or: A token (even smart one) needs a blockchain, like a fish needs a bicycle.

Image above: Tokenizing assets on a Blockchain

Abstract

In this post, I explain why I believe Blockchains are just coincidentally associated with “token economy” and smart contracts, and how in essence they are not their enablers, but actually a hindrance. Then I propose an alternative: a concept of an open, federated smart contract system, that maintains all the benefits traditionally associated with blockchain platforms like Ethereum and can practically support a global scale token-economy, without all the problems inherent to blockchain-based systems.

I am a crypto-finance enthusiast and though I am strongly skewed toward Bitcoin maximalism, I still try to follow the space looking for promising technologies and ecosystems.

One of the coins that really caught my interest was Grin

• It has no fishy business (pre-mine, dev-taxes),
• is written in #Rust (which, I think, is a perfect language for #cryptofin),
• it is based on MimbleWimble which is a very promising tech improving blockchain scalability.

It ticks all the boxes to be a reasonable altcoin.

The only problem with it is it's controversial monetary policy. Basically: one coin, every second, forever. While I don't mind the “forever” part, the problem with Grin's monetary policy is the steady and long initial inflation rate.