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I also wonder how many projects exist now where the blockchain they decided to build their implementation upon will become technical debt. Also, dig your usern

I 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 ago
Definitely 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 ago
  This 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 ago
    It 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 ago
    I 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 ago
    What about things like games with very well defined rules?
  - Kiro 8y ago
    "Smart contracts" have nothing to do with normal contracts. "Distributed script" is a much better name. Basically deterministic scripts you run on multiple computers.
- Geee 8y ago
  Sia is also very compelling and useful (IMO the most useful): https://www.sia.tech/ https://www.sia.tech/
- tim333 8y ago
  Ethereum has proved ok at launching tradable tokens on which a lot of money has changed hands, for better or worse.
rsynnott 8y ago
I assume most pointless uses of the most holy and almighty blockchain could be fairly easily ripped out and replaced with a merkle tree (and in many cases, probably with a linked list).
davidgerard 8y ago
Way too many of them. I expect sysadmins to be dealing with systems whose datastore is a gratuitous blockchain-derived thing for the next twenty years. And all the programs are "smart contracts", which we used to call "database triggers" and "stored procedures".
plorkyeran 8y ago
Very few. You can't have technical debt without first building something useful, and there aren't very many blockchain projects which made it that far.

I 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 ago

Definitely 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 ago
This 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 ago
  It 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  What about things like games with very well defined rules?
- Kiro 8y ago
  "Smart contracts" have nothing to do with normal contracts. "Distributed script" is a much better name. Basically deterministic scripts you run on multiple computers.
Geee 8y ago
Sia is also very compelling and useful (IMO the most useful): https://www.sia.tech/ https://www.sia.tech/
tim333 8y ago
Ethereum has proved ok at launching tradable tokens on which a lot of money has changed hands, for better or worse.

rsynnott 8y ago

I assume most pointless uses of the most holy and almighty blockchain could be fairly easily ripped out and replaced with a merkle tree (and in many cases, probably with a linked list).

davidgerard 8y ago

Way too many of them. I expect sysadmins to be dealing with systems whose datastore is a gratuitous blockchain-derived thing for the next twenty years. And all the programs are "smart contracts", which we used to call "database triggers" and "stored procedures".

plorkyeran 8y ago

Very few. You can't have technical debt without first building something useful, and there aren't very many blockchain projects which made it that far.