8 ms·

Crypto/blockchain and decentralized companies in their various forms. People say it's garbage but they also said that about search engine advertising too.

Moodles 8y ago
People also call garbage garbage. Sometimes they're right.
- bsaul 8y ago
  I was just like you until a few months ago, when i got really interested in the technical aspect of DLT. Don’t let the digital currency scam blind you : there are some really really interesting things going on in that field.
  - spaceandshit 8y ago
    Any example companies or products you'd recommend looking at?
    - bsaul 8y ago
      hedera hashgraph papers and founder talks (you should find them on youtube) made me realize some real people were working on solving real world issues, and not just scam people.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    I had a job in a company obsessed with DLT. I didn’t see anything useful. In fact I’d go as far to suggest that the only use of a blockchain is in cryptocurrency. What have you seen which suggests otherwise?
    - bsaul 8y ago
      Maybe you’ve got more insights on the subject since you’ve actually had a job on the tech, but it seems that « private » DLTs , or « b2b » dlts could have some applications where competitors need to share and persist information. Another is with all systems taking the roles traditionnally filled with state actors ( registers of some sorts). But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes it interesting today, imho. edit : to answer your question more precisely, a talk by one of hedera founder to a university class was eye opening to me ( here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQkag6VOo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQkag6VOo0)
      - twblalock 8y ago
        > But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes it interesting today, imho. How long do we have to wait until the lack of a killer app stops being interesting, and simply means the technology is not useful?
        nostrademons 8y ago
        Bitcoin is coming up on its 9-year anniversary. The equivalent point in the web's history was 1998. How many of today's Internet giants were founded in 1998? Amazon. Plenty of defunct also-rans: Netscape, Ebay, Yahoo, AOL, Geocities, Altavista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Pointcast, Monster.com, RealAudio, Pets.com, Kozmo, AllAdvantage.com, Webvan, DoubleClick. Netflix was in its infancy (~1 year old). Apple was a dying hardware company, a few months from bankruptcy and kept alive by Microsoft's cash infusion. Google's official founding was several months in the future. PayPal was right around then. Napster was a year in the future. Friendster and LiveJournal were 4 years in the future, MySpace 5 years, Facebook almost 6. SomethingAwful.com, Bodybuilding.com, and Fark.com were a year in the future, 4chan 3 years, Digg 6 years, and Reddit 7. Twitter was 8 years in the future. YouTube was 7. Heroku and Weebly were 8-9 years in the future, which was the same time SquareSpace graduated to more than one employee. Dropbox was 8 years in the future. AirBnb was also 8 years, but didn't catch on for a further 5 years or so. Indeed was 6, Etsy was 7, Indiegogo was 9, Kickstarter was 11, GoFundMe was 11, Pinterest was 12, Patreon was 14. So to answer your question going by the web's example - probably about 7 years. The "killer app" for the web (communication & coordination, IMHO) started becoming apparent to the mainstream around 2005, with Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Etsy, Indeed, and Twitter all being founded within +-1 year of that. Interestingly, analogues of all of them existed in 1998 (Classmates.com, DejaNews, RealVideo, EBay, Monster, and...well, nothing really for Twitter), but it took almost 20 years for the underlying infrastructure to get mature enough to get mass consumer adoption.
  - prevedmedved 8y ago
    A DLT is just a database. You can't build a business peddling an open source database in 2018.
    - bsaul 8y ago
      i don’t know a lot of database that you can share between any number of parties with write priviledges and yet be sure none of them can destroy, alter, falsify data or even make them unavailable , and which you don’t even need to host yourself. There are some very peculiar properties of a dlt, that makes them special.
      - Moodles 8y ago
        You mean a merkle tree
      - MauranKilom 8y ago
        Isn't that essentially Github?

Moodles 8y ago

People also call garbage garbage. Sometimes they're right.

bsaul 8y ago
I was just like you until a few months ago, when i got really interested in the technical aspect of DLT. Don’t let the digital currency scam blind you : there are some really really interesting things going on in that field.
- spaceandshit 8y ago
  Any example companies or products you'd recommend looking at?
  - bsaul 8y ago
    hedera hashgraph papers and founder talks (you should find them on youtube) made me realize some real people were working on solving real world issues, and not just scam people.
- Moodles 8y ago
  I had a job in a company obsessed with DLT. I didn’t see anything useful. In fact I’d go as far to suggest that the only use of a blockchain is in cryptocurrency. What have you seen which suggests otherwise?
  - bsaul 8y ago
    Maybe you’ve got more insights on the subject since you’ve actually had a job on the tech, but it seems that « private » DLTs , or « b2b » dlts could have some applications where competitors need to share and persist information. Another is with all systems taking the roles traditionnally filled with state actors ( registers of some sorts). But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes it interesting today, imho. edit : to answer your question more precisely, a talk by one of hedera founder to a university class was eye opening to me ( here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQkag6VOo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjQkag6VOo0)
    - twblalock 8y ago
      > But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes it interesting today, imho. How long do we have to wait until the lack of a killer app stops being interesting, and simply means the technology is not useful?
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        Bitcoin is coming up on its 9-year anniversary. The equivalent point in the web's history was 1998. How many of today's Internet giants were founded in 1998? Amazon. Plenty of defunct also-rans: Netscape, Ebay, Yahoo, AOL, Geocities, Altavista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Pointcast, Monster.com, RealAudio, Pets.com, Kozmo, AllAdvantage.com, Webvan, DoubleClick. Netflix was in its infancy (~1 year old). Apple was a dying hardware company, a few months from bankruptcy and kept alive by Microsoft's cash infusion. Google's official founding was several months in the future. PayPal was right around then. Napster was a year in the future. Friendster and LiveJournal were 4 years in the future, MySpace 5 years, Facebook almost 6. SomethingAwful.com, Bodybuilding.com, and Fark.com were a year in the future, 4chan 3 years, Digg 6 years, and Reddit 7. Twitter was 8 years in the future. YouTube was 7. Heroku and Weebly were 8-9 years in the future, which was the same time SquareSpace graduated to more than one employee. Dropbox was 8 years in the future. AirBnb was also 8 years, but didn't catch on for a further 5 years or so. Indeed was 6, Etsy was 7, Indiegogo was 9, Kickstarter was 11, GoFundMe was 11, Pinterest was 12, Patreon was 14. So to answer your question going by the web's example - probably about 7 years. The "killer app" for the web (communication & coordination, IMHO) started becoming apparent to the mainstream around 2005, with Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Etsy, Indeed, and Twitter all being founded within +-1 year of that. Interestingly, analogues of all of them existed in 1998 (Classmates.com, DejaNews, RealVideo, EBay, Monster, and...well, nothing really for Twitter), but it took almost 20 years for the underlying infrastructure to get mature enough to get mass consumer adoption.
- prevedmedved 8y ago
  A DLT is just a database. You can't build a business peddling an open source database in 2018.
  - bsaul 8y ago
    i don’t know a lot of database that you can share between any number of parties with write priviledges and yet be sure none of them can destroy, alter, falsify data or even make them unavailable , and which you don’t even need to host yourself. There are some very peculiar properties of a dlt, that makes them special.
    - Moodles 8y ago
      You mean a merkle tree
    - MauranKilom 8y ago
      Isn't that essentially Github?