Blockchain might be a relevant tool for a group of strangers to maintain books (a database) which cannot be easily tampered with (or it is virtually impossible). Prime example is sound money. But it could go beyond that. Say you can run a land registry or domain name system this way.
Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
91–100 of 192 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. > timestamping services are trivially cheap already what does it cost, where can I do it right now?
Have the Internet Archive archive a document and it’s hash. Courts have accepted Internet Archive snapshots as evidence. More costly services would be something like DocuSign.
How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have the Internet Archive archive a document and it’s hash. Courts have accepted Internet Archive snapshots as evidence. More costly services would be something like DocuSign.
How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?
https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow
Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse the Archive.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#94Self-sovereign identity is probably the most viable use case at the moment. No third party needed to manage your identity, replace keys, and broadcast updates to the world. Additionally adding the dimension of time, where you can differentiate between something signed while a key was active vs something signed after the key was retired.
Some argue this is the only data necessary on-chain — all other application data can remain in normal data stores while the identities interacting with that data are immutable and auditable.
Laying the groundwork for a lot of neat stuff https://identity.foundation/working-groups/identifiers-names...
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#9541 comments when I write this. There is a ton of ‘will’, ‘could’, ‘might’, but no ‘is’. The concrete examples pointed to are sales pitches, announcements, protocols, consortia being organized. It looks a lot like the answer is no. That may change I suppose, but it really seems like no one is doing anything practically useful with it.
I was going to point out the same.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?
https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse the Archive.
Thanks a lot! I was not even expecting a CLI, I just could not find the possibility on web.archive.org to request a page to be saved.
Now that I scrolled down it is so obvious I do not know how I could have missed it. Thanks again!
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse the Archive.
Thanks a lot! I was not even expecting a CLI, I just could not find the possibility on web.archive.org to request a page to be saved. Now that I scrolled down it is so obvious I do not know how I could have missed it. Thanks again!
Happy to help!
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#98I’d like to go back to 1988 and ask “Is anyone actually using the Internet?”
I’m sure the responses would be similar. Blockchain is still in its infancy, give it a decade or two and I think you’ll be surprised how it became “an overnight success”.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#99The strongest use case right now in the blockchain space is Bitcoin as a sovereign money. It's an asset with substantial liquidity that has incredible protections against asset seizure and strong independence against capital controls. It's the type of thing that you go 30 years without needing it, but then when you do need it you really badly need it. Bitcoin does this well today and there are plenty of people who pr…
This is the only right answer in this whole thread. There's no other good use for a blockchain that I have found after studying it for years.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?
#100In this whole thread, there's not one mention of the word "scarcity". Blockchain allows for digital scarcity. For me, the problems that blockchain solves, it solves through the creation and enforcement of real digital scarcity.
I find that it's not hard to imagine some problems that exist due to the lack of digital scarcity (pre-blockchain). I invite you to open your mind and imagine some for yourself.