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Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

theregister.com

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Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#31

Post by acdha »

Tenoke wrote: post #30
acdha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? There's a lot of speculator money floating around which can give the illusion of something being promising until you do the math and realize that it's more expensive and slower than the alternatives or cannot grow outside of a small ideological community. For example, nothing is preventing paying artists more…

Decentralized exchanges allow users to exchange funds without ever entrusting their asset to a third party while other users are the ones who provide the liquidity and take the profit from the fees, again without anyone having to trust anyone else beyond some publicly deployed code. I'd say that at least some of of the advantages cannot be recreated by a traditional service.

It’s not that simple, however, since the inherent inefficiency means you have higher transaction costs to operate the network and since there’s no fraud protection you still need trusted third parties to broker any exchange where fraud is a possibility. As an expensive way to transfer money to your drinking buddy it works but if you’re buying or selling with strangers those third parties are necessary and still need to be paid.

Similarly, you aren’t getting rid of trust: power recentralizes in a handful of users who control the most mining power and the developers (Ethereum classic comes to mind). Very few people have the time or skills to audit that constantly so they either end up trusting strangers or relying on a trusted third-party who ends up being a bank in all but name.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#32

Post by beiller »

nwah1 wrote: post #9
ostenning wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had looked into the space with even just a small amount of depth, you’d find there are numerous applications. Decentralized finance, games, art, cdn networks, music distribution, video streaming alternatives. Some of them are promising and would address many issues we face; like the Audius project which aims to compete with Spotify and SoundCloud, but actually paying artists for their work. I think it’s fair t…

You can pay artists without a blockchain. No actual benefit is provided to this concept by adding one.

I think paying an artist is not so straight forward. The artist must set up a bank account. Now they must sign somewhere to accept credit cards. Now they must have art that is friendly to said card processor, or else you get deplatformed. Seems we found one use case.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#33

Post by selfhoster11 »

zepto wrote: post #26
selfhoster11 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's can be only said by ignoring the giant blind spot of intermediaries skimming off the payment, traditional banks making it hard to process payments with automation, and foreign currency exchange.

> intermediaries skimming off the payment Unlike crypto?

Fair point, but the rest of my criticisms stand.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#34

Post by bastawhiz »

beiller wrote: post #32
nwah1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay artists without a blockchain. No actual benefit is provided to this concept by adding one.

I think paying an artist is not so straight forward. The artist must set up a bank account. Now they must sign somewhere to accept credit cards. Now they must have art that is friendly to said card processor, or else you get deplatformed. Seems we found one use case.

You still need a bank account to get actual cash out of cryptocurrency. From the perspective of an artist, cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp, Transferwise, Zelle, Google Pay, or any of the other readily available ways to send money.

Unless you're literally selling art by emailing photos of the art and accepting payments to your bitcoin wallet directly, you're still using a platform, and you're still able to be kicked off the platform.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#35

Post by bastawhiz »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #21
nwah1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay artists without a blockchain. No actual benefit is provided to this concept by adding one.

That's can be only said by ignoring the giant blind spot of intermediaries skimming off the payment, traditional banks making it hard to process payments with automation, and foreign currency exchange.

What artists are setting up their own cryptocurrency payments automation system?

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#36

Post by bastawhiz »

Bluestein wrote: post #20
smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audius sounds like it's using blockchain for coins, which is exactly what GP said: it only works for coins. Please provide one other example of a functioning app or service that uses blockchain to do something it can't do just as well without blockchain.

I often think of Dijkstra's "only do what only you can do" ... ... and apply it to this, and wonder ... ... what is it that -it- and only -it- can do?

Permanently and irrecoverably send large amounts of money into the void with a single one-character typo?

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#37

Post by reilly3000 »

I think these types of articles are the harbinger of greatness for a technology to have impact in society. This shows that 43 companies found it valuable to invest in understanding blockchain technology. It means that millions of people are imagining a decentralized world, and how that would upend institutional. By detracting the present over-hype, the dangers of the gold rush to the miners but not marketers, they acknowledge that we’re living in the birth of a new California. Give it some time. Sure blockchain has poor performance characteristics relative to other databases. They all do. Not all databases have the rather remarkable characteristics that globally-shared ledgers can have.

When technology is nascent there is a void of history with it, there are no bounds for expectations. It’s inevitable that most early technology is coupled with broken expectations, as they are formed without substance.

Most blockchain should be understood as a social technology that is predicated on internet technology. It’s also built for the assumption that brokers aren’t trustworthy and extract too much value. Whether that turns out to be true or not will take a generation or two to sort out.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#38

Post by nwah1 »

zepto wrote: post #24
selfhoster11 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. Cryptocurrency is revolutionising delivery of cash. It will take a while to work out the development of it, but we didn't have a ready made plan f…

> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. I see this repeated often, but it doesn’t seem remotely true. Look back to Englebart and the work done at Parc. The applications were very clear.

People were using the internet for useful things from pretty much day 1, and technology adoption curves have only compressed over time. It may have took a decade or two for the internet to become popular, but it only took a few years for smartphones to become popular, or social media, or for ridesharing to usurp the taxi industry.

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#39

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #19
acdha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? There's a lot of speculator money floating around which can give the illusion of something being promising until you do the math and realize that it's more expensive and slower than the alternatives or cannot grow outside of a small ideological community. For example, nothing is preventing paying artists more…

> Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. Cryptocurrency is revolutionising delivery of cash. It will take a while to work out the development of it, but we didn't have a ready made plan f…

So that's a "no".

Re: Blockchain study of 43 solutions finds 0.00% success rate

#40

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

Tenoke wrote: post #30
acdha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? There's a lot of speculator money floating around which can give the illusion of something being promising until you do the math and realize that it's more expensive and slower than the alternatives or cannot grow outside of a small ideological community. For example, nothing is preventing paying artists more…

Decentralized exchanges allow users to exchange funds without ever entrusting their asset to a third party while other users are the ones who provide the liquidity and take the profit from the fees, again without anyone having to trust anyone else beyond some publicly deployed code. I'd say that at least some of of the advantages cannot be recreated by a traditional service.

So cryptocurrency is useful because it lets you trade cryptocurrency. Got it.
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