By Sky Guo, Co-Founder & CEO, Cypherium, the enterprise-focused blockchain platform that prioritizes scalability and decentralization
Our software gets updated so often, it’s easy to ignore when upgrades become available. Much of the time, these changes will even happen as we sleep. But the advent of 5G technology will mark a momentous change in our day-to-day lives, especially when seen in concert with another highly anticipated wave of technology, blockchain.
The “G” in 5G, of course, stands for “generation,” and indeed it is a generational switch. Each new iteration of cellular network technology has brought our world meaningful new technologies. The first generation brought us the first brick cellphones and the capacity to speak to one another through a wireless connection. The second brought us messaging interfaces for texting. The third, 3G, gave us smart phones, which allowed us to connect wirelessly to the internet. 4G, our current widespread network, has improved upon that connection to allow apps like Uber, Waze, and streaming and gaming platforms that required 4G’s improved efficiency and connectivity.
So what will 5G bring us? To answer this we will need to delve into the particular technical advantages the new network posits, notably its high speeds and low latency.
Target speeds of 10 Gbps would make 5G up 200x faster than normal 4G speeds. This will allow mobile devices to process data at speeds our devices cannot yet fathom. But what will such an advantage enable? Sure, our calls will be clearer and our streaming smoother, but what are some new killer apps that these speeds might unlock?
Blockchains and decentralized technologies are certainly among the most promising of these possibilities. Because blockchains work by distributing computing resources among a plethora of devices, thereby avoiding centralized points of failure or manipulation, their deployment and real-world use require a high degree of network participation.
Right now, dominant blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum) have such high requirements for network participation that newly mined coins go to only a small handful of mining farms. Running a node on these networks has such a high energy and economic cost that while the ideology insists on the democratic governance of the network, in practice, control of the network still maintains some centralized architecture. This is part of the reason why blockchains have historically faced such scaling difficulty: despite the code, our hardware inhibits users from realizing the full vision of a truly decentralized network.
With 5G technology and the right blockchain infrastructure, however, we may be on the precipice of a breakthrough in decentralized crypto and smart contract platforms. If the blockchain has been constructed for flexibility and everyday transacting that can be deployed on mobile devices, learning from some of the shortcomings of Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., the 5G may enable those mobile devices to run light network nodes through cellular data. Cypherium, for example, has stratified its network, allowing nodes of different sizes to perform different operations, all while have a stake in the health and success of the network. Moreover, it runs its own Java Virtual Machine, which would allow it to run on a wider variety of devices than some of our legacy blockchains.
Together 5G, these innovations can make for a thoroughly decentralized network that allows a vast number of devices to communicate through unified data sets. In that way, the killer 5G apps will most likely be dApps, decentralized applications that run peer-to-peer, transforming the way we conduct our everyday lives, from payment systems to the allocation and consumption of resources.
And indeed, it is even more likely that 5G will offer us the killer dApps the crypto community has been long awaiting when we consider the low latency of the network. The 4G latency speeds have already surpassed the reaction time of human beings; right now 4G devices have lag times of 150 milliseconds, on average. However, with 5G, devices will be send and receive information with latency as low as 1 millisecond. That is practically real time.
At first glance, this means participants in the network will be able to interact in an unmediated way. Futurists should have visions here of hologram dinner parties, doctors remotely assessing emergencies on site, AR-VR gaming in which players can interact and even work together construct aspects of their mutual realities, and much more.
For blockchains in the immediate future, though, such low latency enables a far higher degree of machine-to-machine communication. Machines are sending and receiving data constantly on the 4G network. Yet, they do so not only at lower speeds, but also in communication with a central authority. On 5G, machine will be able to send and receive information massive amount of instantly to one another. For supply chains, for product manufacturing and warehouse operations, for automation and self-operating devices like cars, the 5G network will make it so that machines can communicate with one another in real time without having to be dispatched by central operators.
In that kind of network where automated machines carry out their tasks through peer communication, blockchain will play an integral role. As smart contract platforms, blockchains can monitor and execute such operations. Devices can be set into motion on-chain, communicate and even transact with one another on-chain, and most crucially subject themselves transparently to human oversight on-chain. In other words, if 5G builds a playfield for the Internet of Things, blockchains will certainly be their referees.
5G is still nascent, of course. It is only in testing through a few pilot programs in neighboring cities, in part because of its operation on short-reached millimeter waves. But this presents a great opportunity for developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs interested in both 5G and blockchain to see their developments not as parallel, but as mutually and critically linked.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.