Challenger Banks to Challenger Blockchains

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(Edited)

In an evolving and dynamic world like ours with technology phasing out old methods and charting a course for the experimentation of new methods, it becomes crucial for systems to set up self-appraising mechanisms to test its growth and advancement. Where such self-appraising mechanisms are not in place, a system may get phased out in competition and delivery in a supposed period of boom.

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Getting to know challenger banks and how its emergence had craved some appetite to discover more and the possibility of integrating such systems in the cryptocurrency and blockchain projects with the fast pace of development hitting the space. Within split of decades, we've moved from web 2.0 to web 3.0 and rants about web 5.0 were making rounds some weeks ago.

Wikipedia defines Challenger banks as small, recently created retail banks that compete directly with the longer-established banks in the UK, with focus on areas underserved by the "big four" banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, and NatWest Group).

The operations of challenger banks are distinguished from that of large old banks by leveraging modern financial technology practices, such as online-only activities, in a bid to reduce nor eliminate some costs and complexities of traditional banking. Recently, commercial banks in Nigeria announced an earlier closing time of 3:00pm (WAT) against the initial 4:00pm (WAT). The shortening of the bank's operating hours is expected to drastically reduce the operating cost of the bank branches across the nation.

“You can simply process most of your transactions via our digital channels, as a few of our Access Bank branches nationwide will be closed at 3 pm from the 29th of August, 2022. - Access Bank source

“Please be informed that some of our branches will now close earlier for the safety of our customers and employees. Our digital channels will remain available to you 24/7." - UBA source

It therefore follows that one of the reasons for the reduction in value deliveries in traditional banking systems is the hard fight to best the growing costs which are related to physical operations, power/energy costs, and others. The antidote to reducing their costs becomes setting up online operations amid their increasing charges to increase their profits. This is a safe glide into the Fintech environment since it was obvious that the banks were losing out. I personally haven't used the banking hall for months and I know there are many out there who follow that pattern, patronizing Point of Sale (POS) instead.

Going deeper, these Nigerian commercial banks are setting up their digital outlets so they can stay in safe competition with FinTechs and other Neo banks to meet up with their profit expectations while reducing cost of operations.

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Unhindered Growth is the Goal

The whole idea about challenger bank is to edge the organization behind it amid related advancement. Challenger banks are innovation experiments reduced to a handle-able scale before so the organization doesn't miss out in the scheme of things.

We need challenger blockchains too. There are developments that cut across web2 environment to web 3. and such quick changes may be difficult to experiemtn in a full blown blockchain, such as Hive. However, if there is a challenger blockchain with codes still ran by the Hive witnesses, some crazy innovative ideas could be ran to a lower scale to see it work and then, it scalability to the main chain can be worked.

We know this is why blockchain projects run testnets and Beta versions of projects before launching into full Alpha. However, I think of a working smaller scale of a blockchain with its full functionalities serving as a pilot point for trying all sort of innovations and getting the attention of new users still credited to its overall users.

I may not be able to get very technical with these thoughts, but I wish some devs can catch a glimpse of it.



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Great read about challenger banks. I never thought that there was a term for smaller banks trying to compete for those who are already long running established ones.

In my country, it would seem that most of these challenger banks is way behind in terms of service and ease of use. One of the main reasons I am wondering about smaller banks in my area are the high initial deposits when making an account. I don't know the reasons why, but it seems that they are limiting the number of their probable clients. The main upside is that they have less client which is good if you want to want to wait in a long queue.

About the blockchain technology, I think what you are referring to is what they call a "progressive deployment". This is a kind of a deployment where the developers apply an update starting with a smaller portion of their users and then wider and wider until they have covered 100 percent of their users. They would check for issues and fix it between deployments. I just don't know how would that apply in a blockchain.

!1UP

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