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Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

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Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#61

Post by chadcmulligan »

dreit1 wrote: post #8
provost wrote: post #2

Hopefully this thread will be different than all the others. Someone is likely to appear here with a counterargument, which I'm looking forward to reading. However, in addition to any counterarguments, please describe why standard tech and/or a 3rd_party is insufficient for your proposed use-cases. This is HackerNews after all, and we desire the deeply technical discussion and context, not propaganda.

I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is generally favorable for the small time investor

but isn't that just taking advantage of a (temporary) loop hole? The real problem there imho is that for some reason the government has decided that oh we need to step in and protect the unwise. Strangely this is by the same people that say government shouldn't be involved in the financial markets. There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#62

Post by this_user »

adamnemecek wrote: post #3

This article reminds me of Clifford Stolls 1995 article http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva... In which he says how the promises of the internet have been inflated. Progress is generally on the exponential (or sigmoid) curve, so it’s slow at first, but explosive later.

"Blockchain tech" is not the Internet, though. It's like a different kind of Internet, one that is slower, more expensive and has less capacity, which was invented after the real thing has already been created. And then people would ask why you would need this if the real Internet can already do almost all of what this worse version does.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#63

Post by jnsaff2 »

wslh wrote: post #48
jnsaff2 wrote: post #35

I used to work for these guys https://guardtime.com . They do keyless digital signatures/timestamps based on block chain way before bitcoin and are quite useful.

I think you are in a position to add something to this discussion: have they found added value in the distributed ledger ecosystem?

Well they issue timestamps/signatures at a rate up to 2^64/second without PKI to provide tamper evident guarantees for data integrity. Their ledger is public and based on universally accepted proofs/primitives. Is it distributed, I suppose no, is it a good use for blockchain I’d say yes.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#64

Post by ssijak »

hanselot wrote: post #30
Namecoin_Dammit wrote: post #26

https://namecoin.org/

I was just wondering why blockchain doesn't get used to manage government data on citizens. One immutable record of a person with all the metadata stored in sidechains.

Yeah, government is sure first to get on a hyper new tech. In the US alone you got like XYZ ways to count votes on elections in different counties, most of which are decades or more old.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#65

Post by joe_the_user »

ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

The problem isn't the technology but the problems around legality and implementation and who it disrupts.

The immediate problem is that an "automatic" contract circumvents the regular legal system and thus is going to be ... not-legal. The larger problem is that this is how things should be.

That the regular system isn't automatic but rather includes considerations of intentions and individuals involves is not a bug but a feature, an extremely important feature (the non-enforceability of unconscionable contracts is pretty important today [1]). Unbreakable contracts open the door for unlimited abuses (how does an automatic contract system prevent contracts for illegal activity? Given legality is going to continue to depend on intentions, etc).

The Etherium Fork illustrated all this and essentially discredited the approach.

Also, it can take a while for successful tech to be successful. But there's also the tech that people spend years trying to get going without success.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#66

Post by Cyberdog »

etr-strike wrote: post #58
Cyberdog wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to me like a fundamental law. Certainly with "internal blockchains" or other cases where at least a majority of the operators are trusted, mining and tokens are completely unnecessary.

A blockchain is a decentralized trustless ledger. If the operators are trusted, you can just use a database. It’s much more efficient. It’s pretty clear from the comment that you don’t understand Bitcoin or why, when people say “we like blockchain but not bitcoin”, that they’re talking nonsense.

> If the operators are trusted, you can just use a database. It’s much more efficient.

This is true! But databases don't have that magic "blockchain" tech.

David Gerard's book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain touches on the ridiculousness of this idea, actually. And, yes, it's ridiculousness, but it's what some people are trying to sell.

So should I take it that you're one of the people who thinks blockchains have little applications outside of currency?

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#67

Post by meri_dian »

Cyberdog wrote: post #50
jackfoxy wrote: post #31

The folks at https://sweetbridge.com/ make a case for supply chain being a natural fit. Some of the low hanging fruit here is international trade between less developed countries, where settlement has to be done in dollars, and independent truckers. The thesis is that huge amounts of capital is tied up in invoice settlement all along the supply chain. (And supply chain refers to every thing from the dirt -- grown or…

What about a blockchain/distributed ledger improves supply chains in ways that a standard centralized database could not? Explain like I'm five.

I've been asking this exact question of blockchain enthusiasts and evangelists for over a year now, and have never received a clear response.

I understand the difference between a distributed ledger and a database, but in all use cases I've heard mentioned as ripe for blockchain derived innovation, not once has a blockchain really been necessary or even an improvement over a traditional database based solution.

To give you an idea of how buzzwordy this all is, my friend works in venture capital and was trying to explain to me how blockchain was going to change the world after he got back from a blockchain conference, saying that it would "revolutionize VR/AR, AI, etc...", technologies that have absolutely nothing to do with one another. I just laughed.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#68

Post by zmonx »

mutteraloo wrote: post #42
ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

So 10-15 more years? In the meantime we can use blockchain/bitcoin to scam money from grandmas, retired folks, and millenials. So they can hate us technologists even more. Oh, and cause global warming and destroy the planet. That way humans will have to come up with a non-government backed currency.

25 years for acceptance are very well aligned with the timeline that Richard P. Gabriel has outlined in "Models of Software Acceptance":

• Technology in the lab (t=0)

• Technology in the first company (t=2–10 years post-lab)

• Technology in the first successful company (t=5–20 years post-lab)

• Technology acceptance (t=10–25 years post-lab)

Source:

https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/AcceptanceModels.pdf

In these slides, Richard gives several examples that match this model and includes several additional explanations.

For example:

• First window system: Stanford/SRI/Xerox PARC ~1975, MIT ~1976

• First commercial use: Symbolics (1979), LMI (1979), Xerox Star (~1980), Apple Lisa (~1982), Apple Macintosh (1984)

• First use by a successful company: Microsoft (~1989)

• Technology acceptance: Microsoft (~1995)

Spreadsheets are another example that is given in the slides. In fact, 25 years for acceptance are quite common in software. Sometimes, it also takes much longer.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#69

Post by eksemplar »

Maersk is using blockchain to validate container ownership claims. Revolutionary tech in a world where crime meant the confirmation papers cost more than the container to ship.

Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt.

Banks have moved to cryptocurrencies for transfers. Sure it's not the unregulated ones, but it's still block chain.

In government in Scandinavia we're doing various proofs of concepts on blockchain. Because it cuts out the need for a legal "middle man" it has huge potential even in less corrupt parts of the world. Everything from simple paperwork to lock/key systems in elder apartments (don't know the English word sorry) is being tested.

Blockchain is certainly full of scams, but it actually offers tremendous value in enterprise, especially when you do any form of bureaucracy. The thing is though, in this world 10 years is nothing. Just look at RPA, it's a tech from before the internet and it's only now beginning to be applied in real world situations that isn't cheating in a video game.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#70

Post by chadcmulligan »

malux85 wrote: post #39

I have a product built on blockchain, it has real, paying customers. It was not funded through an ICO and we do not have our own coin. Https://hydrachain.io/

a tl;dr on what it is might be helpful? I'm afraid I don't quite understand what your product is after looking at the web site.
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