In all the din and noise around cryptocurrrencies, it is easy to forget the libertarian strains of this incredible phenomenon. Many of the early adopters were libertarians and are probably millionaires now. But it remains to be seen whether this libertarian streak will be preserved till the end. The danger of governments undermining or co-opting cryptocurrencies is very real. But one thing is clear, the balance of power has shifted atleast a little bit in favor of the individual but we have to keep our foot on the pedal.
Every day someone somewhere in the world is solving a problem and making the world a better place. One such example is quantstamp. Smart contracts are for real, if ethereum fails something else will succeed. Smart contracts on ethereum have had more than their fair share of hacks. The problem is easy to see. You have to code the smart contract in a language called solidity and error prone humans do the coding. The smart contracts are of-course tested in non public ethereum networks but that does not guarantee that there will be no avenues left for the enterprising hacker to cause some disruption. And fixing a bug in a smart contract is nothing like fixing a bug in an ordinary enterprise application. Quantstamp is an attempt to address this challenge.