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As cool as blockchain is, it sure is starting to pick up hype. When these.. I don't know what to call them.. culture theorists..? start talking about how it wi

As cool as blockchain is, it sure is starting to pick up hype. When these.. I don't know what to call them.. culture theorists..? start talking about how it will CHANGE EVERYTHING, I really start to get skeptical. Look, I think blockchain can basically be seen as a public, distributed-trust ledger. It's not like it doesn't have any kind of social precedent, the concept of a "ledger" has existed... throughout all of modern civilisation? I think the decentralised and computation-oriented nature of blockchain has some interesting uses, but let's not pretend we didn't previously know what a ledger is. Pretty much all of the things listed in this page under "Web 3.0" are things we already do. Blockchain might eventually lead to new ways of doing these things, but let's not pretend it will CHANGE EVERYTHING, it will just allow to do these things, maybe, a bit more efficiently and with more trust. Maybe. Sigh. Sorry, already getting a little tired of the utopian predictions starting to be promoted by techno-evangelists jumping on this bandwagon. Enthusiasm is good, hype gets old quickly.

m3ta 10y ago
The innovation behind a blockchain-based system isn't the ledger or the distributed nature of the thing. It's the incentive structure behind proof-of-work that gives Bitcoins their value. The non-zero value of the bitcoin network is the reason the blockchain exists, and it's the reason it can be used as a decentralized neutral third party for building apps. The blockchain "killer app" is money (Bitcoin).
- radarsat1 10y ago
  But that already exists. So what is all this other stuff?
  - m3ta 10y ago
    That is the million BTC question. Bitcoin, on its own, could "change the world". Other blockchain apps could be influential even if the network/reach of Bitcoin stays at its current level. It's unclear which implementation (if any) will be the winner in the long run.
  - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
    Not Invented Here in a nutshell. Noone wants to buy Bitcoin to enrich those who came before them, so they'd rather setup their own version and sell it to others as "the next big thing"
natrius 10y ago
Thinking about some blockchain precedents can lead to some valuable insights about what we can build with them. It's effectively a scroll. Societies used scrolls to record actions so they could consult history to make decisions. Power was concentrated in the scribes and their masters who controlled the scrolls. If we now have a digital scroll in the cloud controlled by no one, that could be a powerful tool for coordinating entire societies without concentrating power. Maybe.

m3ta 10y ago

The innovation behind a blockchain-based system isn't the ledger or the distributed nature of the thing. It's the incentive structure behind proof-of-work that gives Bitcoins their value. The non-zero value of the bitcoin network is the reason the blockchain exists, and it's the reason it can be used as a decentralized neutral third party for building apps. The blockchain "killer app" is money (Bitcoin).

radarsat1 10y ago
But that already exists. So what is all this other stuff?
- m3ta 10y ago
  That is the million BTC question. Bitcoin, on its own, could "change the world". Other blockchain apps could be influential even if the network/reach of Bitcoin stays at its current level. It's unclear which implementation (if any) will be the winner in the long run.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  Not Invented Here in a nutshell. Noone wants to buy Bitcoin to enrich those who came before them, so they'd rather setup their own version and sell it to others as "the next big thing"

natrius 10y ago

Thinking about some blockchain precedents can lead to some valuable insights about what we can build with them. It's effectively a scroll. Societies used scrolls to record actions so they could consult history to make decisions. Power was concentrated in the scribes and their masters who controlled the scrolls. If we now have a digital scroll in the cloud controlled by no one, that could be a powerful tool for coordinating entire societies without concentrating power. Maybe.