Understand How The Litecoin Price Spikes 32% As The News Of LitePay Payment Processor Is Released

It is being seen that Litecoin which is positioning itself as a medium for payments has jumped by as much as 32% on Wednesday after news broke that it would launch LitePay a payments processor. Therefore the surge helped Litecoin breeze past the $ 200 mark a figure that was said to be touched. Thereby the Litepay website provides two reasons to conduct transactions in Litecoin. Firstly it is observed to transfer the volatility risk arising from Litecoin’s price from merchants to payments processors and secondly, it provides holders of Litecoin more liquefy in the short term with the debit cards meaning they will be able to conduct transactions anywhere in the world and any currency with their debit cards.

Thereafter Litecoin was also identified by Microsoft Corp as one of the building blocks for creating a unique and new decentralized digital identification for services on the Internet. It was then finally the cryptocurrency is also set to undergo a fork that will create Litecoin Cash, which is a new payments coin and the project is not backed by the Litecoin Foundation as the name association was enough to fuel valuations for the cryptocurrency. The fork will hence provide each Litecoin holder with 10 coins of Litecoin cash as according to Iqbal Gandham, the managing director of eToro has said the fork would help miners use their equipment efficiently as he cited development as another reason for the boost in the cryptocurrency ‘s price.

What Is The Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS)?

To introduce BaaS, it is the third party creation and management of cloud-based networks for companies in the business of building blockchain applications. It was found that these third party services are a relatively new development in the growing field of blockchain technology where the business has moved well beyond its best-known use in cryptocurrency transactions and has broadened to address the secure transactions of all kinds. Hence as a result there is also a demand for hosting services. 

Understanding BaaS

It is understood that BaaS is based on the Software-as-a-service model and works in a similar fashion allowing customers to leverage cloud-based solutions to build, host, and operate their blockchain apps and the related functions thereby on the blockchain while the more cloud-based service provider it keeps the infrastructure agile as well as operational. Here it is an interesting development in the blockchain ecosystem that is seen as boosting blockchain adoption across businesses. 

Some Of The Big Players

Here is the shortlist of the major players in the BaaS space that include:

• Microsoft has partnered with ConsenSys to introduce the Ethereum blockchain-as-a-service on the Microsoft Azure in 2015.
• Amazon has thereby introduced Amazon Managed Blockchain, which is a service that "makes it easy to create as well as manage scalable blockchain networks" as also using open source frameworks including those of Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric.
• R3 comes as a consortium of the global financial institutions that produced an even distributed financial ledger called Corda.
• PayStand, that is specializing in sending and receiving payments between many companies.

How Do BaaS Work

Subsequently consumers and businesses are increasingly willing to adapt to blockchain technology as however the technical complexities and operational overhead involved in creating, configuring, and operating a blockchain and maintaining its infrastructure often acting as a barrier. 

Microsoft, Amazon, and R3 are among the big players in BaaS.

Since BaaS offers an external service provider thereby setting up all the necessary blockchain technology and infrastructure for a fee, it is found that once created the provider continues to handle the complex back-end operations for the client. Thereafter the BaaS operator typically offers support activities like bandwidth management, suitable allocation of resources, hosting requirements, and data security feature. As the BaaS operator frees the client to focus on the core job the functionality of the blockchain.

This is a BaaS provider role similar to that of a web hosting provider where the website creators create and run all the website content on their personal computers. Eventually, they may hire support staff or signup with an external hosting provider like Amazon Web Services or Hostgator. Essentially these third party companies take care of the infrastructure and management issues.

Finally The Ultimatum

It is therefore that here BaaS may come as the catalyst that is leading to a wider and the deeper penetration of the blockchain technology across various industry sectors and businesses instead of creating and running their blockchain, a business, large or small, can now simply outsource the technically complex work and focus on its core activities.