Jeff Garzik, one of the original blockchain developers and co-founder of Bloq, will announce a new currency called Metronome later today. The “world’s first cross-chain currency” makes its debut at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, as reported by Bloomberg.

Cross-chain currency?

Their words, not mine. The idea is that Metronome will be the first currency which is portable across multiple blockchains. The example case given in the Bloomberg article is rather confusing, and suggests that coins “used for applications on the Ethereum blockchain will be able to move to Ethereum classic…”

In actual fact, it is only Metronome tokens, which will be initially issued on the Ethereum blockchain, that will be transferable to Ethereum classic once support is added. Bloq also expects to add support for Rootstock and Qtum, which connects to the Bitcoin blockchain, although it isn’t clear whether this means Metronome can be moved to this.

Brilliant… but why?

The claimed benefit of this portability is a lack of reliance on any particular blockchain, meaning that owners can move their holdings elsewhere in the event of one blockchain dying out.

And why would a blockchain die out? Well, through slackened use or developer infighting, of course. This should help the coins retain value and ensure longevity, according to Garzik.

Ouch! The implication being…

… that the current infighting and seemingly endless planned soft and hard forks may spell the end of Bitcoin, I guess.

Certainly the suggestion is that Garzik’s experience as a bitcoin developer and first-hand dealings with its shortcomings have fed into this “better” digital currency.

But isn’t he advocating SegWit2x?

As an upgrade, yes. Although to be fair, I see nothing wrong with saying that X is the best thing for one currency, whilst another currency, unhampered by the same limitations, is better with Y.

In his own words:

If I had a clean slate of paper this is what I would design.

He’s mixing his metaphors, but you get the idea. New coin, fresh start, clean slate, blank sheet of paper.

Okay, so what are the other features?

Aside from portability, there are two key principles:

• Self-governance – There will be zero founder control after initial launch and public access.
• Reliability – Predictability and steadiness where issuance and supply are immutable.

The currency will be completely autonomous, so nobody will be able to change it after launch, and there will be 2,880 coins added to the supply every 24 hours.

I’m not convinced that either of these are necessarily “good” features, and the benefit (and implementation) of cross-chain-iness isn’t 100% clear to me either at this stage.

Anyway, the ICO happens in December. If these features sound useful to you, then visit the website and check it out for yourself.

What do you think about the new Metronome cryptocurrency? How will the portability of his new currency pan out? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Metronome, Wikimedia Commons, and Flickr.