State Change

In Brief: Imagine the security of a blockchain transaction with the speed and low cost of a packet of information sent through traditional infrastructure. This is what state channels can offer any blockchain. After finishing his work on the Co-tricity project (the ConsenSys run part of which is now Innogy), Ameen Soleimani, has turned his attention to state channels. State Channels are a design pattern in which signed messages representing transactions are exchanged between two parties. These parties can choose at any time to broadcast the last message to the blockchain, updating it to a state representative of the sum of all exchanges between the two parties. Sound complicated? Ameen does a great job of explaining the idea which offers a solution both to scaling and to blockchain privacy.  The Raiden network is the most advanced instantiation of state channels currently in development. The Gnosis prediction market also uses state channels for its markets. This could well be the technology that defines 201