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Amazon is just one scalability improvement in blockchain away from getting a major DApp-based competitor with the potential to obliterate its e-commerce side (w

by bitL 9y ago

Amazon is just one scalability improvement in blockchain away from getting a major DApp-based competitor with the potential to obliterate its e-commerce side (while keeping cloud one) within a decade.

ztratar 9y ago
What part of a decentralized app gives such a market advantage? To think that centralization is Amazon's main weakness is, pardon me, quite comical. At the end of the day, much of their power stems from efficient centralization of supply chain, purchaser-side negotiations, economies of scale, and team coordination. Just because an app is on the blockchain doesn't innately make it a winner. It has to deliver the same value to customers at a cheaper price. Amazon doesn't make much money on most transactions, so saying the "cut out the middle-man to save money" argument doesn't really work. So where's the logic? I'm genuinely interested, but just not seeing it.
- bitL 9y ago
  First, as you say Amazon is a middleman charging from 3-15% per sale, making many small 3rd party sellers unable to compete (if they pay shipping themselves etc.) Moreover, they often abuse their position by insta-banning sellers e.g. upon very first listing etc. due to faulty machine learning fraud detection, so using their platform is increasingly risky even for quality sellers. The main advantages of Amazon are centralization of payment information without the need to enter CC etc. at different shops for every single purchase (which blockchain has no issues with by design), fast shipping times with Prime (this might be tricky to reproduce; here is the supply chain efficiency advantage you mention; nevertheless a drop-shipping idea with generic warehouse robotics would commodize it) and returns for any reason (this is people-intense unfortunately and not so easy to automate right now). For us programmers, they also supply state-of-art merchant API services with some interesting things like real-time repricing possibility, observing top sellers for any category to duplicate etc. yet there are quite a few flaws and their API feels dated and could be made much better. Amazon as a brand name is also trustworthy; here trust-less approach in DApps and observing any seller/buyer's transaction history can obliterate this advantage, though some implications are quite scary. To replace Amazon, you'd need a marketplace, which seems like the easiest thing for a DApp; another DApp for background checks on sellers/buyers; for Prime you'd need additional robotics (which is no longer so difficult to be honest due to advancements in the past 3 years, especially in confined areas with known environment map), cheap land with pre-fab warehouses that could be owned and ran by individual communities. Obviously, human nature would be biggest risk here (trading illegal goods and services via chains of fully-automated companies, referencing each other), and you might argue that orchestrating all of this might require something like Amazon to exist anyway; I believe though that it only takes for Amazon to make a few hundred capable single programmers to become upset to solve many of coordination problems in automated fashion. Legal and political requirements might be much higher hurdle.
discodave 9y ago
This is blockchain/crypto delusion. Blockchain does not exceed existing systems in any dimension: * In the long run, any valuable blockchain will tend towards centralization so long as there is such a thing as "economic returns to scale". The largest miners will make more profits that they can re-invest in becoming big enough. This has already happened with bitcoin. Eventually, if they become big enough, they (individually or as a cartel) can just take all property rights recorded on the blockchain. * Blockchain is not cheaper than other ways to commit globally distributed transactions. The per-transaction cost of Bitcoin is way higher than something like DynamoDB, Spanner, AWS Aurora et al. * Blockchain is not more efficient than existing database technologies, and will never be. Why do we need to use the electricity consumption of a small-medium country to move bits around? I could go on. I think it's notable that the serious cloud providers like Amazon and Google have not even pretended to care about bitcoin or blockchain. If they really thought it was the currency of the future, they would just kick all the customers of their public clouds and use their resources to takeover any blockchains of value.
- bitL 9y ago
  I think you are conflating cryptocurrency with blockchain-based DApps; they are different animals. See e.g. here advertised Origin protocol's whitepaper to understand threat vector for Amazon's dominance. Cryptocurrencies are IMO just a neat alpha version of what could be possible, a testing playground somebody took way too seriously; their current implementation is seriously underwhelming (i.e. <30tx/s). While neither Amazon nor Google take blockchain seriously publicly, their VC arms do.

by bitL 9y ago

ztratar 9y ago

What part of a decentralized app gives such a market advantage? To think that centralization is Amazon's main weakness is, pardon me, quite comical. At the end of the day, much of their power stems from efficient centralization of supply chain, purchaser-side negotiations, economies of scale, and team coordination. Just because an app is on the blockchain doesn't innately make it a winner. It has to deliver the same value to customers at a cheaper price. Amazon doesn't make much money on most transactions, so saying the "cut out the middle-man to save money" argument doesn't really work. So where's the logic? I'm genuinely interested, but just not seeing it.

bitL 9y ago
First, as you say Amazon is a middleman charging from 3-15% per sale, making many small 3rd party sellers unable to compete (if they pay shipping themselves etc.) Moreover, they often abuse their position by insta-banning sellers e.g. upon very first listing etc. due to faulty machine learning fraud detection, so using their platform is increasingly risky even for quality sellers. The main advantages of Amazon are centralization of payment information without the need to enter CC etc. at different shops for every single purchase (which blockchain has no issues with by design), fast shipping times with Prime (this might be tricky to reproduce; here is the supply chain efficiency advantage you mention; nevertheless a drop-shipping idea with generic warehouse robotics would commodize it) and returns for any reason (this is people-intense unfortunately and not so easy to automate right now). For us programmers, they also supply state-of-art merchant API services with some interesting things like real-time repricing possibility, observing top sellers for any category to duplicate etc. yet there are quite a few flaws and their API feels dated and could be made much better. Amazon as a brand name is also trustworthy; here trust-less approach in DApps and observing any seller/buyer's transaction history can obliterate this advantage, though some implications are quite scary. To replace Amazon, you'd need a marketplace, which seems like the easiest thing for a DApp; another DApp for background checks on sellers/buyers; for Prime you'd need additional robotics (which is no longer so difficult to be honest due to advancements in the past 3 years, especially in confined areas with known environment map), cheap land with pre-fab warehouses that could be owned and ran by individual communities. Obviously, human nature would be biggest risk here (trading illegal goods and services via chains of fully-automated companies, referencing each other), and you might argue that orchestrating all of this might require something like Amazon to exist anyway; I believe though that it only takes for Amazon to make a few hundred capable single programmers to become upset to solve many of coordination problems in automated fashion. Legal and political requirements might be much higher hurdle.

discodave 9y ago

This is blockchain/crypto delusion. Blockchain does not exceed existing systems in any dimension: * In the long run, any valuable blockchain will tend towards centralization so long as there is such a thing as "economic returns to scale". The largest miners will make more profits that they can re-invest in becoming big enough. This has already happened with bitcoin. Eventually, if they become big enough, they (individually or as a cartel) can just take all property rights recorded on the blockchain. * Blockchain is not cheaper than other ways to commit globally distributed transactions. The per-transaction cost of Bitcoin is way higher than something like DynamoDB, Spanner, AWS Aurora et al. * Blockchain is not more efficient than existing database technologies, and will never be. Why do we need to use the electricity consumption of a small-medium country to move bits around? I could go on. I think it's notable that the serious cloud providers like Amazon and Google have not even pretended to care about bitcoin or blockchain. If they really thought it was the currency of the future, they would just kick all the customers of their public clouds and use their resources to takeover any blockchains of value.

bitL 9y ago
I think you are conflating cryptocurrency with blockchain-based DApps; they are different animals. See e.g. here advertised Origin protocol's whitepaper to understand threat vector for Amazon's dominance. Cryptocurrencies are IMO just a neat alpha version of what could be possible, a testing playground somebody took way too seriously; their current implementation is seriously underwhelming (i.e. <30tx/s). While neither Amazon nor Google take blockchain seriously publicly, their VC arms do.