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Don't forget the first step "Do you not really care about the technology and just want to write a webapp that gets mad investor money?" and an arrow that goes s
by Derek_MK 8y ago
Don't forget the first step "Do you not really care about the technology and just want to write a webapp that gets mad investor money?" and an arrow that goes straight to "Yes"
- calibas 8y agoI think the days of "mad investor money" just because you added blockchain to something may be over. The hysteria over blockchain went hand-in-hand with last year's cryptocurrency bubble, I wouldn't be surprised if smart investors are avoiding it now.
- woah 8y agoWouldn’t the dumb investors be avoiding it now? I think the smart investors would ideally form an opinion based on fundamentals instead of which buzzword is hot right now.
- calibas 8y agoI'm no investor, but I assume a whole year of the markets crashing would discourage people.
- starbeast 8y agoThen again, when you look at the rest of the economy it would seem that people only have a two year memory for really bad ideas, at best.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYes, I used to think stocks were a good investment, but then that one year they all crashed and I realized stocks are all hype.
- lukev 8y agoSmart investors that consider fundamentals would read the flowchart in OP and "consider database" instead of blockchain.
- vidarh 8y agoI've reviewed startups this year that had genuinely useful uses for blockchain (I can't go into details as I'd violate confidentiality). They key being that it was "just a tech choice" based on need, on the backend of a much larger idea. They could have done it without a blockchain, but it was a good fit for what they did. That said, I've also seen a bunch of "X, but with blockchain! Can we have money now?" startups looking for funding.
- jldugger 8y agoAnd if that opinion was 'this is a garbage fire' then we're back to 'all investors avoid it.'
- cabaalis 8y agoI also wonder how many projects exist now where the blockchain they decided to build their implementation upon will become technical debt. Also, dig your username, lol.
- CydeWeys 8y agoDefinitely the vast majority of them. Bitcoin and Namecoin are the only really compelling use cases I've ever seen. Even Ethereum kind of falters because there's not much you can really accomplish with a purely digital contract.
- greggyb 8y agoThis might be seen as picking a nit, but I think the distinction is important. Ethereum falters not because you can't do much with a purely digital contract, but because people typically want the guarantees of a digital contract except when they don't. There is so much value (if only from inertia), of being able to fall back onto negotiation, or in a more negative circumstance litigation, around an existing contract. The digital contract is too rigid for how contracts are typically executed in the real world.
- chrisco255 8y agoIt only falters because the current implementation doesn't scale and the scaling solutions are 1-2 years out. Otherwise running a VM on a block chain is a brilliant idea and has already produced thousands of projects. "Smart contracts" aren't necessarily analagous to actual contracts. They can also be programmed with configurability.
- posterboy 8y agoI read the parent implying the opposite. The cases where the eth contracts are secure, because they only rely on actions captured in and only in the network, are very few.
- reidjs 8y agoWhat about things like games with very well defined rules?
- Kiro 8y agoYes, it's the opposite now. If you say "blockchain" it's a red flag for investors. I know people pivoting away from blockchain (like they should have done to begin with) because of meeting too much resistance in VC meetings.
- pkaye 8y agoMeanwhile Overstock.com is selling their retail business and going into blockchain. There is still some hysteria going on.
- tim333 8y agoThe overstock guy is here on fox explaining what he's up to https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5971657426001/?#sp=show-clips https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5971657426001/?#sp=show-clip... (Nov. 26, 2018 - 4:16 - Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne on the company's shift in focus to the blockchain technology.) There doesn't seem much too much hysteria going on there. He's hoping to be a leader in STOs which are a less scammy more regulated version of ICOs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lisper 8y agoI saw a serious mention of blockchain recently as a possible solution to the problem of contaminated produce. The snake oil salesmen will always come up with creative new ideas.
- tim333 8y agoWell Walmart and IBM are working on one of those https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/walmart-is-betting-on-the-blockchain-to-improve-food-safety/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/walmart-is-betting-on-the-... I was chatting to a blockchain enthusiast friend about building something along those lines myself for recording which ingredients came from where but the whole blockchain bit seems a bit tacked on to be trendy. I mean the more obvious way to record the data would be in a regular database but I guess you could write it to a chain as well so people could be sure it hadn't been altered. Dunno. Watching the video at the end of the techcrunch article there's an IBM guy saying a problem is people record what's gone where with all sorts of incompatible systems - paper, local computers etc which makes it slow to figure which farm did it when you get food poisoning. I guess saying they have to write to data to an open blockchain rather than a Walmart database might be an easier sell?
- lisper 8y agoThis is the thing that no one seems to get: there are two things that make a block chain: a Merkle tree and mining. Mining is the expensive part, but the Merkle tree is the part you actually need for 99% of applications (including tracking produce).
- ppeetteerr 8y agoMake sure to mention how you will revolutionize the industry with AI