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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

211–220 of 1001 posts

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

#211

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…

> I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it.

So, you're opposed to the internet, then?

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

#212
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally the reason it blows my mind is because it’s now permissionless to craft a unique structured product or derivatives protocol, deploy it globally, and anyone on the planet can participate in that market. It’s fully customizable and accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

In what way "permissionless"? In the way "the government has agreed that they can be unregulated financial products" or in the way "hopefully it can evade government financial regulation"? or in some other way?

Sure there’s definitely US-centric issues given the current regulations in place.

But it’s permissionless in that if the financial markets don’t support a structured product you or your community needs, you can create and deploy it yourselves with instant global accessibility.

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

#213
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a way to authenticate yourself without a centralized authority. So right now it's being used to create exclusive communities, access to which theoretically has some value. In the future, there may be application ecosystems which operate solely against your wallet information, no need for registration. Maybe that has some value too - time will tell. I don't follow the details of the web3 market closely, so not sp…

We've had "auth without centralized authority" for decades, and 99% of people don't care and won't deal with the hassle involved. see PGP, encrypted email, OpenID, etc etc.. The exclusive communities you mention only have value because of the hype and FOMO and high dollar amounts that people see being made on sales of "exclusive" NFTs or some such. Same as many of the many crypto pumps, same as the dotcom bubble, sam…

> see PGP, encrypted email, OpenID, etc etc..

Yeah, but this actually works.

Like it or not, people are already using their wallets as their username. And they're trading cryptographic assets. And everyone can see it because it's public.

This isn't theoretical.

I've been to PGP key-signing parties. I can assure you that this is not that.

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

#214
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally how research in the Universities makes it to the world. Spin-offs like Boston Dynamics are essential to building things that may not have immediate use but payoff can potentially be huge. We need to do more of this. Don’t throw the baby with the bathwater. I really don’t think generalizations of certain jaded experience and then seeing the entire world with the same broken lens does any good. Probab…

Boston Dynamics is and always has been on a trajectory to build useful products based on technology that is promising. Whether they're going to be successful or not is dependent on financing and time and luck of technology. Blockchain was awesome technology in 2008, and Ethereum brought very interesting developments. But in the end there's only one thing it can do, and that's be an irrefutable ledger, and for most pu…

boston dynamics has never even been close to being on a trajectory to build useful products. they’re a grant-harvesting company first and foremost. they simply do not know how to build efficient and useful locomotors despite at least 3 decades of practice and millions of years of evolutionary precedents literally living right outside its doors.

in that way, the analogy to blockchain is apt: technology focused efforts are not product (read: marketing) oriented ventures.

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

#215
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping site owners, BAT token. Incentivizing IPFS content pinning, Filecoin. Allowing censorship-resistant / chargeback free donations, most coins. Enabling private transactions, Monero. Most "dapps" empower decentralization, distributed exchanges, trading, DNS, ownership contracts (DOAs), etc. NFT's for art as silly as it is, more importantly for Handshake domain names and other cases where ownership proof comes in…

> Please feel free to go and attack all of those ideas and projects, but don't think for a second you can really gaslight people into believing they aren't worth of pursuit. This hostility is completely unnecessary. But if you want I can add one more to the list: funding the North Korean nuclear weapons program. https://www.zdnet.com/article/north-korean-hackers-stole-a-r...

I'm confused. Are you being facetious about crypto having adverse uses too, or are you saying we should ban rocketry (another technology with good & bad uses), or something else entirely?

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

#216
post #199

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…

The idea that blockchain tech is somehow invented out of nothing and then we search for a problem to match couldn't be further from the truth. Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem. I used to work in blockchain tech and the main problem I was focused on was "How do we prevent internet monopolies like Facebook and Google?". If you don't see those monopolies as a problem, then y…

There's quite a bit of distance between blockchain tech and preventing Facebook/Google monopolies isn't there? And as long as blockchain tech has some dependency on capital investment, your better funded outfits are always going to have the terrain tilted in their favor.

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

#217
post #199

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…

The idea that blockchain tech is somehow invented out of nothing and then we search for a problem to match couldn't be further from the truth. Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem. I used to work in blockchain tech and the main problem I was focused on was "How do we prevent internet monopolies like Facebook and Google?". If you don't see those monopolies as a problem, then y…

How does blockchain tech prevent monopolies exactly? Any environment that respects property rights and has activities that can be done more efficiently with scale and concentration will have centralization. Cryptocurrencies themselves are centralized by almost every dimension because mining exhibits those characteristics. Nearly any interesting on chain technology is centralized in that a minority disproportionately receives the vast majority of the upside. None of this kills monopolies

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

#218
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, you have snip weird things no one gives one hoot about outside of the crypto shill word. All of this is just buttering the cat. https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1476873668605186050

Well then what's the point of this discussion? The thread is "how has it advanced? How long can you call it early days?" If you just stop reading rebuttals as soon as they're mentioned you're better off talking to a wall, and you'd waste less people's time that way too.

Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal.

I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vaporware.

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

#219
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a way to authenticate yourself without a centralized authority. So right now it's being used to create exclusive communities, access to which theoretically has some value. In the future, there may be application ecosystems which operate solely against your wallet information, no need for registration. Maybe that has some value too - time will tell. I don't follow the details of the web3 market closely, so not sp…

I would like to create an online application which people could use by paying for its usage in bitcoin. I assume it would make the application much simpler because there would not need to be any or very little user-account management, no sending bills or charging credit-cards. Just gimme them bitcoins. The user-state could be stored on the client-machine, unless they especially want to pay for us backing it up on the…

How do you inagine "giving you bitcoins" will work without you doing something equivalent to sending bills or charging credit cards?

Sure, you can publish your wallet address and tell them to send you money. How do you give them access to your content after they have sent their money? How is Bitcoin helping compared to you publishing your IBAN account number and asking for money to be sent directly there?

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

#220
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand. You're saying that you wouldn't be able to perform online votes or surveys and remotely send money without a blockchain? Could you expand more on what functionality that the blockchain provides that the other solutions in this space (online surveys and remotely send money) don't?

They don't have to trust each other. ie. No need to have a dedicated treasurer.

In the end, someone has power over the things in the real world, like releasing a version of the software or purchasing stuff. So everyone involved has to trust that someone at the least.
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