Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem?

A century after the first airplane was 2003.

Air power was already militarily important by 1916.

You might better have cited the laser, which took three decades to find heavy use, or microwave technology, worked out around 1890 but not used much until the 1940s.

Bitcoin isn't "unstable". It's very stable, as money is released on a very predictable and predetermined schedule. You know precisely how much inflation is going to occur and when it will end.

The only "volatile" is the exchange rate market of Bitcoin to USD. Obviously, this is going to be volatile for some time because demand varies from day to day. What's obvious, however, is that the trend in demand is continuing to increase over time. If you look at purchasing Bitcoin to hold for 4 years or more (or indefinitely), then you aren't concerned about the day to day fluctuations in the exchange rate.

If you purchased Bitcoin at any time in the past 10 years, and held onto it for 4 years, there is no point at which you could've made a loss. In fact, on average, you would've almost doubled your money if you converted it back to USD after 4 years.

They say past performance is no indication of success, but next month we enter another "quantitive hardening" period in Bitcoin, where the new supply released over the next 4 years is half of the supply released over the previous 4 years. If the rate of growth in demand stays the same, the exchange rate will continue to rise - but that itself causes an increase in demand because more people want to hold onto an appreciating asset rather than a depreciating dollar. Especially true given that the Fed has committed to rapidly devaluing the dollar this year in a struggle to deal with COVID-19.

Bitcoin doesn't care about the virus. There's nobody to bail out bitcoiners. The State is the virus, and Bitcoin is the remedy.

Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the project I am describing below.

You have a stab at one of the most important issues within the space here. You are right, most projects either do not have any utility or they are so far up their idea and tech that they think it will produce value by itself. Unfortunately, most things end here. For most, this value will never surpass the simple value of "exchanging value" or "storing value" (both are important I agree, but we are talking about tech, not money).

However, that is not how it should be. Projects should be building and solving issues, adding utility and providing solutions, otherwise, we are stuck in a system which produces the point zero problem. This can get us cemented in the past with no hope of any future.

Check out cyber. It is a decentralized google with a mission to open the semantics field and decentralize the service of the internet with the use of blockchain and economic incentives.

It's not an idea. Both, the chain and the initial app are working as planned. Yes, the project is still in testnets, but, it is 100% open-source and the idea is provably implemented.

Cyber managed to prove that it can change the current search mechanism and make it work. The main use of the network is to build an open, decentralized knowledge graph, by the users themselves to create a shared database of knowledge. All transactions in the network are made to target that purpose in one way or another.

Cyber utilizes the use of computation, bandwidth and storage and produces a useful computer with several use-cases, with the most obvious is the creation of an open and provable search in a trustless and censorship-free environment without the illnesses of web2 tech..

It's hard for people to simply skip this thread if they can't answer the question. Hence we have now 144 comments and beside my own post I could not find anyone actually answering the question.

Seems like any Database could be used for this. If there is a central authority its almost certain no blockchain tech is needed at all. A central authority does not disabled swarm intelligence or something. It does not have to use its power against all others. Centrality ruled systems work very very fine as long as the central authority has the same goal as the other parties. If there is a central operator for anti spam call database and they do their job correctly there is no reason to not trust them and replace them with complex distributed agreement mechanisms. especially not if they in the end are in control of "the blockchain" anyway.