comes from the US, but almost every major crypto project or company was involved in a lawsuit against the regulators. That’s not a great environment. My wish is that the regulars start changing their behavior to create a productive, healthy environment for everyone,” he said.