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The blockchain. A strange thing to say when Bitcoin is nearing $8k each, but I'm not interested in cryptocurrencies as an abstract store of value based on the f

The blockchain. A strange thing to say when Bitcoin is nearing $8k each, but I'm not interested in cryptocurrencies as an abstract store of value based on the fever of the market. By now, however, I really thought someone would have found a use for the blockchain as the underpinning of some kind of new app or tech that would be able to create real value for bitcoin or whichever crypto they built it on. However, we just haven't seen that. We have a lot of gambling, a lot of whales moving the waters, and a lot of irrational exuberance. But no solid tech. It's still early, but I haven't even heard of anything in the works that really knocks my boots off. All in all, I'm glad people are getting rich (although my hunch is that most getting rich were so to begin with), but so far the tech part of it all has been a big disappointment. I guess other than finding a way to make space heaters that generate money. That's pretty cool.

jjn2009 9y ago
2017 was the biggest year for blockchain by a huge margin by many metrics (see https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/ https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/). there is now 200 billion dollars in this space, give it another year or two. Some things will shake out for sure, probably a lot of it, but many efforts will lead to production applications.
- pandler 9y ago
  That's the thing. Blockchain tech is still pretty early stage in terms of reaching the general consumer. Yes, Bitcoin has been around for 8+ years now, but it takes a damn long time for a brand new type of technology to mature and work out the kinks. Ethereum has only been around for about 3 (2014). It's easy to look at the space right now and see that it isn't currently viable, but that sentiment completely ignores the passage of time and the fact that we are moving towards the goal of general applicability. Yes, there will probably be a 2000's style shakeout of all the failed or mislead or me-too attempts, but the fact that there are so many projects popping up should tell you that we are still trying to figure out what we can and should do with blockchain.
kobeya 9y ago
Well, what are you looking for? There's lots of tech developments happening in the bitcoin space, from mimblewimble to lightning to confidential assets & zero knowledge proofs. But it sounds like none of this is what you had in mind?
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  Something consumer driven that makes a $200 billion market even begin to make sense would be a start.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    So, payments? There's plenty of work being done on that. See: lightning. "Market" and "market cap" are two different things. The market cap of a currency is inversely driven by the velocity of money, which for bitcoin is quite low. The "market" (cap) of the US dollar is in the trillions even by low conservative estimates.
guiomie 9y ago
Same here. Smart contract look interesting, but I haven't found a use case the WOW'ed me.
Nuzzerino 9y ago
Hmm, have you heard of SingularityNET? There are plenty of projects being made that have real, valuable uses for blockchain tech. Marketplaces are one of them. If you want an app store that isn't controlled by one corporation that can force you play by their arbitrary rules, blockchain can allow this to happen. A centralized front-end is necessary, but that's all it is, a front-end. They have pretty much zero incentive to play hardball with the customers. You're right that most of it is over-inflated hype. But to say the technology is useless is a stretch.
- natch 9y ago
  “Arbitrary” rules? That’s flamebait... it’s already been explained here as nauseum that the rules help protect the privacy and security of end users.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Arbitrary (adj): 1. subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion.
  - Nuzzerino 9y ago
    > The rules help protect the privacy and security of end users The rules are for one thing and one thing only: To maximize the price per share of the company. This correlates with privacy and security, but only because the market has eliminated the players that do not provide security and privacy for users. But even then, there is plenty of evidence that your data is not secure or private, in the hands of tech giants. The definition of security is itself subjective and contextual. What the market does not eliminate (yet), are companies that abuse their power once they have it. Google dropped "Don't Be Evil" and backed it up with actions that aren't quite so benevolent. Although other services such as DuckDuckGo have launched, to try to compete, the market ultimately did not change. If this were to happen in a decentralized blockchain service, the back-end would be fully transparent. Therefore, the end users could have easily chosen another engine which is built upon that same back-end, rather than a fully watered down version that tries to reinvent the billion-dollar wheel on a sub-million-dollar budget.
justhackedme 9y ago
What does "blockchain" do? If you can answer that question, it'll be worth it.
marcus_holmes 9y ago
yep. Haven't seen a single application that isn't primarily aimed at raising investment money. It's Ponzi's all the way down as far as I can tell. That may change, of course.
- intruder 9y ago
  Golem seems interesting, rent out your cpu cycles to others. I think it currently works only with Blender, i.e. you could rent out rendering-farm.
  - anonymous5133 9y ago
    Golem is definitely interesting considering that big cloud computing companies are now selling computing power.
- 6nf 9y ago
  The only application I've seen other than raising money is gambling, e.g. SatoshiDice
swyx 9y ago
have you looked into IPFS/Filecoin and still view distributed storage as overhyped? or just havent looked that hard into the different ideas that are out there?
- DaSilentStorm 9y ago
  First: I love the idea behind IPFS and decentralized storage and I'm sure there will be some valid use cases. But: There's already tech available enabling these very use cases (see https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) and the adoption is pretty low. Plus IPFS doesn't solve the problem of disappearing peers at all. If no one's willing to mirror your awesome IPFS page, it will be gone the same way as with centralized hosting. Fun Fact: IPFS is not BlockChain tech.
anonymous5133 9y ago
IMO, the killer app for cryptocurrency is going to be open bazaar. What is open bazaar? Simply put - it is a peer to peer decentralized market place. Think of a something like amazon except no fees to sell, no restriction on what you can sell and powered by bitcoin. Right now the software does not work fully because the only crypto you can use it bitcoin which currently has high fees. The devs are going o switch to using bitcoin cash which has low transaction fees (pennies per transaction). I have bought and sold items on open bazaar when it was working and it works flawlessly. The buying and selling experience is by far the best I've had. Since there are no fees (other than transaction fees charged by BTC/BCH) you can make more profit compared to selling on ebay/amazon.
- m_t 9y ago
  There's no fee (except, you know, for the fees).
fidrelity 9y ago
What do you think about the Brave Browser? While it's just a Chromium with an integrated ad blocker + no-track, I think their curated publisher model might change the online ad industry for the better!
- namdnay 9y ago
  I'm not sure the Brave concept really needs blockchain - it could be implemented far more easily with a centralised DB. To be honest it looks like yet another ICO cashgrab
tramGG 9y ago
You should check out "Synapse AI" -- it's one of the first pieces of blockchain tech that actually makes sense. They want to decentralize AI and facilitate democratized AI economies on the blockchain.
dbcooper 9y ago
Check out FunFair - a well thought out/executed blockchain gambling system.
lj3 9y ago
> I guess other than finding a way to make space heaters that generate money. That's pretty cool. That's the fundamental flaw in the blockchain, IMHO. The amount of resources in terms of computing and electricity you need to verify transactions at scale is ridiculous. Nobody's going to bother with that unless there's a serious payoff involved. I find it helps to mentally replace the word 'blockchain' with 'triple entry accounting.' You don't expect much groundbreaking tech work to come from something like triple entry accounting.

jjn2009 9y ago

2017 was the biggest year for blockchain by a huge margin by many metrics (see https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/ https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/). there is now 200 billion dollars in this space, give it another year or two. Some things will shake out for sure, probably a lot of it, but many efforts will lead to production applications.

pandler 9y ago
That's the thing. Blockchain tech is still pretty early stage in terms of reaching the general consumer. Yes, Bitcoin has been around for 8+ years now, but it takes a damn long time for a brand new type of technology to mature and work out the kinks. Ethereum has only been around for about 3 (2014). It's easy to look at the space right now and see that it isn't currently viable, but that sentiment completely ignores the passage of time and the fact that we are moving towards the goal of general applicability. Yes, there will probably be a 2000's style shakeout of all the failed or mislead or me-too attempts, but the fact that there are so many projects popping up should tell you that we are still trying to figure out what we can and should do with blockchain.

kobeya 9y ago

Well, what are you looking for? There's lots of tech developments happening in the bitcoin space, from mimblewimble to lightning to confidential assets & zero knowledge proofs. But it sounds like none of this is what you had in mind?

michaelchisari 9y ago
Something consumer driven that makes a $200 billion market even begin to make sense would be a start.
- kobeya 9y ago
  So, payments? There's plenty of work being done on that. See: lightning. "Market" and "market cap" are two different things. The market cap of a currency is inversely driven by the velocity of money, which for bitcoin is quite low. The "market" (cap) of the US dollar is in the trillions even by low conservative estimates.

guiomie 9y ago

Same here. Smart contract look interesting, but I haven't found a use case the WOW'ed me.

Nuzzerino 9y ago

Hmm, have you heard of SingularityNET? There are plenty of projects being made that have real, valuable uses for blockchain tech. Marketplaces are one of them. If you want an app store that isn't controlled by one corporation that can force you play by their arbitrary rules, blockchain can allow this to happen. A centralized front-end is necessary, but that's all it is, a front-end. They have pretty much zero incentive to play hardball with the customers. You're right that most of it is over-inflated hype. But to say the technology is useless is a stretch.

natch 9y ago
“Arbitrary” rules? That’s flamebait... it’s already been explained here as nauseum that the rules help protect the privacy and security of end users.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Arbitrary (adj): 1. subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion.
- Nuzzerino 9y ago
  > The rules help protect the privacy and security of end users The rules are for one thing and one thing only: To maximize the price per share of the company. This correlates with privacy and security, but only because the market has eliminated the players that do not provide security and privacy for users. But even then, there is plenty of evidence that your data is not secure or private, in the hands of tech giants. The definition of security is itself subjective and contextual. What the market does not eliminate (yet), are companies that abuse their power once they have it. Google dropped "Don't Be Evil" and backed it up with actions that aren't quite so benevolent. Although other services such as DuckDuckGo have launched, to try to compete, the market ultimately did not change. If this were to happen in a decentralized blockchain service, the back-end would be fully transparent. Therefore, the end users could have easily chosen another engine which is built upon that same back-end, rather than a fully watered down version that tries to reinvent the billion-dollar wheel on a sub-million-dollar budget.

justhackedme 9y ago

What does "blockchain" do? If you can answer that question, it'll be worth it.

marcus_holmes 9y ago

yep. Haven't seen a single application that isn't primarily aimed at raising investment money. It's Ponzi's all the way down as far as I can tell. That may change, of course.

intruder 9y ago
Golem seems interesting, rent out your cpu cycles to others. I think it currently works only with Blender, i.e. you could rent out rendering-farm.
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  Golem is definitely interesting considering that big cloud computing companies are now selling computing power.
6nf 9y ago
The only application I've seen other than raising money is gambling, e.g. SatoshiDice

swyx 9y ago

have you looked into IPFS/Filecoin and still view distributed storage as overhyped? or just havent looked that hard into the different ideas that are out there?

DaSilentStorm 9y ago
First: I love the idea behind IPFS and decentralized storage and I'm sure there will be some valid use cases. But: There's already tech available enabling these very use cases (see https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) and the adoption is pretty low. Plus IPFS doesn't solve the problem of disappearing peers at all. If no one's willing to mirror your awesome IPFS page, it will be gone the same way as with centralized hosting. Fun Fact: IPFS is not BlockChain tech.

anonymous5133 9y ago

IMO, the killer app for cryptocurrency is going to be open bazaar. What is open bazaar? Simply put - it is a peer to peer decentralized market place. Think of a something like amazon except no fees to sell, no restriction on what you can sell and powered by bitcoin. Right now the software does not work fully because the only crypto you can use it bitcoin which currently has high fees. The devs are going o switch to using bitcoin cash which has low transaction fees (pennies per transaction). I have bought and sold items on open bazaar when it was working and it works flawlessly. The buying and selling experience is by far the best I've had. Since there are no fees (other than transaction fees charged by BTC/BCH) you can make more profit compared to selling on ebay/amazon.

m_t 9y ago
There's no fee (except, you know, for the fees).

fidrelity 9y ago

What do you think about the Brave Browser? While it's just a Chromium with an integrated ad blocker + no-track, I think their curated publisher model might change the online ad industry for the better!

namdnay 9y ago
I'm not sure the Brave concept really needs blockchain - it could be implemented far more easily with a centralised DB. To be honest it looks like yet another ICO cashgrab

tramGG 9y ago

You should check out "Synapse AI" -- it's one of the first pieces of blockchain tech that actually makes sense. They want to decentralize AI and facilitate democratized AI economies on the blockchain.

dbcooper 9y ago

Check out FunFair - a well thought out/executed blockchain gambling system.

lj3 9y ago

> I guess other than finding a way to make space heaters that generate money. That's pretty cool. That's the fundamental flaw in the blockchain, IMHO. The amount of resources in terms of computing and electricity you need to verify transactions at scale is ridiculous. Nobody's going to bother with that unless there's a serious payoff involved. I find it helps to mentally replace the word 'blockchain' with 'triple entry accounting.' You don't expect much groundbreaking tech work to come from something like triple entry accounting.