It’s not still the early days of blockchain • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

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…

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. Probably the opposite. We ought to try new tech and keep an open mind.

Before people go off on Boston Dynamics - there are thousands of spin-offs, pick some other charitable example. The point isn’t about BD.

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

#42

Post by magicjosh » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:30 AM UTC

The article suggests that using the phrase "it's early days" is incorrect in blockchain technology because Bitcoin and Ethereum have been around for 13 and 6 years respectively.

The author goes on to give examples like smartphones, Uber, and Tesla, all of which have had serious developments in terms of impact and usability in around the same time period. Then given that Bitcoin and Ethereum have not made similar progress in that time period suggests it is not "early days".

Users continue to get scammed and lose funds. So what is it instead? Middle days? End of life? Pre-early days?

Open to ideas here. The author seems to suggest that what we're seeing in blockchains is the best we're going to get out of it. If Bitcoin were middle aged, would users put up with all the warts knowing they won't go away?

(Disclosure I own Bitcoin and Ethereum)

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

#43

Post by kelnos » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:30 AM UTC

lunch wrote: post #29

xmprt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like even after zooming out and seeing the big picture, it's hard to imagine blockchain solving real world problems. 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. Anything that has the government in the loop (like buying houses or property) is a non starter and anything that runs on centralized server…

> 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.

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

#44

Post by chx » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #15

> All that to say, a lot has changed in the technology world in the past six to twelve years It sure has. But not really that fundamentally, since 2009. A lot has changed in the blockchain space too. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it isn't true. A lot of those changes are on par with some of the tech advancements mentioned before my quote in the article. In 2009, you had bitcoin, so basically a dis…

> 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

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

#45

Post by TekMol » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

Depends on how you define early.

When comparing the situation of crypto to the internet, I would say we are at around 1997 now. 1996 was the year when Yahoo went public and 2021 was the year when Coinbase went public.

The usability of crypto solutions also reminds me of 1997. It is still so bad that it makes them almost unusable. Reminds me of acoustic couplers where you had to manually plug your cable bound phone into some device and dial a number to connect to a bulletin box. Just that today the bad usablity looks very different. It has to do with complicated, privacy violating KYC processes, no standardized secure way to make a socially recoverable secret key, lightning network only used in very few places etc.

TCP/IP and DNS were both developed in the early 70s (1972 I think). So over 20 years before the first internet company went public.

So the adoption of the internet evolved more slowly than the adoption of crypto it seems. As the Coinbase IPO came already 13 years after the Bitcoin whitepaper.

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

#46

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

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.

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?

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

#47

Post by kelnos » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #13

I'm not long on anything blockchain related. But I don't understand why people get so invested in it being a scam or failure. Maybe it is, and it'll all die. That's fine. Why do people spend so much time insisting that it's the inevitable outcome. Let it do its thing, find something better to do.

Many of us believe all this stuff is incredibly harmful right now. Just standing back and ignoring it, rather than attempting to direct people away from it, will likely cause more harm.

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

#48

Post by Dwolb » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

IMO L1 (Ethereum, Solana, Fantom, etc.) development is closer to building out a communications or telco network.

From that “hard” technology perspective, it’s very early days. And the apps that run on top of these L1s are fully limited by L1 bandwidth, latency, and blockspace.

So, I think we’re in the pre-dial-up days for blockchains and will need a couple more orders of magnitude improvement to be (universally) on par with today’s app performance.

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

#49

Post by Mistletoe » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #36

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.

'Zooming out and seeing the big picture' seems to mean buying into a libertarian vision of the world where the current money system is horribly broken and blockchain technologies are a viable and superior alternative. I profoundly disagree on all points of that analysis.

I’m not libertarian at all. I see cryptocurrency as a fair and transparent way out of the extreme wealth inequality we see in the world today. Decentralization gets me excited. New ways of using technology gets me excited.

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

#50

Post by mikeg8 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

gcampos wrote: post #24

Following the same logic, the late 90s were not the web “early days” because the web started in the early 90s

Not really. The innovations in 90s web technologies solved more “real” problems and gained mass adoption. much different than the blockchain/crypto innovations of the past decade which are still used by a relatively small number of people.