Jeff Garzik, co-founder of Bloq Bloq, the company founded by long-time Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik, covers a lot of ground across the public and private blockchain space, including the promise of Turing-complete smart contracts plugged into Bitcoin, written in JavaScript and Python.
The recently unveiled suit of BloqEnterprise applications will serve as a blockchain operating system (BOS) for private and public blockchains, including enterprise-friendly development tools, 24/7 enterprise-grade support, and a network level dashboard and data analytics service. Its BloqRouter component is "the fastest, most secure Bitcoin full node on the planet, with a hardened Bitcoin Core fork and option to switch to Bitcoin Classic (BIP 109)". Bloq is also working with Deloitte on its "digital bank" initiative.
Garzik, who helped provide scalable Linux software solutions to businesses a decade ago with Red Hat, is taking a similar approach with Bloq, which has added Gavin Andresen, Nick Szabo and William Mougayar as advisors.
Bloq’s smart contract application is a piece of software called Bloq Ora (short for oracle). It allows users to run their favourite programming language, Java, JavaScript, Python, C++, and write Turing-complete smart contracts on any blockchain.
Garzik told IBTimes : "It’s essentially designed as an Ethereum plug-in for Bitcoin. But it has several qualities that make it, in my opinion, better than Ethereum, where you have to learn a new programming language, you have to download a new debugging software, new development tools, everything – sort of the ink is not yet dry.
"This [Bloq Ora] is an example of what I refer to as a ‘layer 2 technology’. With Bitcoin you don’t necessarily put all the features into the Bitcoin protocol itself."
Garzik agreed that at a high level Bloq Ora functions rather like the Counterparty protocol with Bitcoin. He added that the technology is in a preview stage, and […]
