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I can think of a few reasons why most blockchain technology won't take off. 1) Centralized solutions are cheaper. Consider Amazon vs. Filecoin. Amazon can buy

I can think of a few reasons why most blockchain technology won't take off. 1) Centralized solutions are cheaper. Consider Amazon vs. Filecoin. Amazon can buy hard drives in bulk and receive large discounts. They can pass those savings onto their customers. The Filecoin users providing storage to customers will have to 1) convince customers that their technology is safe 2) offer cheaper service. There isn't a trust issue with Amazon. So why would customers move to Filecoin? 2) Centralized solutions are much faster. Yes, there is a bunch of work being done now to allow for smaller transactions (lightning networks, plasma). There's no proof this is going to work. High level scaling solutions remain academic. 3) Development takes longer because the software has to operate in a trustless environment. Every update, no matter how minor, requires an independent security audit. There are quite a few examples of why security audits are not optional. 4) Because money is involved forks can be contentious. The default is to do nothing. A centralized solution with a board of directors and CEO can outpace a blockchain community in development speed and time to market. 5) If the private keys are lost or stolen the consumer is screwed. That makes blockchain technology incredibly risky. It's still safer to pay friends with Chase QuickPay. Banks also have insurance. How can a blockchain be insured? EDIT: Thought of one more. 6) Smart contracts are too rigid to replace the legal system. One option is to use an oracle as a source of information. However, using oracles to pull data from outside the blockchain means most of the logic is centralized.

0800 9y ago
Why blockchain technology may take off: 1) Centralized solutions are costly to freedom of choice and privacy. Consider a solution where Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook photos, S3, and YouTube is run through Filecoin. No more "You haven't used DropBox in a year, so we are closing your account". No more "This video has been demonetized for all advertisers in our network.". No more "we ran these nets over all your photos and use the information gathered to make a better advertisement profile for you". This is what happens when users make and own software: Limewire, Bittorent, Popcorn Time, DC++, Napster, Kazaa. Though most of these are now depricated/forced shut down, it was not for having a better alternative available. 2) Centralized solutions are currently much faster, but they may not be in the future. Also, other coins (that offer spare computing power) or commercial enterprises could act as a power nodes (sub-centralized solutions) in a decentralized network, to speed it up for a fee when needed. Decentralized peer2peer content delivery is currently owned by centralized players, like Akamai. I see no reason why it could not work when it is owned by its users. 3) Because the software has to operate in a trustless environment, a lot of attention has to be spend in making these systems more secure. Security through obfuscation is not a fall-back anymore. If we had known that LastFM stored password hashes as unsalted MD5, would we have trusted it with our accounts? We will have fuzzing tools and static program analysis to help automate checking the security of a contract. 4) Forks can be dealt with in a decentralized manner: voting power being assigned by a provable amount of tokens you own. You can run an entire election in this manner, cryptographically voiding any "vote rigging" argument. 5) You may have so much freedom as to shoot yourself in the foot. Therefore, Cryptocurrency banks may provide support for payment solutions, insurance, lending, for people who don't want to store all their money under their flammable mattress. 6) Smart contracts will fully replace the paper notarial system. Criminals will be booked into networked systems where their identity is biometrically verifiable for the duration of their "stay". Trading and lending circle contracts will be heavily vetted and proven standard smart contracts one can select from a library.
- atomical 9y ago
  1) > "You haven't used DropBox in a year, so we are closing your account". The cost of storing data long-term is non-zero. How would Filecoin offer free storage? > No more "This video has been demonetized for all advertisers in our network." YouTube creators want community guidelines. They don't always like the way that they are interpreted and enforced. I'm sure a small minority wants to build something where they can upload absolutely anything without being censored. For those folks there is Gab.ai. It will never become mainstream though and the advertisers with big budgets will opt out. > Limewire, Bittorent, Popcorn Time, DC++, Napster, Kazaa Users chose Netflix and other centralized streaming services because of their ease of use. Also, copyright enforcement may have played a small role. Some users were claiming that they weren't using the above software to download pirated content. That was a bunch of bullshit. 2) > Decentralized peer2peer content delivery is currently owned by centralized players, like Akamai. I see no reason why it could not work when it is owned by its users. There's no reason why it couldn't work, but there's also no business need driving it. 3) Once an account is compromised in a trustless environment there is no way for the owner to take ownership of that account again. Also, in a trustless environment it's always possible for A) a smart contract to be hacked and B) a bug in the virtual machine to be exploited. Both centralized and decentralized face security issues. 4) They will still be contentious though. Look at Bitcoin. Imagine the last election but applied to software. It's not going to end pretty and unlike a normal company people in the community may not "move on." 5) There may be services in the future, but that would be anathema to the movement. The cryptocurrency apologists want each individual to manage their private keys. They would argue that 1) if you don't have control of your private keys you do not have control of your cryptocurrency 2) it's centralization. 6) This didn't address my criticism. There is no proof that anything like this is even remotely possible.
  - glitch003 9y ago
    >The cryptocurrency apologists want each individual to manage their private keys. Actually, a hybrid solution is possible using multisig and secret sharing algorithms. Many crypto enthusiasts are aware of how the "real world" works. People need to be able to recover access to their accounts if they lose their keys. It's not all black and white like you make it out to be. For example, I implemented a solution for a mobile app that stores a users private key in their phone's keychain. It also splits the key into two parts, and emails the user 1 part, and stores the other part on a centralized server. If a user loses their key, they can get the first recovery part from their email, and by verifying their identity via 2 factor, the centralized server provides them with the second recovery part.
cageface 9y ago
#5 seems like the deal breaker to me for a lot of use cases. The average user is not nearly savvy enough to be trusted to secure their private keys. I can't count how many of my non-tech friends have been locked out of their email accounts or fallen prey to some kind of password fishing attack. With centralized solutions they still have a reasonable chance of getting their account or data back. With a blockchain they are screwed. For most consumers this will be more than enough to scare them off.

0800 9y ago

Why blockchain technology may take off: 1) Centralized solutions are costly to freedom of choice and privacy. Consider a solution where Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook photos, S3, and YouTube is run through Filecoin. No more "You haven't used DropBox in a year, so we are closing your account". No more "This video has been demonetized for all advertisers in our network.". No more "we ran these nets over all your photos and use the information gathered to make a better advertisement profile for you". This is what happens when users make and own software: Limewire, Bittorent, Popcorn Time, DC++, Napster, Kazaa. Though most of these are now depricated/forced shut down, it was not for having a better alternative available. 2) Centralized solutions are currently much faster, but they may not be in the future. Also, other coins (that offer spare computing power) or commercial enterprises could act as a power nodes (sub-centralized solutions) in a decentralized network, to speed it up for a fee when needed. Decentralized peer2peer content delivery is currently owned by centralized players, like Akamai. I see no reason why it could not work when it is owned by its users. 3) Because the software has to operate in a trustless environment, a lot of attention has to be spend in making these systems more secure. Security through obfuscation is not a fall-back anymore. If we had known that LastFM stored password hashes as unsalted MD5, would we have trusted it with our accounts? We will have fuzzing tools and static program analysis to help automate checking the security of a contract. 4) Forks can be dealt with in a decentralized manner: voting power being assigned by a provable amount of tokens you own. You can run an entire election in this manner, cryptographically voiding any "vote rigging" argument. 5) You may have so much freedom as to shoot yourself in the foot. Therefore, Cryptocurrency banks may provide support for payment solutions, insurance, lending, for people who don't want to store all their money under their flammable mattress. 6) Smart contracts will fully replace the paper notarial system. Criminals will be booked into networked systems where their identity is biometrically verifiable for the duration of their "stay". Trading and lending circle contracts will be heavily vetted and proven standard smart contracts one can select from a library.

atomical 9y ago
1) > "You haven't used DropBox in a year, so we are closing your account". The cost of storing data long-term is non-zero. How would Filecoin offer free storage? > No more "This video has been demonetized for all advertisers in our network." YouTube creators want community guidelines. They don't always like the way that they are interpreted and enforced. I'm sure a small minority wants to build something where they can upload absolutely anything without being censored. For those folks there is Gab.ai. It will never become mainstream though and the advertisers with big budgets will opt out. > Limewire, Bittorent, Popcorn Time, DC++, Napster, Kazaa Users chose Netflix and other centralized streaming services because of their ease of use. Also, copyright enforcement may have played a small role. Some users were claiming that they weren't using the above software to download pirated content. That was a bunch of bullshit. 2) > Decentralized peer2peer content delivery is currently owned by centralized players, like Akamai. I see no reason why it could not work when it is owned by its users. There's no reason why it couldn't work, but there's also no business need driving it. 3) Once an account is compromised in a trustless environment there is no way for the owner to take ownership of that account again. Also, in a trustless environment it's always possible for A) a smart contract to be hacked and B) a bug in the virtual machine to be exploited. Both centralized and decentralized face security issues. 4) They will still be contentious though. Look at Bitcoin. Imagine the last election but applied to software. It's not going to end pretty and unlike a normal company people in the community may not "move on." 5) There may be services in the future, but that would be anathema to the movement. The cryptocurrency apologists want each individual to manage their private keys. They would argue that 1) if you don't have control of your private keys you do not have control of your cryptocurrency 2) it's centralization. 6) This didn't address my criticism. There is no proof that anything like this is even remotely possible.
- glitch003 9y ago
  >The cryptocurrency apologists want each individual to manage their private keys. Actually, a hybrid solution is possible using multisig and secret sharing algorithms. Many crypto enthusiasts are aware of how the "real world" works. People need to be able to recover access to their accounts if they lose their keys. It's not all black and white like you make it out to be. For example, I implemented a solution for a mobile app that stores a users private key in their phone's keychain. It also splits the key into two parts, and emails the user 1 part, and stores the other part on a centralized server. If a user loses their key, they can get the first recovery part from their email, and by verifying their identity via 2 factor, the centralized server provides them with the second recovery part.

cageface 9y ago

#5 seems like the deal breaker to me for a lot of use cases. The average user is not nearly savvy enough to be trusted to secure their private keys. I can't count how many of my non-tech friends have been locked out of their email accounts or fallen prey to some kind of password fishing attack. With centralized solutions they still have a reasonable chance of getting their account or data back. With a blockchain they are screwed. For most consumers this will be more than enough to scare them off.