This is interesting because it's the first time I've heard about 21 and they have raised $116 million pre-launch. Given that companies who've raised an order of magnitude less are all over the news, it's surprising they have been so stealth.
I'm also still not clear what 21 does. According to the article they are building out the blockchain into the internet of things (IoT). That sounds really vague. Plus, the article mentions a contractual twist - like smart lawyer contracts. These two things don't seem to obviously go together.
It sounds like some variant of the hardware Bitcoin bank idea that has been floating around the valley.
The rough sketch of the idea is
-Hardware device runs a full security bitcoin node in your house
-Provides a multisig for your mobile wallet.
-Automatically moves savings into cold storage
-Provides a basic environment for implementing crypto banking features
yeah, another bitcoin pipe dream...
what's needed is probably something like integrating a wallet+bitreserve+exchange+payment processor in a single business. And then forking/enhancing btc itself. Some of the top btc companies have got ridiculous investment rounds that could be used towards that goal, easily.
The blockchain ends up being useful as a public secure ledger, so perhaps it's going to be used in that way somehow.
Otherwise, I don't know of many companies who've actually worked into the space of the less well-known features of bitcoins that can be used via the embedded pseudo-language.
> "These two things don't seem to obviously go together."
That actually makes a lot of sense: if you consider some of the security challenges associated with IoT, e.g. an IoT door lock, then a smart contract where you have m of n signatures needed to unlock it (think of them like a modified escrow with policy side, too), then you can see the play here. The transaction to open the door gets signed only if that policy is met at each of the m signatures. You might have a lock device signature, a home signature, and a home owner signature. There are lots of microtransactions in IoT (good and potentially bad). Smart contracts can mitigate / isolate risk and ultimately reduce attack surface vulnerabilities. Block chain is a necessary part of this to work. For more info check out "bitcoin 2.0".
The vision is to use bitcoin to enable automated micropayments between devices. One example that Marc Andreessen has talked about is sharing your network connection with neighbours:
I'm also still not clear what 21 does. According to the article they are building out the blockchain into the internet of things (IoT). That sounds really vague. Plus, the article mentions a contractual twist - like smart lawyer contracts. These two things don't seem to obviously go together.