A short while ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with ORBS co-founder Tal Kol, and I have to say it was both a pleasant experience and a pleasant surprise. Tal is not only an open-source advocate, he’s an “open source” himself when it comes to orbs, willing to share and answer any questions I had for him.
He was not only very forthcoming, his revelations were also rather illuminating. I hadn’t looked into Orbs much at all before snagging this interview, but I have to say that he certainly tweaked my intrigue of the project.
Whether you know nothing or a quite a lot about Orbs, this interview is definitely one you should check out. We have a video of my time with Tal coming soon, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few things here as well.
Check it out.
What Makes Orbs Different?
Orbs is a hybrid blockchain that dubs itself as a public blockchain “designed for the real world.” Of course, considering that so many different projects claim to be designed for the real world but still have yet to gain mass adoption, that is a rather bold claim.
For developers, they can launch virtual chains using familiar languages and
apps can be built with predictable fees that “provide stronger guarantees to users.” Orbs also attracts enterprise organizations by helping them avoid the painful migration to a public blockchain with virtualization, which leverages a private, controlled virtual chain on Orbs’ public blockchain network.
So I asked Tal, how does ORBS differentiate and really provide a compelling value that businesses can’t simply say no to? He gives a really detailed answer in the video, but the short answer is that private blockchains are missing the innovation of blockchain with their “permissioned” blockchains, and public blockchains simply don’t work in the business world and are aimed at Dapps (decentralized applications) and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations).
“If you take something like a token economy and try to mix it with a real company, they’re not going to know what to do with it. The DAO business model does not work in the real, regular world. You can’t have a CEO and shareholders and have a token economy. It doesn’t go together.”
Tal does a great job explaining the drawbacks of both private and public blockchains for real world businesses, but a couple of the big take aways from this answer were very interesting indeed.
“Unlike the hyper-ledgers of the world that are private and permissioned, Orbs is permissionless.” He went on to say that the value that they seek to show is to, “find the Ubers of the world and show them that public blockchain can be a value to them.”
In other words… Orbs is aiming at real world businesses with real world solutions.
A HUGE Difference
This is definitely a project after the heart of our very own Dennis Lewis. In his book, Behold the Cryptopreneurs (available on Amazon), Dennis touts the need for organizations exactly like this. Ones that have a real goal of providing real solutions to businesses across a range of industries.
The sleek branding and a user-friendly design and Orbs has already attracted several different partners with compelling names like: Bittrex, Bithumb, Huobi, Upbit, and even the World Economic Forum.
Furthermore, Tal reveals in the interview how they settled on Randomized Proof of Stake over other forms of consensus making and “each virtual chain can choose its consensus model flavor,” with several different flavors available that Tal explains.
The openness of Tal and his ability to explain the unique benefits that Orbs brings to the table has definitely piqued the interest of several of us here at CTN. While we’ll definitely be watching them, we highly recommend that you check out the interview, do some research, and consider Orbs for your business’ transition to blockchain or as a possible crypto investment.
