Every so often, you come across such a mind-bendingly brilliant idea that all you can do is sit back and marvel. In hindsight, such solutions may sound simple, like, ‘let’s connect all the computers into a giant internetwork’, but in practice, it’s more complicated and there’s often a tussle – at least in the beginning – over things like protocols. A famous example of this is the gradual adoption of TCIP over what was known as OSI, or the Open Systems Interconnection, in the 1990s, which provided the technical foundation of the internet.

While the above might not to be a perfect analogy, there are a number of independent blockchains in operation today, which has led to some early experimentation around how to make them interoperable. These blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others, are isolated at the moment, and as more and more value flows through them, it’s probably going to be a good idea at some point to get them to talk to one another.