Why Simple is Beautiful in Life and in Crypto

Since Bitcoin emerged, thousands of blockchain projects followed. Many are already dead, but CoinMarketCap alone lists well over two thousand coins and tokens. But somehow, regardless of any up-and-coming contenders, Bitcoin has managed to hold its dominant position for years. The “flippening” now seems unlikely ever to happen. So, what’s Bitcoin’s secret sauce?

Well, it’s difficult to say for sure, but it’s a fair bet that simplicity plays a critical part. Amid the ICO boom of 2017 and 2018, hundreds of projects popped up with some pretty tenuous use cases and premises.

For example, Dentacoin is supposed to buy you dental services even though most dentists are still happy to accept fiat. Putincoin aims to pay tribute to the Russian President, while Unobtanium literally sells itself on being unobtainable.

Meanwhile, even though many other projects developed and forked from Bitcoin, Satoshi’s creation has never pretended to be more than it is – a peer to peer form of digital cash.

You don’t have to look far outside the world of crypto to see that simplicity is a strategy that works. Apple gained legions of loyal fans for its clean and simple iPhone design, doing away with buttons in favor of a touchscreen. Likewise, Google became the world’s number one search engine with only a single text box and two buttons, beating out the likes of Yahoo and Bing.

Since the ICO boom ended, Bitcoin’s dominance is now stronger than ever. Investors and crypto users have woken up to the fact that bells and whistles aren’t what constitutes a sustainable business. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of crypto companies going back to basics and offering what’s needed, rather than fancy features.

Here are three examples of projects following in the lead of Bitcoin and keeping it simple.
Image source: depositphotos.com

ChangeNOW

One of the biggest challenges facing cryptocurrency adoption is around changing fiat into cryptocurrency. Coinbase is one of the more popular fiat-to-crypto onramps, but it only offers a limited range of trading pairs.

ChangeNOW provides one of the easiest ways to get into crypto from fiat and offers a wide range of more than 170 coins, alongside the option to purchase tokens with fiat using a credit card. Customers can instruct their token swaps via a straightforward user interface, and the service is non-custodial, so you keep control of your private keys. Furthermore, there is no registration required to use the service.

ChangeNOW also offers various extra features, such as NOWPayments, enabling merchants to accept cryptocurrencies as payment via a QR code. However, all of the platform’s features are designed with one aim in mind – to make the end-user experience as uncomplicated as possible.

LiquidApps

LiquidApps aims to accelerate user adoption of decentralized applications (dApps) by making life as simple and hassle-free as possible for developers. The company provides access to a suite of services through its DAPP Network. Dapp Service Providers (DSPs) on the network can create bespoke packages to sell to developers for tokens.

One example of LiquidApps services is efficient, low-cost, EOS-compatible virtual RAM (vRAM.) The company recently published a case study whereby it demonstrated how social media dApp Karma is saving around 99% on its EOS RAM costs by using LiquidApps vRAM. Another service is vAccounts, enabling developers to onboard users by creating EOS accounts easily and for free.

As if all this weren’t enough, the company also recently released Zeus, a software development kit. It makes dApp development, testing, and deployment easier and more accessible – even to newer developers.

Brave

It doesn’t get much simpler than free, and the next project is also developing a product that’s free to use. Brave is developing an open-source, privacy-focused web browser that will pay users for their time and attention spent viewing advertisements online. Payment is in the currency of the platform, Basic Attention Token.

However, even for the non-crypto user, the Brave browser is available for free download, and the project places a heavy focus on making it as user-centric as possible. By stripping out the so-called “adtech,” Brave delivers a browser that’s up to eight times faster on mobile and doesn’t harvest your browsing history to sell on to advertisers like other browsers.

Summary

The world isn’t always a simple place, and the world of blockchain is no different. Particularly in the area of enterprise blockchain, the myriad demands of businesses dictate a certain level of complexity.

However, for individuals, keeping everything clean, simple, and accessible is a strategy that’s proven time and again to gain favor among the masses. Based on precedent, it’s a safe bet that those blockchain projects that operating with simplicity in mind are those likely to last the distance.