Ubiq Research — The Ubiq Business Case
By: Kris Lester
Tags: Smart Contracts, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ubiq, Blockchain

Introduction

This article is prepared to assist in building a business case for running your token, building your dApp and storing your information on the Ubiq blockchain.

Ubiq is derived from the Ethereum codebase. A whitepaper has never been published as the use cases serve much of the same functions and development focus is fluid.

The Business Case

First of all, let us cover where Ubiq can serve the same functionality as Ethereum.

Ubiq is a Smart Contract platform much the same way Ethereum is. Ubiq runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM, which is the run-time environment for smart contract code to be executed.

Smart contracts allow users to transfer assets securely, without the need for a middleman and with no risk to fraud with either party.

For example:

Two parties define a contract with each other to exchange a financial asset. The terms of the contract are written to define variables such as a time/date for the transfer to be completed and an agreed price for purchase.

Once the contract has been written both parties have to fulfill the terms based on the criteria established. If one party fulfills their side of the exchange by paying for the asset and the other party does not transfer the asset, the smart contract automatically refunds the payment, ensuring a fair transaction.

As this transaction is now stored on the blockchain, its record is permanent, preventing fraud and allowing regulatory agencies to view the transaction if required.

In traditional finance, a third party would be required for this process, to ensure that both parties act fairly and in accordance with the law. This sometimes occurs at substantial cost to both parties (think about your legal fees you have to pay lawyers for the purchase and sale of a property for example).

For a more detailed primer on Smart Contracts, please see the Blockgeeks introduction below.

In addition to executing contracts, tokens and dApps can also be built upon the Ubiq platform.

A dApp is a Decentralized Application and is the interface for front-end applications that run and store information on a decentralized blockchain such as Ubiq.

An example of a dApp running on Ubiq would be GeoCoin, a geocaching application where users can interact with a map interface and track down coin caches around the world. The virtual tokens received from collecting GEO via the dApp are sent to the user who travels to the physical location and collects it.

The transaction is then cryptographically verified by the Ubiq blockchain. This means that the user is assured that they now own the GEO they have collected on a immutable public ledger that no central authority owns.

A link to the GeoCoin dApp can be found below:

Where Ubiq differs from Ethereum

Mining, Scalability, Efficiency and Security

As highlighted in our previous Ubiq Research posts, Ubiq’s average blocktime runs at 88 seconds in comparison with Ethereum at an average of 14 seconds.

This leads to slower DAG growth, allowing miners with lower specs of hardware to participate for longer periods of time, before needing to upgrade.

Also this means the platform is more scalable due to the slower growth of the blockchain and also naturally more efficient and secure as evidenced in the whiteblock case study (given the same hashrate).

Predictable monetary policy

Ubiq’s monetary policy was set at it’s nucleus block, as outlined in our Ubiq Research post. This means businesses know what to expect from day 1 on the chain. This lowers the risk of contentious hard forks and community splits, allowing business to plan, develop and invest in the future of the platform without uncertainty or lack of planning.

Enterprise Stability

Ubiq aims to be the most Enterprise Stable smart contract platform in the market. We believe that we achieve this in two ways:

First, we take a conservative approach to Ethereum’s upgrades, committing to running only thoroughly tried and tested code.

Second, Ubiq’s release schedule is greatly reduced. If you think about this from the perspective of businesses IT infrastructure, imagine if the IT department deployed server and/or desktop updates every week, requiring users to stop what they are doing, install the updates, wait for their machines to reboot and possibly have to roll back the install if something went wrong.

This would be a huge disruption to the business, causing loss of revenue and working hours.

By releasing less updates, less experimental and untested code, your team building on the Ubiq platform can focus more on application development, providing new features to your users and improving your use case.

Transparent Governance and Decentralization

Our Escher Logo

Ubiq’s governance system ‘Escher’ runs as a separate token on the Ubiq network, allowing users to vote on key issues without the need for large quantities of UBQ to stay locked up during the voting period. The approach is in line with our ethos of Transparent Governance, providing all Escher token holders a say on the direction of the platform. This method of decentralizing governance through a vote reduces the potential for contentious decisions leading to a permanent hard-fork and community split.

Ethereum, in comparison, takes a lot of direction from well known members within their development teams. This has and can lead to contentious splits in the chain and gave rise to an alternative development team, Ethereum Classic.

What should I build on Ubiq?