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This is the dot com age of the blockchain. It is hard, close to impossible, to conduct business in this space because at all times are you surrounded by questio

This is the dot com age of the blockchain. It is hard, close to impossible, to conduct business in this space because at all times are you surrounded by questionable upstarts and outright scams who compete by screaming incoherent buzzwords the loudest. All these have valuations far above what a serious upstart could ever achieve. People make outlandish promises that no person of average intelligence could ever take seriously taking up all the air, keynoting conferences and generally diverting discourse from what really needs to be done in order for this technology to be useful. I think we have to wait for all the ICOs and rich statefullness flim-flam to subside before we see any real benefits from this space.

vertex-four 9y ago
Very likely true, but the question is... what benefits are there to be found? I think we found most of the useful spaces for a blockchain quite early on - aside from currency, there's squaring Zooko's Triangle (identity/nameservices), trustless gambling, and simple mechanisms for agreeing where to send money. I think the next set of services (once we've solved scalability+transaction fee problems) will revolve around figuring out what to do now that we have a currency that is very easy to send to anyone over the Internet, rather than trying to develop blockchain technology itself further. Even just getting it into people's hands and developing the user experience further is going to result in the currency gaining far more utility. (I'll note that we still have no reasonable protocol for implementing subscription payments etc.) There was a short period of time, between bitcoin entering the public consciousness and its technology becoming a platform for investment in thin air, an ability for me to buy a whole lot of things with it. With just a little effort, I could've survived with no traditional currency at all. And then that vanished, quickly, as it became obvious that its teething problems were not being solved.

vertex-four 9y ago

Very likely true, but the question is... what benefits are there to be found? I think we found most of the useful spaces for a blockchain quite early on - aside from currency, there's squaring Zooko's Triangle (identity/nameservices), trustless gambling, and simple mechanisms for agreeing where to send money. I think the next set of services (once we've solved scalability+transaction fee problems) will revolve around figuring out what to do now that we have a currency that is very easy to send to anyone over the Internet, rather than trying to develop blockchain technology itself further. Even just getting it into people's hands and developing the user experience further is going to result in the currency gaining far more utility. (I'll note that we still have no reasonable protocol for implementing subscription payments etc.) There was a short period of time, between bitcoin entering the public consciousness and its technology becoming a platform for investment in thin air, an ability for me to buy a whole lot of things with it. With just a little effort, I could've survived with no traditional currency at all. And then that vanished, quickly, as it became obvious that its teething problems were not being solved.