At the recent Malta AI & Blockchain Summit, Coin Rivet interviewed Dapix CEO David Gold, who teased: “We’re going to make blockchain so easy that your web surfin’ grandma could use it.”
Before we began the interview on the sunny rooftop terrace of the Hilton, David showed me a demo of Dapix’s product and the FIO protocol to give me a taste of how seamless and easy it is to use.
Human readable wallet identities. Private, decentralized, and works immediately with all tokens and coins (plus any new ones). FIO Addresses are a key part of blockchain usability, learn more on how they're designed:https://t.co/dts5QlW7NM
— FIO Protocol (@joinFIO) June 6, 2019
FIO mainnet to launch by the end of the year
David is a self-described “dot-com entrepreneur who fell in love with blockchain and crypto” and views it as a technology that can have a similar worldwide impact as the internet.
He sees parallels between the beginning of the internet and the start of the blockchain and crypto boom. On the one hand, he believes that it is disruptive, but he is all too well aware that on the other hand, for some people, it is hard to grasp and use.
“So I started looking for a solution to these problems,” reveals the Dapix CEO. “And the result of that was the FIO protocol that our company Dapix is launching and using to bring the world together, currently with 19 other wallets and exchanges.”
FIO stands for the Foundation for Interwallet Operability and it is a non-profit foundation based in the Cayman Islands.
“FIO is going to make blockchain very easy to use. It’s going to do for blockchain what HTTP did for the internet – which is make it easier.”
The FIO protocol will launch its mainnet by the end of the year and will initially provide three core capabilities: FIO addresses, FIO requests, and FIO data.
“FIO addresses is the ability to never even have to know what a public address is let alone interact with them,” explains David.
“FIO requests is the ability to send a request for payment from one wallet to any other wallet in the world in a completely decentralised and private way, and FIO data is the ability to include information in that request or with a payment such as a note, invoice, or order card.
“Those will be the three initial things the FIO protocol will enable. It enables it identically on every blockchain immediately – user experience is the same no matter what token or coin they’re interacting with.”
On the 10th birthday of Bitcoin, we welcome one of the oldest and most well-established wallets as the 7th member of FIO. Welcome, @MyceliumCom!
Say hi to the rest of the group! @cryptokeepkey @ShapeShift_io @BRDHQ @EdgeWallet @CoinomiWallet @MyCryptohttps://t.co/tOOB0Z0pL6 pic.twitter.com/otSIdw4G8n
— FIO Protocol (@joinFIO) January 3, 2019
FIO has received a lot of support from big names
The FIO protocol has been accepted and received positively in the crypto and blockchain space, with big names such as Erik Vorhees publicly backing the protocol.
“It has been tremendously well received,” reveals David. “We have Erik Vorhees as an adviser and investor in what we’re doing; we have 19 wallets and exchanges that are backing the FIO protocol.”
The wallets and exchanges backing the FIO protocol include Binance’s Trust Wallet and the Enijn Wallet, along with others such as Edge and Coinomi.
The FIO protocol is also completely decentralised, and to borrow David’s own words: “It is completely self-sovereign and is completely private.
“The privacy is really important. The FIO chain actually is completely encrypted, so you can’t even see information on the chain in a plain text way.
“There is information recorded on FIO, so you do have an immutable ledger. For example, the FIO data is recorded on the FIO blockchain, but only the people involved in the transaction can actually read it; nobody else can.
“So we have some very novel cryptography that we use to enable that to be private on our chain, and yet enable the parties to transact and have that immutable record.”
To celebrate @enjin and @joinFIO's partnership, we are offering a free "FIO Express" token (inspired by the Pony Express) that will playable across 21 games! To join in the fun, enter here: https://t.co/2w6WAr6wMK pic.twitter.com/p8a8L90SZW
— FIO Protocol (@joinFIO) April 17, 2019
FIO will also impact the gaming and NFT space
Enjin is one of the FIO members, and the project plays heavily into the gaming and non-fungible token (NFT) space. David reveals that many of the same issues Dapix and FIO are remedying exist in this space too.
“Among other things, there are two key ways that FIO will be able to additionally play into the NFT space, especially in gaming. One is that in the gaming world, often the owner of a non-fungible token actually wants others to know who owns it – they don’t want a long complicated public address to show that magic sword.”
FIO will enable authorisation so that others can look up who owns an NFT with a name readable by humans and not a long, complicated wallet address.
“Another thing is with games, there is often the need to have ongoing micropayments, but gamers don’t want to be interrupted constantly with the need to have to interact with them. So the FIO protocol will enable, in the future, the ability for dApps and games to actually have users to authorise certain transaction levels where they don’t have to deal with those in a case-by-case basis,” says David.
This coming summer, users can go to FIO.foundation and sign up there ahead of the pre-sale of FIO addresses. Users will also be able to bid on FIO domains as well that will work on the FIO protocol and reserve them before the mainnet launch.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.