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Hello, api. You might want to check this page out: https://www.stateofthedapps.com https://www.stateofthedapps.com There are 938 projects listed that leverag

Hello, api. You might want to check this page out: https://www.stateofthedapps.com https://www.stateofthedapps.com There are 938 projects listed that leverage Ethereum/Solidity. One of my personal favourites is: https://colony.io https://colony.io. The whitepaper is a fun read.

api 9y ago
What I'm really looking for (and I've been asking this question in a lot of places recently) is some concrete examples of real world cases where this tech is being... you know... used as something other than just novelty or tinkering. Block chain centric use cases don't count since those just reinforce my worst case hypothesis-- that cryptocurrency is a financial MMORPG and a pure value-free bubble. What's an actual case of an actual team, project, or organization using this stuff to do something... actual? I'm both a developer and a founder and am very active in tech. I have yet to encounter a single case of someone using a block chain based application in the real world with the exception of the core currency/wire transfer use case of cryptocurrency. We have used it for that ourselves, but as others have noted the appreciation in value is actually harming this use case. What I see here is heaps of money being raised and a lot of developer time being spent building things without any contact with reality whatsoever. As they say in the military: the first casualty of war is the plan. IMHO there is nearly zero chance that you are building the right thing until you have shipped and iterated a few times, especially with something complex and rather byzantine. The only exception to that might be "scratch your own itch" or "dogs making dog food" projects, but those really aren't exceptions since if you are the customer you can (to some extent and in the early days) short circuit the process by testing on yourself in your own head as you go. Colony looks like groupware on the block chain. Groupware is a very well known tar pit of death.
- goodroot 9y ago
  You might like this example, it puts decentralized smart-contracts in a digestible context: https://germanylandofinnovation.com/2016/10/19/german-company-rwe-is-using-ethereum-to-test-blockchain-car-charging/ https://germanylandofinnovation.com/2016/10/19/german-compan... -- Under the prototype, users interact with the charging station by agreeing to a smart contract that is programmed on top of the Ethereum network. Prior to charging, the user makes a deposit on the network, which is later released after the transaction is complete. The main difference is that instead of users being billed for the amount of time that they are connected to charging station–i.e. the way most stations work today–users pay only for the amount of electricity consumed during the charging process. The hope is that both the cost of the micro-transactions, and the allocation and consumption of electricity, will be made more efficient and ultimately save money. In addition, the blockchain plus smart contracts has the potential to streamline the process of purchasing power from a charging station. In theory, this can take place directly with the machine (charging station) and not require prior contact with the providing company or a human representative.
  - api 9y ago
    How is paying for electricity with Ethereum better for me than paying with a card? I don't see the advantage. When VisiCalc was demo'ed there were people lined up literally pulling out their checkbooks and offering to pay almost limitless amounts of money for the prototype. Spreadsheets had insane value to accountants. Other than the core use case of currency that I mentioned, where are the "killer apps" for block chain? A lot of it looks like minor and dubious improvements or solutions in search of a problem. Neither of those comes close to justifying the insane amount of money and resources being poured into this area.
    - davejohnclark 9y ago
      Have you come across https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org? It's outside the currency/wire transfer space. Looked like an interesting application to me, but possibly too nascent to be a shining example
    - goodroot 9y ago
      The big feature of the car example comes within the third paragraph. It's decentralized. The node, the charging station, doesn't need to phone home or synchronize with a central authority in order to process the payment. It can write and fulfill the contract. It may be the case that the fundamental, key, killer features of the blockchain have lost their initial lustre to many people, and I understand that. But decentralization and verifiable, consistent truth are a really, really big deal. There are applications with promise, large promise. Killer apps? Maybe. They will arrive, it's more "which of these" and not "whether these": * https://ambrosus.com https://ambrosus.com: "At the Ambrosus project we aim to radically improve the global supply chains by creating a trusted ecosystem where we can reliably record the entire history of products and execute commercial transactions accordingly." * http://www.augur.net http://www.augur.net: Prediction markets -- fascinating stuff with major potential. * https://qz.com/1163660/brazil-may-write-new-laws-based-on-data-stored-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/ https://qz.com/1163660/brazil-may-write-new-laws-based-on-da... Brazil experimenting with laws/petitions on the blockchain ... There are many amazing use-cases. The reason this YC article was published is because there is a great demand for blockchain from investors. Ignore it or doubt it at your own peril!
- ptk921 9y ago
  Hi Api. Your questions are _spot_ on! Speculative investing + skyrocketing valuations does encourage highly motivated reasoning-- a unique kind of confirmation bias: "This technology MUST be the answer to all the problems of the future because I'm getting wealthier TODAY!" Irrational exuberance is rampant. That said -- the recent New Yorker article on Estonia's digital society [1] covered that country's usage of a blockchain to manage patient healthcare records. > the backbone of Estonia’s digital security is a blockchain technology called K.S.I. K.S.I. from Guardtime [2] is an enterprise permissioned blockchain that is less decentralized than bitcoin and ethereum. Still, its exciting to see that Estonia is leveraging immutability and (some) decentralization to build a secure persistence layer that provides data provenance and a log of data access for management of their citizens' personal data, including healthcare records. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-di... [2] https://guardtime.com/technology https://guardtime.com/technology
  - jhwang5 9y ago
    Sure, but Lituania also didn't need to use the Blockchain for this use case.
    - posterboy 9y ago
      > Lituania You didn't even read properly - we were talking Estonia. At the scale of a local health care system the blockchain is perhaps really nothing more than a fancy database, if at that scale it will stay energy efficient for a long while.
      - jhwang5 9y ago
        If you read correctly, I was not taking any exception to energy efficiency aspect of using Blockchain, either.
- Naomarik 9y ago
  Also as a developer and founder making decisions and executing on every piece of the stack, I also don't see why this is blowing up. It seems to me that a bunch of people who have not had to experience making and executing real software architectural decisions are hyping it up to be more than it is. They've created an echo chamber for this buzzword, and rather than talking about solving a real problem, they're going straight for this solution. Good reliable software is already hard to create and maintain and where I live all these clueless businesses and government folk think that blockchain has come to save them from all their IT woes. Blockchain as a technology as originally described by satoshi's paper is an extremely good solution as a cryptocurrency. You have a bunch of transactions and they all reduce into a single number -- your wallet balance. Anything other than this you're just shoehorning data in a crappy linked list and you'll pay all the penalties for doing so.
- Goladus 9y ago
  > cryptocurrency is a financial MMORPG and a pure value-free bubble. Frankly, I think the MMORPG economic model is more sane. At least in-network consumption is part of the core use case and they've demonstrated 20 years of (incredible) profitability.

api 9y ago

What I'm really looking for (and I've been asking this question in a lot of places recently) is some concrete examples of real world cases where this tech is being... you know... used as something other than just novelty or tinkering. Block chain centric use cases don't count since those just reinforce my worst case hypothesis-- that cryptocurrency is a financial MMORPG and a pure value-free bubble. What's an actual case of an actual team, project, or organization using this stuff to do something... actual? I'm both a developer and a founder and am very active in tech. I have yet to encounter a single case of someone using a block chain based application in the real world with the exception of the core currency/wire transfer use case of cryptocurrency. We have used it for that ourselves, but as others have noted the appreciation in value is actually harming this use case. What I see here is heaps of money being raised and a lot of developer time being spent building things without any contact with reality whatsoever. As they say in the military: the first casualty of war is the plan. IMHO there is nearly zero chance that you are building the right thing until you have shipped and iterated a few times, especially with something complex and rather byzantine. The only exception to that might be "scratch your own itch" or "dogs making dog food" projects, but those really aren't exceptions since if you are the customer you can (to some extent and in the early days) short circuit the process by testing on yourself in your own head as you go. Colony looks like groupware on the block chain. Groupware is a very well known tar pit of death.

goodroot 9y ago
You might like this example, it puts decentralized smart-contracts in a digestible context: https://germanylandofinnovation.com/2016/10/19/german-company-rwe-is-using-ethereum-to-test-blockchain-car-charging/ https://germanylandofinnovation.com/2016/10/19/german-compan... -- Under the prototype, users interact with the charging station by agreeing to a smart contract that is programmed on top of the Ethereum network. Prior to charging, the user makes a deposit on the network, which is later released after the transaction is complete. The main difference is that instead of users being billed for the amount of time that they are connected to charging station–i.e. the way most stations work today–users pay only for the amount of electricity consumed during the charging process. The hope is that both the cost of the micro-transactions, and the allocation and consumption of electricity, will be made more efficient and ultimately save money. In addition, the blockchain plus smart contracts has the potential to streamline the process of purchasing power from a charging station. In theory, this can take place directly with the machine (charging station) and not require prior contact with the providing company or a human representative.
- api 9y ago
  How is paying for electricity with Ethereum better for me than paying with a card? I don't see the advantage. When VisiCalc was demo'ed there were people lined up literally pulling out their checkbooks and offering to pay almost limitless amounts of money for the prototype. Spreadsheets had insane value to accountants. Other than the core use case of currency that I mentioned, where are the "killer apps" for block chain? A lot of it looks like minor and dubious improvements or solutions in search of a problem. Neither of those comes close to justifying the insane amount of money and resources being poured into this area.
  - davejohnclark 9y ago
    Have you come across https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org? It's outside the currency/wire transfer space. Looked like an interesting application to me, but possibly too nascent to be a shining example
  - goodroot 9y ago
    The big feature of the car example comes within the third paragraph. It's decentralized. The node, the charging station, doesn't need to phone home or synchronize with a central authority in order to process the payment. It can write and fulfill the contract. It may be the case that the fundamental, key, killer features of the blockchain have lost their initial lustre to many people, and I understand that. But decentralization and verifiable, consistent truth are a really, really big deal. There are applications with promise, large promise. Killer apps? Maybe. They will arrive, it's more "which of these" and not "whether these": * https://ambrosus.com https://ambrosus.com: "At the Ambrosus project we aim to radically improve the global supply chains by creating a trusted ecosystem where we can reliably record the entire history of products and execute commercial transactions accordingly." * http://www.augur.net http://www.augur.net: Prediction markets -- fascinating stuff with major potential. * https://qz.com/1163660/brazil-may-write-new-laws-based-on-data-stored-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/ https://qz.com/1163660/brazil-may-write-new-laws-based-on-da... Brazil experimenting with laws/petitions on the blockchain ... There are many amazing use-cases. The reason this YC article was published is because there is a great demand for blockchain from investors. Ignore it or doubt it at your own peril!
ptk921 9y ago
Hi Api. Your questions are _spot_ on! Speculative investing + skyrocketing valuations does encourage highly motivated reasoning-- a unique kind of confirmation bias: "This technology MUST be the answer to all the problems of the future because I'm getting wealthier TODAY!" Irrational exuberance is rampant. That said -- the recent New Yorker article on Estonia's digital society [1] covered that country's usage of a blockchain to manage patient healthcare records. > the backbone of Estonia’s digital security is a blockchain technology called K.S.I. K.S.I. from Guardtime [2] is an enterprise permissioned blockchain that is less decentralized than bitcoin and ethereum. Still, its exciting to see that Estonia is leveraging immutability and (some) decentralization to build a secure persistence layer that provides data provenance and a log of data access for management of their citizens' personal data, including healthcare records. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-di... [2] https://guardtime.com/technology https://guardtime.com/technology
- jhwang5 9y ago
  Sure, but Lituania also didn't need to use the Blockchain for this use case.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    > Lituania You didn't even read properly - we were talking Estonia. At the scale of a local health care system the blockchain is perhaps really nothing more than a fancy database, if at that scale it will stay energy efficient for a long while.
    - jhwang5 9y ago
      If you read correctly, I was not taking any exception to energy efficiency aspect of using Blockchain, either.
Naomarik 9y ago
Also as a developer and founder making decisions and executing on every piece of the stack, I also don't see why this is blowing up. It seems to me that a bunch of people who have not had to experience making and executing real software architectural decisions are hyping it up to be more than it is. They've created an echo chamber for this buzzword, and rather than talking about solving a real problem, they're going straight for this solution. Good reliable software is already hard to create and maintain and where I live all these clueless businesses and government folk think that blockchain has come to save them from all their IT woes. Blockchain as a technology as originally described by satoshi's paper is an extremely good solution as a cryptocurrency. You have a bunch of transactions and they all reduce into a single number -- your wallet balance. Anything other than this you're just shoehorning data in a crappy linked list and you'll pay all the penalties for doing so.
Goladus 9y ago
> cryptocurrency is a financial MMORPG and a pure value-free bubble. Frankly, I think the MMORPG economic model is more sane. At least in-network consumption is part of the core use case and they've demonstrated 20 years of (incredible) profitability.