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Ask HN: Can a cryptocurrency protocol be a success independent of coin price?
I hear many people talk about why "coin X" is a great investment because the protocol behind is could be "revolutionary". For example, Ethereum.
However, could the protocol behind the coin be a great success & widely used in different areas/industries, while the actual coin price tanks and/or becomes irrelevant?
I guess the main point of the question is: Can a protocol that is behind a cryptocurrency survive, and thrive in the real world, without the coin being valuable?
For a real world example: Is there a chance that the protocol behind Ethereum can be successful and widely used, while the price of Ethereum tanks and the coin disappears?
Or are the 2 forever linked?
- hakanito 9y agoUsually the currency is tied to the protocol to incentivize people to keep the network up and running - this is essentially what mining is. By helping the network to confirm transactions (by mining or staking) you get rewarded with the transaction fees that people pay to make a transfer on the network. Now, there are zero transaction fee protocols like the DAG based IOTA for example (and I think NANO works this way too). In order for your transaction to be confirmed, it has to confirm two previous transactions. So essentially you get no reward other than the fact that your own transaction will be confirmed as well by the next coming transactions.
- wmf 9y agoIn theory all those things can happen, but it's hard for the press to separate success from price. So one way you can help them is to fix the price by design so that it never goes up or down. This will also drive away speculators who probably aren't helping your system anyway.
- coralreef 9y agoNot sure what you mean by the "protocol". Ethereum, like many cryptocurrencies, is open source. So you can fork it, change it, and build your own system. Now your system needs a network of nodes to support the blockchain. How else do you incentivize them but offer them block rewards in the form of tokens/coins? Unless you don't want to be decentralized, which is totally possible. But why would anyone want to use your product if it risks being shut down so easily? So whatever your network is, now you've got traction and you're running into scaling problems. You want to implement new features. Are you really smarter than Vitalik Buterin? Is your team better, can you actually solve those problems? If not, isn't Ethereum ultimately better than whatever is trying to compete against it? Private blockchains could have a place solving niche business problems. But whatever that solution have far more advantages existing on Ethereum vs elsewhere.
- eb0la 9y agoJust sell something on top of a blockchain protocol. Think Ripple, but 100% private blockchain. Just don't allow anyone to sell to anyone but you. Suddenly you've removed the volatility and deflation risk inherent to cryptocurrencies. The bad part is you don't become insanely rich in 24h; but I think that time passed long ago.
- tugberkk 9y agoFor public blockchains, you need cryptocurrency, and it must be at least comparable to the energy miners spent. However, it is different for private blockchains.