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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 cryptocurrenc

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.
    - not_real_acct 8y ago
      If you wrote a book, I would buy it. Great post, very succinct.
    - Moodles 8y ago
      Has any technology got a worse hype to practical use ratio than blockchain though?
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        Within the last 3 years: Magic Leap, AR/VR in general, Theranos, Elon Musk's cave-diving submarine, Juicero, self-driving cars, drone delivery. Smartwatches, smart-home speakers, and IoT are roughly tied with blockchain for hype/use ratio.
        Moodles 8y ago
        I disagree. Smart watches like FitBit or Apple actually do stuff, self driving cars do actually drive, Elon Musk's submarine hyped as much as blockchain, seriously? Blockchain businesses have achieved practically nothing.
    - a7776f88862 8y ago
      > it took almost 20 years for the underlying infrastructure to get mature enough to get mass consumer adoption. I don't know if you were on the Internet in 1998. I was. The Web was useful, mature, and had tens of millions of paying customers in 1998. In contrast, all the people I have known to use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies only do it for speculation. You bring up PayPal and list eBay as a "defunct also-ran." The only reason people started using PayPal was to shop on eBay, and the only way PayPal got anyone to start using them for payments was to bribe people with $20 referral bonuses, which they could only do due to their VC firehose of money, and a huge spambot campaign where they pestered eBay merchants with messages along the lines of "I'd like to bid, but I can only do PayPal." (see The PayPal Wars) PayPal is a great historical lesson in explaining why BitCoin and other libertarian hash chain schemes will fail as a currency, because PayPal was founded on the same deluded libertarian fantasy: "“PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before,” Thiel predicted. “It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or pounds or yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.”" https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/who-killed-paypal https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/who-killed-payp... The real value of PayPal turned out to be fraud prevention and consumer protection, something that hash chain schemes lack by design.
- Moodles 8y ago
  Why is Git with signed commits so uninteresting yet a "private blockchain" is?

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.
  - not_real_acct 8y ago
    If you wrote a book, I would buy it. Great post, very succinct.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    Has any technology got a worse hype to practical use ratio than blockchain though?
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      Within the last 3 years: Magic Leap, AR/VR in general, Theranos, Elon Musk's cave-diving submarine, Juicero, self-driving cars, drone delivery. Smartwatches, smart-home speakers, and IoT are roughly tied with blockchain for hype/use ratio.
      - Moodles 8y ago
        I disagree. Smart watches like FitBit or Apple actually do stuff, self driving cars do actually drive, Elon Musk's submarine hyped as much as blockchain, seriously? Blockchain businesses have achieved practically nothing.
  - a7776f88862 8y ago
    > it took almost 20 years for the underlying infrastructure to get mature enough to get mass consumer adoption. I don't know if you were on the Internet in 1998. I was. The Web was useful, mature, and had tens of millions of paying customers in 1998. In contrast, all the people I have known to use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies only do it for speculation. You bring up PayPal and list eBay as a "defunct also-ran." The only reason people started using PayPal was to shop on eBay, and the only way PayPal got anyone to start using them for payments was to bribe people with $20 referral bonuses, which they could only do due to their VC firehose of money, and a huge spambot campaign where they pestered eBay merchants with messages along the lines of "I'd like to bid, but I can only do PayPal." (see The PayPal Wars) PayPal is a great historical lesson in explaining why BitCoin and other libertarian hash chain schemes will fail as a currency, because PayPal was founded on the same deluded libertarian fantasy: "“PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before,” Thiel predicted. “It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or pounds or yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.”" https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/who-killed-paypal https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/who-killed-payp... The real value of PayPal turned out to be fraud prevention and consumer protection, something that hash chain schemes lack by design.
Moodles 8y ago
Why is Git with signed commits so uninteresting yet a "private blockchain" is?