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ETH is used only within the blockchain ecosystem. Its greatest utility has been enabling ICOs. OMG and BAT are both interesting proof of concepts, but they are

ETH is used only within the blockchain ecosystem. Its greatest utility has been enabling ICOs. OMG and BAT are both interesting proof of concepts, but they are not really operating at any kind of scale. I don't see how they can transition to a stable and growing company. I love the idea of Augur, but they have something like 50 daily users, and that's not a sustainable business. Perhaps my original comment was a bit too snarky, but my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage.

kbenson 8y ago
> my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage. Perhaps the wild claims and shoot-for-the-stars plans prevented most the blockchain startups from capitalizing on where the easy money was (and usually is), enterprise sales. IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out).
- timoth3y 8y ago
  Absolutely. There is always money to be made selling picks and shovels. IBM, ConsenSys, and others selling blockchain "solutions" to large customers has made a great deal of money over the past two years.
- decentralised 8y ago
  Consider AI which is an academic field for over 50 years and has had billions thrown at it. What's the best we've got so far? Alexa? Watson? Blockchain is very promising but it's an immature field with plenty of room for growth. Most of the people I've met in the last two years are brilliant scientists and engineers but few are experienced at building products with mass appeal (myself included...). In 2019 we'll see plenty of developments in privacy (Zk-SNARKs/STARKs) and scalability (Plasma, Sharding) and hopefully we'll be able to prove if Proof of Stake is as secure as PoW. With all these new building blocks, I'm certain there will be second generation blockchain products that are closer to regular users.
- davidgerard 8y ago
  > IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out). Conference gossip is that this is not the case, and they're experiencing internal pressure to show a production system - any production system - and then to show one that makes back some of the money they've ploughed into this. e.g. IBM's systems for Walmart and Maersk are completely centralised, but the back-end database is Hyperledger, so they're being trumpeted as "GOOD NEWS FOR BLOCKCHAIN" - the correct perspective is "with sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine", and boy are IBM strapping Porky to a rocket.
decentralised 8y ago
ETH is used outside of the blockchain ecosystem: https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-syrian-refugees-using-ethereum-blockchain https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-s.... BAT has the Brave browser as its adoption mechanism. Personally it's my favourite browser for some months now both on desktop and mobile. OMG is from a company (OmiseGo) who operate a payment network in SE Asia. They are quite big and the adoption of OMG by their traditional service is planned as part of the Plasma project.
- timoth3y 8y ago
  The ETH example you mention was a PoC. It did not generate revenue and is not a business. Don't get me wrong. I think it's great, and it might be technically very impressive, but it's not generating money. It's not a business. Omise is interesting in that they clearly have a product and users. They were one of the first ICOs to put a valuation of the tokens at over $1B. Do you have any idea what kind of transaction volume they are handling? I've never seen any numbers. Augur is technically interesting as well, but earlier this year Coindesk noted they have a valuation that amounts to $4.8 million per active user, which seems to me to be unsustainable. https://www.coindesk.com/where-have-all-the-augur-users-gone https://www.coindesk.com/where-have-all-the-augur-users-gone
  - decentralised 8y ago
    The setup was a PoC, but the help it generated was real. Axa's fizzy is live and it's a revenue generating business: https://fizzy.axa/en-gb/ https://fizzy.axa/en-gb/ Omise hasn't launched it's blockchain platform yet (see Plasma) so their volumes are in local currencies. I understand it's in the MM USD but have no data on them atm. Mind you that the valuations are often the sales price of the token times the total supply (market cap). This is not a realistic metric imho. The issue of price discovery is / was addressed in many ICOs using auction theory (English, Dutch, Vicory, etc) but after the sale is completed the market sets the prices. Personally I'm more interested in Token Bonding Curves that guarantee a fixed price along a supply curve.
  - justsee 8y ago

kbenson 8y ago

> my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage. Perhaps the wild claims and shoot-for-the-stars plans prevented most the blockchain startups from capitalizing on where the easy money was (and usually is), enterprise sales. IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out).

timoth3y 8y ago
Absolutely. There is always money to be made selling picks and shovels. IBM, ConsenSys, and others selling blockchain "solutions" to large customers has made a great deal of money over the past two years.
decentralised 8y ago
Consider AI which is an academic field for over 50 years and has had billions thrown at it. What's the best we've got so far? Alexa? Watson? Blockchain is very promising but it's an immature field with plenty of room for growth. Most of the people I've met in the last two years are brilliant scientists and engineers but few are experienced at building products with mass appeal (myself included...). In 2019 we'll see plenty of developments in privacy (Zk-SNARKs/STARKs) and scalability (Plasma, Sharding) and hopefully we'll be able to prove if Proof of Stake is as secure as PoW. With all these new building blocks, I'm certain there will be second generation blockchain products that are closer to regular users.
davidgerard 8y ago
> IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out). Conference gossip is that this is not the case, and they're experiencing internal pressure to show a production system - any production system - and then to show one that makes back some of the money they've ploughed into this. e.g. IBM's systems for Walmart and Maersk are completely centralised, but the back-end database is Hyperledger, so they're being trumpeted as "GOOD NEWS FOR BLOCKCHAIN" - the correct perspective is "with sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine", and boy are IBM strapping Porky to a rocket.

decentralised 8y ago

ETH is used outside of the blockchain ecosystem: https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-syrian-refugees-using-ethereum-blockchain https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-s.... BAT has the Brave browser as its adoption mechanism. Personally it's my favourite browser for some months now both on desktop and mobile. OMG is from a company (OmiseGo) who operate a payment network in SE Asia. They are quite big and the adoption of OMG by their traditional service is planned as part of the Plasma project.

timoth3y 8y ago
The ETH example you mention was a PoC. It did not generate revenue and is not a business. Don't get me wrong. I think it's great, and it might be technically very impressive, but it's not generating money. It's not a business. Omise is interesting in that they clearly have a product and users. They were one of the first ICOs to put a valuation of the tokens at over $1B. Do you have any idea what kind of transaction volume they are handling? I've never seen any numbers. Augur is technically interesting as well, but earlier this year Coindesk noted they have a valuation that amounts to $4.8 million per active user, which seems to me to be unsustainable. https://www.coindesk.com/where-have-all-the-augur-users-gone https://www.coindesk.com/where-have-all-the-augur-users-gone
- decentralised 8y ago
  The setup was a PoC, but the help it generated was real. Axa's fizzy is live and it's a revenue generating business: https://fizzy.axa/en-gb/ https://fizzy.axa/en-gb/ Omise hasn't launched it's blockchain platform yet (see Plasma) so their volumes are in local currencies. I understand it's in the MM USD but have no data on them atm. Mind you that the valuations are often the sales price of the token times the total supply (market cap). This is not a realistic metric imho. The issue of price discovery is / was addressed in many ICOs using auction theory (English, Dutch, Vicory, etc) but after the sale is completed the market sets the prices. Personally I'm more interested in Token Bonding Curves that guarantee a fixed price along a supply curve.
- justsee 8y ago