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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.

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.
laksjd 9y ago
But what percentage of systems is actually ONLY implementable using a block-chain-based cryptocurrency? I love decentralisation as much as the next guy but it's not a feature. Apart from the obvious authority-circumvention (both positive and negative), what killer features do these systems have? All the interesting projects I've seen for ethereum rely on Intel SGX to bring ground truth about the real world onto the chain.
- unboxed_type 9y ago
  When you have a need to establish some business procedure between different parties that do not trust each other, smart contracts might be very useful. No other database is able to provide guarantees/features comparable to the public blockchain in that respect. A trust model of most modern databases just do not comply with "everyone trusts noone" principle. About relying on Intel SGX. Yes, blockchain oracle to be trusted needs to be run in some kind of protected environment. So what? It doesn't imply that technology is useless. I would say, we have a synergy of different security technologies to get really impressive results.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Nuzzerino 9y ago
  In the case of SingularityNET, AI agents are accessible and composable. They can interact with other agents, or act in unison to form larger, more complex agents. The market incentivizes development and maturity of both the system and the individual agents. This is a killer feature if you ask me. There will be a great number of already-useful agents available upon launch of SingularityNET, to kick-start the service's ability to provide tangible value. However, you're right that most of these projects fail to deliver any value. Many projects are riding the hype-train, and many more are outright scams. However, the example I named is none of those. Edit: I should add that a big problem of centralized markets is that nobody wants to put all of their eggs in one basket. Take Second Life for example: In SL, your digital avatar and assets are siloed into that world. You cannot transfer them to the next great virtual world. This is conceptually similar to the standardization debates. Anyone can make their own protocol, but if there are profit motives behind one, the industry will be reluctant to adopt. Standardization takes a lot of time, trust, and debate. And for good reason! With decentralized marketplaces, standards are not quite as important. An implementation can be as fluid as an app, and the cost of replacing one interface/implementation with another is much lower than the cost of standardization. The internal workings of the marketplace itself can be altered with a democratic vote. This is all theoretical, we have yet to see these ideas produce real returns. But the killer feature is that people have more incentives to invest their resources toward adopting the platform, and that itself is a tangible value, as long as the adoption of the platform itself creates value in other ways.

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.

laksjd 9y ago

But what percentage of systems is actually ONLY implementable using a block-chain-based cryptocurrency? I love decentralisation as much as the next guy but it's not a feature. Apart from the obvious authority-circumvention (both positive and negative), what killer features do these systems have? All the interesting projects I've seen for ethereum rely on Intel SGX to bring ground truth about the real world onto the chain.

unboxed_type 9y ago
When you have a need to establish some business procedure between different parties that do not trust each other, smart contracts might be very useful. No other database is able to provide guarantees/features comparable to the public blockchain in that respect. A trust model of most modern databases just do not comply with "everyone trusts noone" principle. About relying on Intel SGX. Yes, blockchain oracle to be trusted needs to be run in some kind of protected environment. So what? It doesn't imply that technology is useless. I would say, we have a synergy of different security technologies to get really impressive results.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Nuzzerino 9y ago
In the case of SingularityNET, AI agents are accessible and composable. They can interact with other agents, or act in unison to form larger, more complex agents. The market incentivizes development and maturity of both the system and the individual agents. This is a killer feature if you ask me. There will be a great number of already-useful agents available upon launch of SingularityNET, to kick-start the service's ability to provide tangible value. However, you're right that most of these projects fail to deliver any value. Many projects are riding the hype-train, and many more are outright scams. However, the example I named is none of those. Edit: I should add that a big problem of centralized markets is that nobody wants to put all of their eggs in one basket. Take Second Life for example: In SL, your digital avatar and assets are siloed into that world. You cannot transfer them to the next great virtual world. This is conceptually similar to the standardization debates. Anyone can make their own protocol, but if there are profit motives behind one, the industry will be reluctant to adopt. Standardization takes a lot of time, trust, and debate. And for good reason! With decentralized marketplaces, standards are not quite as important. An implementation can be as fluid as an app, and the cost of replacing one interface/implementation with another is much lower than the cost of standardization. The internal workings of the marketplace itself can be altered with a democratic vote. This is all theoretical, we have yet to see these ideas produce real returns. But the killer feature is that people have more incentives to invest their resources toward adopting the platform, and that itself is a tangible value, as long as the adoption of the platform itself creates value in other ways.