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There is also lbry, a decentralized media hosting platform based on cryptocurrency. Although I'm still not convinced that the crypto is necessary here...

• abritinthebay 9y ago
  It’s rarely necessary
• geofft 9y ago
  Depends what "cryptocurrency" means. If it's proof-of-work, it's only meaningful if there's an actual double-spend problem in the problem domain, otherwise it's just waste and buzzword. If it doesn't solve proof-of-work, it could make sense—there are lots of production systems that use technologies also used in cryptocurrencies, like Merkle trees for Certificate Transparency and for Chrome OS image signing—but "cryptocurrency" is misleading.
  • abritinthebay 9y ago
    A lot of places use blockchain as some kind of "all you have is a hammer" solution to hashing. Which... I mean in some (rare) cases is a good thing but is usually - as far as I can see - just a way to get VC money or buzz by saying "we use crypto".
    • geofft 9y ago
      Right, and it's also usually significantly more inefficient than just using normal cryptography, so it seems like it's a long-term negative. For lbry itself it looks like they're using coins for actual payments to creators, which seems like it's a worthwhile project (and definitely has the double-spend problem), but it's not clear to me that it needs to be connected with the content distribution problem.
• kauffj 9y ago
  A blockchain is necessary because there is no other method of having a shared, distributed database of digital content that is not owned or controlled by a single party.