Feb 17, 2022
Beyond Protocol’s Secret Sauce
The Beyond Protocol mainnet launch will be a hallmark event, opening the floodgates of IoT innovation to the masses. Once our code is made public, the entire world will be able to work with us in building the fabric of the future—what’s been seen to-date is just the tip of the iceberg. In this article, we’ll talk about the strategy which guides it all: caring.
What Beyond Protocol is building is needed…badly.
IoT device growth was steady through 2019, and then all of the sudden exploded. Yet, at the same time, so have hacks. According to Kaspersky they doubled in six months during 2021.¹
Simply put, if we follow the trajectory we are on now, our IoT devices won’t be secure enough to do the work they’re designed to do.
And then there’s another problem. Massive squandered opportunity. If I am an engineer, and I want to connect a Bosch device to a Google device, I need to get both companies to agree. Yeah right.
Beyond Protocol solves both problems. It secures our devices — and, now safe, we can feel comfortable opening them up for developers to unite. Developers burn for the opportunity to do this; they now can — no petitioning executives at entrenched corporations needed.
So how do we draw attention to this breakthrough?
That’s our secret sauce, and it’s simple: caring.
Use cases with people and organizations we care about in which we solve their burning, authentic needs— ones they care about.
A probabilistically impossible to hack blockchain for inter-device communication might be interesting to some but is probably quickly forgotten. An innovation which saves a family member’s life who is silently suffering mental health issues — this clicks.
Build It and They Will Come
Our focus for the remainder of Q1 and moving into Q2 will be our work towards a mainstream mainnet. Central to this goal are solidified use-cases that solve real-world problems, right now, for issues we care about.
Over the past year, we’ve demonstrated four main proof-of-concept use-cases for Beyond Protocol:
- Partnership with Rob Gronkowski and DoorDash on our Connected Athlete initiative, delivering Patient Health Information over the blockchain for the first time, ever, allowing for just-in-time delivery of the nutrients our bodies need:
Why care? Rob Gronkowski — “Gronk” — is a larger than life, fun-loving celebrity people feel could be part of the family. Considered the best tight end ever to play in the NFL, he has bounced back from otherwise career-ending injury time and time again, cares intensely about performing at his peak, and desires to inspire the younger generation to lean into the best science and technology has to offer to make smart choices about their health.
- Partnership with Grammy Award-winning Cage the Elephant and the Vanderbilt University Center for Innovation on a prototype biometric suit for lead-singer Matt Shultz, helping monitor his vitals for novel mental health applications:
Why care? Winner of the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for their last two releases — 2020 and 2017 respectively — Cage the Elephant’s innovative genius pushes music forward. At the center of it all is frontman Matt Schultz, who draws from his personal experiences and our shared humanity to philosophize about how things are, and how they could be. Outspoken about his struggles with mental health and a contributor to causes which support mental health awareness, Shultz cares about uniting us around our shared experiences and championing love and acceptance.
- Beyond Protocol EV charging stations — in partnership with Stripe, a global leader in payment processing — allowing secure, instant payment for each electric vehicle charge:
Why care? The EV era is indisputably upon us. Outside of our office in Europe, for a small charge, you can hop into an EV, run an errand, and check-it back in by dropping it off at a nearby charging station. This is super convenient, something everyone loves, but the program is likely to fail. Why? The check-out process is too complex for the average person, requiring downloading one of several mobile apps and tapping one of several NFC cards depending on the charging station. It’s messy, and users don’t get it. Beyond Protocol solves this with a secure, autonomous, payment by smart contract between the car the charging station.
- European Union Commission electric bike station initiative, stationed directly outside their meeting site:
Why care? The European Union Commission is committed to ushering in a green future for transportation— everything from emission-less buses and electric trains to micro-mobility like scooters and bikes. To scale, the deployments need to be secure and efficient. It’s imperative the scooters and bikes can’t be hijacked by bad actors. It’s also crucial riders can seamlessly check them in and out, and that the chargers replenish each unique battery type as optimally as possible. Beyond Protocol does all this by facilitating the exchange of asset identity, interaction parameters, and automatic payment details through smart contract.
The main purpose of these initiatives was to demonstrate what’s possible with Beyond Protocol.
At present, our technology can be accurately described largely as “closed source” — our testnet has been live for some time now, but only for select use-cases with specific partners (as we approach mainnet, we do plan on opening that up to a wider pilot group).
But once our code is fully open to the public, not only can the next generation of mega apps be built — but developers and technologists can build their own hardware and use-cases for Beyond Protocol.
Simply put, Beyond Protocol is the foundation, the blank canvas. It allows all smart devices to communicate, collaborate, and transact safely. At mainnet, we hand Beyond Protocol over to the world — what can be built then is only limited by time, skill, desire, and imagination.
Clichés aside, the possibilities truly will be endless — this is what we mean by “crowdsourced innovation.”
That being said, possibilities mean very little if left unexplored. How do we plan to introduce Beyond Protocol to the world?
The Road to a Mainstream Mainnet
The entire article is (forgive the pun) worth reviewing, but this quote from our CEO taken from a Worth.com feature article on Beyond Protocol is of particular relevance with respect to our mainnet launch:
“So many in Silicon Valley refer to blockchain technology as the new frontier, without providing a roadmap for how we go from theory to practical execution . . . What are the use cases? Where is the adoption? We’ve developed Beyond Protocol with real-world demonstrations in mind, and how they can set the standard for several industries and create new ones in the process.”
Our four primary proof-of-concept use-cases shed light on what’s possible with Beyond Protocol, but our primary goal in developing this platform was not to take center-stage in terms of software development or as a hardware manufacturer, but to empower others with a robust ecosystem and toolset for IoT networking and collaboration.
Apple and Google developed iOS and Android, and subsequently the App Store and Google Play — and while both companies produce software, the vast majority of apps on each platform are from third-party developers.
This is precisely the intent for Beyond Protocol; we’re excited to develop custom use-cases for our partners, to solve right-now problems — and we’re over the moon about the crowdsourced innovation that our collective genius will come up with. Humanity’s greatest innovations occur when obstacles are removed, and creators are empowered to create — Beyond Protocol’s capabilities unlock the next step in the evolution of Web3, allowing not just phones and computers, but all IoT tech to connect to the blockchain securely.
The Connected Athlete demo mentioned earlier is just a small fragment of the tip of the Beyond Protocol iceberg — but represents a key element of how we intend to bring this technology to the mainstream. From the Worth.com piece:
Having highly sensitive information travel across blockchain sounds like risky business. But Manzi bet big on this vision earlier this month with his “Connected Athlete” livestream event in Tampa Bay, wherein Rob Gronkowski and other NFL players had food and nutritional supplements delivered post-game based on their prior day intake values and biometric data — information stored and sent through Beyond Protocol. DJ Steve Aoki spun tracks afterwards.
“For athletes, something like Beyond Protocol is a gamechanger,” Gronkowski tells Worth. “Many health providers still use antiquated technology to keep users’ confidential health data secure, which are prime for hackers. Jonathan’s company solves these security issues, while allowing for a seamless integration with other services players depend on.”
Over the past few years, we’ve worked tirelessly to introduce, discuss, and demonstrate Beyond Protocol to key figures in the arenas of business, tech, sports, and politics. A strong foundation has been laid for mass adoption, and we will continue to accelerate these efforts as mainnet approaches.
In addition to what’s already in development, we also plan on unveiling another use-case or two with one of our high-profile partners during Q2. We can’t say much yet, but will share the following — they’ll be of greater magnitude than what we’ve already done.
And this is all without yet having mentioned our sleeping giant — BPEV. Getting your share of indefinite residual income from electric vehicle charging stations will soon become a reality. We’re hard at working getting this in front of both auto manufacturers and government officials, and will pursue these avenues aggressively in the months ahead.
Overall, everything we do from now until mainnet will center around delivering a robust, complete platform to the world — and doing so in a way that shines a bright light on Beyond Protocol for all to see.
We want your grandmother talking about this.
Final Thoughts — The Best Is Yet to Come
Headed into 2022, we felt it was critically important to crystalize our goals in the minds of supporters and onlookers. Conceptually, Beyond Protocol takes a minute or two to fully digest — but once it clicks in your mind’s eye, you can’t unsee it: the new internet for smart devices.
Although there’s a lot that goes into it, our goal itself is simple — to deliver Beyond Protocol to the masses. By making device-to-device communication more dynamic, flexible, and trustworthy — unlocking crowdsourced innovation for all of our smart devices — we can work together solve our biggest problems and build a better world for everyone.
We look forward to rolling up our sleeves with our community to do this important, good work.
“With security as a given, we can open up our devices for collaboration. Using them like threads of yarn, the dreamers among us can weave together inventions we would have never thought to conceive.”
- Jonathan Manzi
Links:
¹ Seals, Author: Tara, and Tara Seals. “IOT Attacks Skyrocket, Doubling in 6 Months.” Threatpost English Global Threatpostcom, https://threatpost.com/iot-attacks-doubling/169224/.
