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This is a great article, but I disagree on one point. Blockchains aren't overhyped. Sure, people promote them for strange use cases sometimes. But I'm pretty co
by natrius 11y ago
This is a great article, but I disagree on one point. Blockchains aren't overhyped. Sure, people promote them for strange use cases sometimes. But I'm pretty confident that we'll look back on blockchains as underhyped. Blockchains will reshape entire industries, and some of the largest corporations on the planet will find themselves competing on a level playing field with a few kids in a garage.
Has disintermediation ever been overhyped? Currency disintermediated trusted community members who you knew would do you a favor in return. The printing press disintermediated the Catholic Church, one of the most powerful entities of its day. The internet disintermediated... lots of people. Blockchains disintermediate everyone else.
- goldbrick 11y agoBlockchains are a horrible solution for the problem domain. Oh, you need decentralized consensus? Let's limit throughput to n / w / 0.5n. Hence bitcoin's multi-hour resolution times which are increasing geometrically. Sorry, I don't see it.
- edraferi 11y agoI hope your right, but I'm concerned that blockchains still rely on the core developers. Very few people really understand the protocols, and even they don't audit their nodes' code. You don't have to trust a central database, but you DO need to trust the code that runs the distributed database. This need for trust demands politics, and that's why we have Bitcoin's crisis de jur.
- whazor 11y agoA solution for this problem will be general libraries which you can build blockchains with. But I agree on that maintaining a blockchain needs governance as well.
- debacle 11y agoYou're overhyping block chains right now by comparing them to the printing press and the invention of the Internet. Block chains are a neat technology with limited application.
- natrius 11y agoWe'll find out, won't we? In the meantime, my audience is those who are willing to suspend disbelief and start learning about the technology to see if I'm right.