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Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

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Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#231

Post by BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 »

sebmellen wrote: post #7

The biggest use case I have found of blockchain tech is timestamping, especially in a case where the timestamping party cannot be trusted to act honestly because of conflicting interests. I'll give you an example, from one of my startup's enterprise customers. This company needs to ensure that their high-end auto inventory remains in the same state through transport — the mileage, the car body, etc. They've had issue…

Timestamping existed long before blockchains. You can just push the image to github, there is no way to change the push timestamp.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#232

Post by jkepler »

dgrin91 wrote: post #19

Broadly speaking blockchain only solves a singular problem: Trust. If there is some work that needs to be done between parties and you don't trust the parties involved then you can use blockchain to do the work in a trust-less setting. This is why money has been the first and most prominent use case; people are less trusting with their own money. For a specific non-money potential use case of blockchain I would say i…

Yes. See the ION project Microsoft has led starting - its a decentralized identity project designed as a sidechain that periodically anchors its data to bitcoin's censorship resistant blockchain. See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/identity-standards-bl..., https://identity.foundation/, or https://github.com/decentralized-identity/ion.

If your project doesn't need decentralized trust, using 'blockchain' is simply a marketing move.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#233

Post by jkepler »

Canada wrote: post #48

The use case is money. That's it. All valid use cases involve a transfer of stored value. (eg. money, securities, collectable stuff) For everything else there's a much cheaper option, even for time stamping. Anything involving "proving" something, meaning making some assertion at some time is not a good case. For those look at certificate transparency for a better example of how to handle that. When people say "stora…

Money is the first and obvious use case when you have a decentralized trust machine. But since money is only our shared language for communicating value, censorship resistant publishing won't be far behind.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#235

Post by jkepler »

Fnoord wrote: post #104

Blockchain is extremely useful for one thing only (and, like Unix philosophy, it does it particularly well): scamming . If you want to learn about examples, read throughout the comments. I've read about half the comments and, to no surprise, not much of substance. Distributed DB ("private Blockchain") has its uses, but it isn't publicly owned like a traditional Blockchain.

https://github.com/decentralized-identity/ion

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#236

Post by jkepler »

Geee wrote: post #5

Decentralized and private cloud data storage: https://sia.tech The benefit from using blockchain is that your data will be safely replicated and accessible from the cloud, and at the same time you are the sole owner of the data. Only your private key can access the data. In this case, blockchain also facilitates a decentralized marketplace for sellers and buyers of data storage.

See also https://tardigrade.io/.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#237

Post by jkepler »

bawolff wrote: post #132
FridgeSeal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country this is already fully supported: PayID will let you transfer money instantly instantly between accounts (up to some daily limit), with no fees. Similarly, an app called BeemIt, which is supported by the major banks here gives you a very similar experience, albeit with a prettier UI/UX. As it stands, there’s now no advantage that cryptocurrency offers in this space anymore IMO.

In my country the government issues little pieces of paper with patriotic symbols on them that we pass to each other. Maybe im just a stick in the mud, but i always thought it worked pretty great.

Works great until the government either recalls the pieces of paper (PM Modi in India, anyone?), or institutes strict capital controls while running the printing press incessantly (Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Lebanon, just to name a few examples).

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#238

Post by jkepler »

solresol wrote: post #196

Mid-market insurance has a sort-of-a use case, but I've not quite been able to make it work (yet). If you are a large-ish business, you will talk to your insurance broker to insure it. This will probably turn into a multi-thousand page document describing all the assets that you want protected, and what events you want them protected from. The broker then does "marketing" which means nothing like what marketing means…

Sounds like someone who understands those problems should build a protocol that includes a very low fee per transaction to pay for protocol development. That's how the bisq.network handles this - that way parties interested in actually implementing the solution can be paid. They won't make huge amounts of money, but at least they'd be compensated.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#239

Post by jkepler »

root_axis wrote: post #6

Cryptocurrncies. That's it. Edit: lots of downvotes for this comment but the evidence speaks for itself.

Perhaps you were down-voted due the the decentralized non-monetary innovations already existing on open public blockchains: protocol-level private cloud storage[1], decentralized identity[2], censorship resistant permissionless chat[3], and decentralized project governance[4].

[1] https://tardigrave.io, https://sia.tech [2] ION protocol developed by Microsoft as an open protocol, see https://github.com/decentralized-identity/ion) [3] https://www.getjuggernaut.com/, https://gethaven.app/faq/) [4] https://bisq.network/dao/, running a project, paying for software & protocol development and supporting end-users with no one entity in charge since April 2019.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#240

Post by jkepler »

jkepler wrote: post #239
root_axis wrote: post #6

Cryptocurrncies. That's it. Edit: lots of downvotes for this comment but the evidence speaks for itself.

Perhaps you were down-voted due the the decentralized non-monetary innovations already existing on open public blockchains: protocol-level private cloud storage[1], decentralized identity[2], censorship resistant permissionless chat[3], and decentralized project governance[4]. [1] https://tardigrave.io , https://sia.tech [2] ION protocol developed by Microsoft as an open protocol, see https://github.com/decentralized…

Also time stamping, as mentioned multiple times in comments above. See opentimestamps.org for a self-hostable implementation that can run on bitcoin or litecoin's networks.
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