The advantages and the limitations of using the blockchain technology to optimize products and services are the reasons behind “unicorn” startups such as Airbnb’s caution in implementing the technology.
It is still difficult to predict the major reasons behind “unicorn” startups’ growing interest towards the blockchain technology.
Because of the potential of the blockchain technology, corporations and startups that have set up blockchain research and development teams can potentially create their own decentralized peer to peer currency or take advantage of the blockchain network’s irrefutable and unalterable nature store data and information efficiently through the utilization of smart contracts.
Airbnb and ChangeTip
Recently, billion dollar startup and accommodations platform Airbnb acqui-hired the development team of ChangeTip, a bitcoin-based tipping service provider.
In a move that surprised many bitcoin enthusiasts, the Airbnb team emphasized that they have just hired all of the staff members and developers of ChangeTip with the exception of bitcoin developers.
The statement was released after an increasing number of bitcoin enthusiasts began to suspect the possibility of the Airbnb platform offering a bitcoin payment option to customers looking to book or rent out rooms and houses across the world.
However, the speculations of the bitcoin community were quickly overturned by the Airbnb team.
Powering the networks
Airbnb’s partial acquisition of blockchain experts at ChangeTip evidently proves the shift in trend from bitcoin to the blockchain technology.
A growing number of corporations, enterprises and investors are beginning to feel ambitious enough to either build their own permissioned blockchain networks to efficiently process their existing services and products or develop their own unique altcoins to power their networks.
What began as an experimental project of Wall Street banks has become a worldwide phenomenon, supported and followed by the world’s largest startups and companies.