IPv6 Forum President, Company-as-a-Product Pioneer Believe IPv6 & Blockchain Merging Inevitable

Last Updated on September 8, 2022 by Admin

With popular global brands like Apple, Google, Facebook, Nike and Louis Vuitton recognizing the value of emerging technologies and becoming part of the development of the metaverse, people are steadily becoming more aware and interested about them. 

Blockchain is one of the more popular emerging technologies, with it being considered as a foundation for others to flourish and work efficiently. Of course, these innovative technologies, which have been deemed to be the start of the Fifth Industrial Revolution, are mostly Internet-based. 

For all of these cutting-edge technologies to be developed properly, the Internet also has to scale. The current Internet has already run out of IPv4 addresses. Not many people know, but due to the limited number of IP addresses, only major servers have unique addresses and each one is shared between about 2,000 individuals or gadgets connected to the Internet. 

The Internet has long been reusing abandoned IPs to make up for the demand as more new users and devices connect to the Internet. In 2021, an estimated 300 million new users connected to the Internet. To meet this demand, the creation of a new version of the Internet Protocol has become imperative. 

What is IPv6?

IPv6 is able to scale to meet the need—both present and future—for unique IP addresses. Many might ask why not IPv5 when the current version is IPv4. The simple answer is that IPv5 was almost the same as IPv4 and that it also will only provide a limited number of addresses. Hence, it was scrapped.

According to 5G World Alliance Chair and IPv6 Forum President Latif Ladid, it would take about 580 centuries for IPv6 addresses to be depleted even if it is generating unique IPs at a rate of 10 million per second. This would then be more than enough for every individual and device connected to the Internet to have its own unique IP address.

People might not be aware of it, but slowly, the world is already transitioning to IPv6. When the transition is complete, not only will it enable faster bandwidth but also direct communication between people and machines. This is the perfect groundwork for blockchain, the metaverse, and even artificial intelligence (AI) to be fully functional.

How can IPv6 unlock the full potential of blockchain?

With each individual and machine connected to the Internet having its own unique IPv6 address, direct IP-to-IP or peer-to-peer communication will become possible. This means that the third-party servers that act as intermediaries between users can now be eliminated from the equation. 

“The current Internet works as such: so, instead of having end-to-end—if not, let’s say, peer-to-peer communication like we have on the phone—we have somebody in between us who is basically telling us, ‘I am the master, and you are my slaves. So, I’ll make you talk to each other, but I decide on [how] to do it,’” Ladid explained.

“The original design of the Internet is that the big mainframes talk to each other directly. In the meantime, we have the telecom world that has joined, and they don’t give IP addresses to the users. They give only dynamic, if not, only private IP addresses, which makes them rather slaves instead of masters in the connection. So, people can’t talk to each other unless somebody else makes that possible,” Ladid added. 

The first sentence of the Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto reads, “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” Bitcoin is built on blockchain and its first successful implementation. With IPv6, its true peer-to-peer functionality will finally be achieved. 

“The integration of IPv6 and blockchain—we don’t know what blockchain that is at this moment—is inevitable. It is going to happen. It is the combination of integration of the Internet of data and Internet of value. Two things will converge at the base layer, rather than the Internet of value being concocted on top of the Internet of data, which is what we have today,” Company-as-a-Product pioneer Zeming M. Gao said. 

What is next?

It will not be an overstatement to say that the integration of IPv6 and blockchain will do wonders for the Internet and emerging technologies. With direct peer-to-peer communication, anything is possible. On top of the very basic direct sending of payments, people and machines can directly and seamlessly transact with each other on any kind of platform from any type of industry, immutable and securely recording all these transactions on the blockchain. 

However, not just any blockchain would do. As IPv6 has scaled in order to be able to provide unique addresses to all users and devices on the Internet, a blockchain that is equipped to scale to meet the increasingly high volume of data and transactions. Only if a blockchain scales adequately can it also bring down transaction fees that will make it practical for all kinds of users. 

“The next is, ‘Which blockchain?’ Well, nothing comes close to BSV. On application level, you can say, ‘Okay, we’re doing hundreds of transactions per second. We could even do thousands.’ And you feel like, ‘Oh, this is the hope, this is the future.’ But once you go to the base layer, you’re not talking about hundreds of thousands, in the full scale of the Internet, you’re not even talking about [just] millions of transactions per second,” Gao revealed. 

According to Gao, who is also the Chief Strategy Officer at Toolots Inc. and Chief Advisor at Caapable.com, two principles of Cybernetics can best illustrate how IPv6 and blockchain can thrive. The principles of requisite variety states that variety should be above a certain level for the system to flourish and the principle of united base purpose states that there should be unity at the base layer to prevent chaos. 

Just like the Internet provided variety on the application level, it also has a united base layer in the form of the TCP/IP. While IPv6 and blockchain-based applications can certainly provide variety, the base layer—the blockchain—should also be united. 

As the United States government becomes stricter in enforcing regulations on digital currency platforms, which are all built on blockchains, Gao cautions that crackdowns should not be the primary solution to ensuring compliance, but education. 

“I hope the government would actually study from this point, instead of just focusing on [crackdowns]. I personally don’t believe that cracking down is the primary solution. It’s sometimes necessary, [but] I don’t think it’s the primary solution. The primary solution really is [making] sure the right narrative is being promoted, then people have the right access to the right kind of information,” Gao pointed out. 

The most recent opening of a blockchain presidential advisor role in the White House is the right step toward this goal. If people like Gao–knowledgeable, experienced, and involved in the blockchain – to the position, then the government will be able to make more informed decisions. 

If policymakers actually learn and understand blockchain as a technology and what scaling it can do, then everyone can be united in deciding which blockchain is best for the integration of IPv6 that would then create a new and better Internet.