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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#71

Post by exdsq »

obstacle1 wrote: post #16
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #5

Blockchains exist for a reason completely other than performance. Of course a centralized database would perform better. That’s not the point. I think engineers keep getting hung up on this and don’t zoom out and see the big picture.

The parent article doesn't say anything about performance. Therefore this comment seems like a red herring. A case of not reading the article? The parent article's point is that most currently popular technologies found an application rather quickly, whereas blockchain technologies have been around for a long time (in tech terms) and still have not made ground.

Maybe you mean that they haven’t made useful ground, where useful is specific to you.

Remember that blockchain technologies have become legal tender, have over a trillion in market cap, have become financial instruments traded by people around the globe, is taught at Universities and part of the CFA accounting exam, is in the news daily, has resulted in large investments in research, etc…

It’s impact has hardly been non-trivial. Just the impact on finance is substantial even if people seem to gloss over a new financial asset as “just finance stuff”.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#72

Post by lunch »

kelnos wrote: post #43
lunch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blockchains are good when there's a lack of trust and decentralization is absolutely necessary. There are very few problems that actually need a blockchain. How about the current status quo of the Internet? Do you think being mined, sold, and endlessly tracked is OK?

It's not, but blockchains don't magically fix that. And the "web3" stuff built so far is still pretty centralized and could include that same tracking if the incumbents so chose.

Of course a blockchain doesn't magically fix anything, it's a distributed log. But a decentralized distributed log is a great building block for something that isn't owned by FAANG.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#73

Post by ryandamm »

freemanon wrote: post #66
rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

i suggest learning it properly before jumping to conclusions. everything has pros and cons. e.g. cars pollute but would you want to go back to riding horses? judge less, learn more

I've yet to see a "pro" for blockchain or NFTs that doesn't conform to the characterization you're trying to dispute. Care to offer one? I'm eager to learn.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#74

Post by baby »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #33

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like stori…

People are doing research and deploying cool stuff that others are actively using. You can criticize that as much as you want but it won’t do much.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#75

Post by [deleted] »

mikeg8 wrote: post #62
Dwolb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curve Finance with $14B locked to its platform. Serves up low slippage stablecoin swaps. Some background on Curve (and Convex): https://medium.com/coinmonks/convex-curve-curve-d7e28cd6c1d9

“Low slippage stable coin swap” is one of the most jargony things I’ve read on here in a while. Can you please ELI5 because I have no clue what this is or how it could be useful.

[deleted]

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#76

Post by obstacle1 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #46
obstacle1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent article doesn't say anything about performance. Therefore this comment seems like a red herring. A case of not reading the article? The parent article's point is that most currently popular technologies found an application rather quickly, whereas blockchain technologies have been around for a long time (in tech terms) and still have not made ground.

From the article- > How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word?

OK perfect. "Inefficient" in every sense of the word. Let's say I'm wrong and skipped over that line. What else could the various senses of "inefficient" mean in the context of this article?

Probably the fact that, despite having been under development for > 10 years, we haven't seen any ground broken by any blockchain technologies for any reasons other than speculation or triviality. Which is what the other 95% of the article focuses on. The inefficiency of the development process, not necessarily the technology, although yes, the latter is a factor.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#77

Post by hvmonk »

mizzao wrote: post #54

How's this any different than the typical technology hype and adoption cycle? Perhaps we are just at the "peak of inflated expectations" right now, and are about to dive into the "trough of disillusionment". https://setandbma.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/technology-ado... This certainly happened with AI at least twice... remember the AI summers of 1970 and 2010 and the AI winters in between...before certain applicatio…

"My wife recently suggested a possible one: NFTs minted by your university as proof of your diploma. Or perhaps your academic transcript. No way to forge a fake diploma again."

This is already happening: https://www.5gnewsroom.com/2022/01/12/iit-kanpur-awards-bloc...

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#78

Post by magicjosh »

ryandamm wrote: post #67
magicjosh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Moore ever talk about the time length of such cycles? I imagine it differs from industry to industry. Is blockchain on a 10 year cycle like Uber/Facebook, or a longer cycle? (Disclosure I own Bitcoin and Ethereum)

The hype cycle isn't Moore, it's Gartner -- the research firm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

Same question I suppose. The parent diagram featured both the hype cycle and Moore's chasm. Do they both operate on different timescales or are they usually a decade end-to-end?

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#80

Post by mikeg8 »

freemanon wrote: post #66
rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

i suggest learning it properly before jumping to conclusions. everything has pros and cons. e.g. cars pollute but would you want to go back to riding horses? judge less, learn more

This is always the defense: “you obviously don’t understand it”. Or, maybe there is a good reason this type of article pops to the top of HN every other day. The skeptics have good reason to doubt the viability of all the hype.
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