Live data from Hacker News

It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

201–210 of 1001 posts

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

#201
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…

Most people don't care about X, so clearly anyone trying to build a product to address X is just a scam.

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

#203
post #162

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…

It seems you are looking for a product blockchain enables you, but there are activities the blockchain enables which are not products, and are very difficult up to impossible without. One example is sustainable (financially) open-source project is one I use now. Before that it was always impossible. You get a bunch of people all over the world, many of them are identified only by Internet handles. There's no investme…

> One example is sustainable (financially) open-source project is one I use now. Before that it was always impossible.

And yet just like blockchain, you allude to something without providing any substance. What is the open-source project? You’ve failed to actually tell us what the real “thing” is.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife recently suggested 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 once again better served by a database. Diplomas are inherently centralized and issued by a trusted authority. Guess we gotta keep brainstorming for use cases -- that's how technology development works, right?

The university can shut down, suffer data loss or get hacked. Decentralized storage is an improvement. No sense in diplomas being transferable though.

Is it the time to invent NTTs? Non-transferable tokens?

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

#205

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…

In Dubai, buying real estate with bitcoin is a real thing, and by the looks of it also a big thing. If nothing else, it shows that crypto has succeed in one of its goals: moving money between countries, without being detected/hindered by governments. I mean, I don't know who buys real estate with crypto, but I am assuming that people who live in dubai and have large crypto values are bullish on crypto, and won't wast…

Here's an article About Dubai putting its entire land registry on the blockchain:

https://www.ccn.com/100-dubai-put-entire-land-registry-block...

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

#206
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...

Also, let Iran burn a fair bit of its oil to mine ฿S.

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

#207

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…

That is what financialization does. Finance is a parasite that will destroy all potential if given room. To force finance to be symbiotic you must never allow them to control anything. These ideas are best left in the academy, and then later financialized. The exception to this is internal R&D (like Bell Labs and countless other extremely productive corporate divisions.)

Out of curiosity: How well have significant Bell Labs contributors been compensated? It seems to me that lost of current tech, and even 'future tech' not yet adopted has come out of Bell Labs. But how many of the engineers that came up with said advances settled for relative peanuts? Getting paid $250K for something that changes the world seems... less than adequate.

Maybe I'm just greedy.

I don't think so.

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

#208

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…

Online shopping hadn't hit product market fit in the late 80s even though the Internet had already been around for a few years.

[deleted]

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

#210
post #162

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…

It seems you are looking for a product blockchain enables you, but there are activities the blockchain enables which are not products, and are very difficult up to impossible without. One example is sustainable (financially) open-source project is one I use now. Before that it was always impossible. You get a bunch of people all over the world, many of them are identified only by Internet handles. There's no investme…

How do you comply with compliance and reporting requirements? I would naively imagine that interacting with the financial system/fullfilling requirements for cross border payments etc. are still difficult when everyone is anonymous

Not saying you are doing something wrong but rather that I see a lot of applications in the wild that have to do with people imagining also a different regulatory landscape - which actually is a discussion to be had.

Post reply on HN