The delay in settlement is deeper than expected. Recently, dividends in bank accounts took a full three days to arrive, which in an era of instant information transfer seems quite absurd—the efficiency of fund processing is still stuck in processes from decades ago.

This frustration made me start to think: is blockchain really just a hype tool? Not really. Looking closely at its essence, it is a machine built for efficient clearing. Many people focus on speculative trading and overlook its most powerful use.

In traditional finance, privacy and speed are often seen as opposites. To protect transaction privacy, one must resort to mixing or complex calculations, which inevitably reduces efficiency. But some new public chain consensus designs break this misconception—they are not just building an ordinary chain, but creating a fully automated, compliant settlement system.

Imagine a publicly listed company issuing shares on-chain, not just simple ERC-20 tokens, but smart containers embedded with compliance logic. When the company declares dividends, the funds automatically, privately, and compliantly flow to tens of millions of holders—no reconciliation, no T+2 waiting, no worries about leakage of holding information. The entire process is executed automatically by code.

This is the correct way to unlock the potential of smart contracts. Many current DeFi projects are essentially just token swaps, not true financial innovation. But when virtual machines can handle complex financial operations with zero-knowledge proofs, the massive and inefficient back-end costs of traditional institutions lose all justification for existence.

Good infrastructure has a characteristic: once you use it, you will never accept the inefficiency of the old system again. The potential of blockchain in clearing is forcing traditional finance to face an inevitable revolution.