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| "What's Ethereum's killer app?" we asked ourselves not long ago. Now we know. It's the world's best publicly-accessible settlement platform for financial tran

| "What's Ethereum's killer app?" we asked ourselves not long ago. Now we know. It's the world's best publicly-accessible settlement platform for financial transactions. I don't see any evidence of this being true.

realPubkey 6y ago
I also see no evidence, but many hints. Most people use ethereum to send eth or ERC20 tokens. There are not many who use the smart contracts for anything else.
drom5 6y ago
I would say that the killer app currently is decentralised finance, lending and trading for example on the chain. The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain.
- cnasc 6y ago
  > The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain. NFTs aren’t exclusively art. For example, I previously worked at https://unlock-protocol.com/ https://unlock-protocol.com/ which uses NFTs to signify membership
- dbspin 6y ago
  Hypothetically, NFTs are amazing. They have the potential to revolutionise royalties and help artist directly profit from the success of their work. There are successful marketplaces like Nifty Gateway for visual NFT's and some under development for music NFTs. But... Right now, Etheriums soaring 'gas' prices are basically freezing new entrants into the market. The cost of 'minting' a token on the blockchain right now - say an image or animation on rarible.com, is enormous. Worse, the gas cost of purchasing an NFT can be triple the sale price. It's the equivalent of a varying, unpredictable rate of VAT in the hundreds of percent. This is having a knock on effect on all the NFT markets. Maybe it can be solved by Etherium 2.0, but right now Ether isn't fit for purpose for NFTs. Tying the cost of smart contract 'gas' to the value of the digital currency made this inevitable.
  - suikadayo 6y ago
    We don’t have to wait for Eth2, there are several L2 solutions in the works right now like Optimism and Polygon
    - dbspin 6y ago
      They're not supported on any of the popular NFT trading / minting sites. That economy is currently built around ETH.
      - suikadayo 6y ago
        Opensea currently uses Matic/Polygon, in addition to L1 https://matic.opensea.io/ https://matic.opensea.io/
  - peter_l_downs 6y ago
    Couldn't agree more that NFTs are theoretically very interesting but the way they work right now is absolute garbage. See this experience report: https://freezine.xyz/4/nfts/index.html https://freezine.xyz/4/nfts/index.html
    - dbspin 6y ago
      I don't think this is particularly an issue with the way NFTs work - except in regard to their choice of Ether, and Ether's current issue with gas prices. I think there's a lot of potential in the existing markets. It's really specifically a problem with the economics of trading them, caused by the inflation in transaction costs of Ether. Article you linked the artists issue is that he couldn't find a market for his art. Which kind of misses the point. "Then I asked around if anyone wanted to buy it. The boys in the groupchat weren't interested. Neither were any of my twitter followers. Damn." Sure you could get lucky with being early into a highly speculative market, but by and large this is like patreon or kickstarter or anything else online. If there's a potential market for what you're making or doing, it's a new (and potentially lucrative) way to tap into it. It doesn't generate a new demand for work that doesn't have (or can't generate) an audience on its own. NFTs aren't a form of advertising, certainly not a particularly effective one. Also the artist initially used Zora (which I've never heard of), rather than Rarible or Opensea, or Mintable or Snark or any of the better known open markets. On rarible he set his royalties to 25% (rather than the usual 10%) which obviously discourages speculative investment. He also set the cost of his first art piece to 1 ETH! Crazy high for an unknown artist. The article kind of seems like a snarky joke, but if it is one I'm not sure what the punchline is, given he really did spend the money and really does seem to want to sell the NFTs. I think it's more likely a case of irony employed as a defence mechanism. We have someone who self confesses he doesn't understand the market, making a remix piece quickly and half assedly, selling it at a high rate across multiple markets, without an audience or any interest in what is popular there. I mean I get it, who wants to miss the gold rush? But it's not a useful barometer of NFTs. Currently all the real money is being made by selective services who primarily work with digital artists who have an existing following, or make work they think will reach an audience - sites like niftygateway.com or superrare.co The work that's selling well is generally excellent. And sure, there is something inherently ridiculous in the idea of 'owning' a piece of digital art. But no more so that owning a numbered print or piece of video art by a renowned artist, or hell a cardigan owned by Kurt Cobain. All of which have real, established and ongoing value.
- antupis 6y ago
  I would say NFT and micropayments are killer apps. It would be fantastic if we had browser addon where you can 1-click pay something like 0.01$ to read article. NFT for gaming is going to be huge industry eg pro-gamers could sell their character skins same way now eg basketball players sell their jerseys or you could import that Hearthstone deck to complete new game.
  - heterodoxxed 6y ago
    | 1-click pay something like 0.01$ to read article. How would this work in a way that takes gas/fees into consideration?
    - Clewza313 6y ago
      That's kind of the point: it's completely infeasible to do microtransactions with Ethereum, much less Bitcoin. At time of writing it costs around $23 (!) to do a single ETH transaction.
      - aabbcc1241 6y ago
        We can if the network is not full of professional miners. If every user has a practical chance to pack their transaction into a block.
      - _alex_ 6y ago
        There are several lightning network (payment channel layer on top of bitcoin) paywalls where you can pay 1/10 of a cent to read an article. The tech exists, its now an adoption problem
      - suikadayo 6y ago
        It’ll be possible with L2 like Optimism which will be out for the public next month.
    - somebodythere 6y ago
      Do it in a state channel or rollup.
- gruez 6y ago
  >The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain. There's this story from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196027 I'm not sure whether it's a good sign or a bad sign. On one hand it shows NFTs being serious because there's a huge ($500+k) transaction behind it. On the other hand it shows how frothy the market is given how someone just dropped $500k for a few hundred bits.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  > The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain Art is probably the worst use-case for NFT. NFT work well for memberships, tickets, virtual land in games, etc. For art, not so much. It doesn't solve ownership: any one else can "own" the same piece of art, it's only the NFT that is unique. It doesn't solve scarcity: the author can make more copies and wrap them into other NFTs. It doesn't solve authenticity: any one can wrap existing art into an NFT and sell it. Basically the only thing NFT art solve is anteriority and possibly authorship: you can prove that you made a piece of art before a certain date, and that you published it first.
ccortes 6y ago
It's not. Maybe if somehow egass fees go down, right now they are so high that even bitcoin is a better alternative. I think the author is equating ethereum with stable coins?
pjc50 6y ago
> world's best publicly-accessible settlement platform for financial transactions. Isn't that SEPA? Or Paypal?
- tmarice 6y ago
  It is, unless you're deemed untouchable.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    There's also the KYC aspects of crypto exchanges.
nstj 6y ago
Are you familiar with the “DeFi revolution?”
- TeeWEE 6y ago
  DeFI is yet another set of inflated expectations and bullish sentiment to attract even more investors. In real terms its not doing a lot yet.
  - nstj 6y ago
    For sure, I never said it was actually implemented/feasible. Just that it’s the current vector by which Ethereum is being marketed
microtherion 6y ago
I'm not a huge fan of lawyers and bankers, but I'd take my chances with them any day over this kind of platform: https://medium.com/@danrobinson/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest-ecc5f0505dff https://medium.com/@danrobinson/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest-ec...

realPubkey 6y ago

I also see no evidence, but many hints. Most people use ethereum to send eth or ERC20 tokens. There are not many who use the smart contracts for anything else.

drom5 6y ago

I would say that the killer app currently is decentralised finance, lending and trading for example on the chain. The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain.

cnasc 6y ago
> The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain. NFTs aren’t exclusively art. For example, I previously worked at https://unlock-protocol.com/ https://unlock-protocol.com/ which uses NFTs to signify membership
dbspin 6y ago
Hypothetically, NFTs are amazing. They have the potential to revolutionise royalties and help artist directly profit from the success of their work. There are successful marketplaces like Nifty Gateway for visual NFT's and some under development for music NFTs. But... Right now, Etheriums soaring 'gas' prices are basically freezing new entrants into the market. The cost of 'minting' a token on the blockchain right now - say an image or animation on rarible.com, is enormous. Worse, the gas cost of purchasing an NFT can be triple the sale price. It's the equivalent of a varying, unpredictable rate of VAT in the hundreds of percent. This is having a knock on effect on all the NFT markets. Maybe it can be solved by Etherium 2.0, but right now Ether isn't fit for purpose for NFTs. Tying the cost of smart contract 'gas' to the value of the digital currency made this inevitable.
- suikadayo 6y ago
  We don’t have to wait for Eth2, there are several L2 solutions in the works right now like Optimism and Polygon
  - dbspin 6y ago
    They're not supported on any of the popular NFT trading / minting sites. That economy is currently built around ETH.
    - suikadayo 6y ago
      Opensea currently uses Matic/Polygon, in addition to L1 https://matic.opensea.io/ https://matic.opensea.io/
- peter_l_downs 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more that NFTs are theoretically very interesting but the way they work right now is absolute garbage. See this experience report: https://freezine.xyz/4/nfts/index.html https://freezine.xyz/4/nfts/index.html
  - dbspin 6y ago
    I don't think this is particularly an issue with the way NFTs work - except in regard to their choice of Ether, and Ether's current issue with gas prices. I think there's a lot of potential in the existing markets. It's really specifically a problem with the economics of trading them, caused by the inflation in transaction costs of Ether. Article you linked the artists issue is that he couldn't find a market for his art. Which kind of misses the point. "Then I asked around if anyone wanted to buy it. The boys in the groupchat weren't interested. Neither were any of my twitter followers. Damn." Sure you could get lucky with being early into a highly speculative market, but by and large this is like patreon or kickstarter or anything else online. If there's a potential market for what you're making or doing, it's a new (and potentially lucrative) way to tap into it. It doesn't generate a new demand for work that doesn't have (or can't generate) an audience on its own. NFTs aren't a form of advertising, certainly not a particularly effective one. Also the artist initially used Zora (which I've never heard of), rather than Rarible or Opensea, or Mintable or Snark or any of the better known open markets. On rarible he set his royalties to 25% (rather than the usual 10%) which obviously discourages speculative investment. He also set the cost of his first art piece to 1 ETH! Crazy high for an unknown artist. The article kind of seems like a snarky joke, but if it is one I'm not sure what the punchline is, given he really did spend the money and really does seem to want to sell the NFTs. I think it's more likely a case of irony employed as a defence mechanism. We have someone who self confesses he doesn't understand the market, making a remix piece quickly and half assedly, selling it at a high rate across multiple markets, without an audience or any interest in what is popular there. I mean I get it, who wants to miss the gold rush? But it's not a useful barometer of NFTs. Currently all the real money is being made by selective services who primarily work with digital artists who have an existing following, or make work they think will reach an audience - sites like niftygateway.com or superrare.co The work that's selling well is generally excellent. And sure, there is something inherently ridiculous in the idea of 'owning' a piece of digital art. But no more so that owning a numbered print or piece of video art by a renowned artist, or hell a cardigan owned by Kurt Cobain. All of which have real, established and ongoing value.
antupis 6y ago
I would say NFT and micropayments are killer apps. It would be fantastic if we had browser addon where you can 1-click pay something like 0.01$ to read article. NFT for gaming is going to be huge industry eg pro-gamers could sell their character skins same way now eg basketball players sell their jerseys or you could import that Hearthstone deck to complete new game.
- heterodoxxed 6y ago
  | 1-click pay something like 0.01$ to read article. How would this work in a way that takes gas/fees into consideration?
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    That's kind of the point: it's completely infeasible to do microtransactions with Ethereum, much less Bitcoin. At time of writing it costs around $23 (!) to do a single ETH transaction.
    - aabbcc1241 6y ago
      We can if the network is not full of professional miners. If every user has a practical chance to pack their transaction into a block.
    - _alex_ 6y ago
      There are several lightning network (payment channel layer on top of bitcoin) paywalls where you can pay 1/10 of a cent to read an article. The tech exists, its now an adoption problem
    - suikadayo 6y ago
      It’ll be possible with L2 like Optimism which will be out for the public next month.
  - somebodythere 6y ago
    Do it in a state channel or rollup.
gruez 6y ago
>The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain. There's this story from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196027 I'm not sure whether it's a good sign or a bad sign. On one hand it shows NFTs being serious because there's a huge ($500+k) transaction behind it. On the other hand it shows how frothy the market is given how someone just dropped $500k for a few hundred bits.
jobigoud 6y ago
> The second killer app is NFTs, basically the exchange of art on the chain Art is probably the worst use-case for NFT. NFT work well for memberships, tickets, virtual land in games, etc. For art, not so much. It doesn't solve ownership: any one else can "own" the same piece of art, it's only the NFT that is unique. It doesn't solve scarcity: the author can make more copies and wrap them into other NFTs. It doesn't solve authenticity: any one can wrap existing art into an NFT and sell it. Basically the only thing NFT art solve is anteriority and possibly authorship: you can prove that you made a piece of art before a certain date, and that you published it first.

ccortes 6y ago

It's not. Maybe if somehow egass fees go down, right now they are so high that even bitcoin is a better alternative. I think the author is equating ethereum with stable coins?

pjc50 6y ago

> world's best publicly-accessible settlement platform for financial transactions. Isn't that SEPA? Or Paypal?

tmarice 6y ago
It is, unless you're deemed untouchable.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  There's also the KYC aspects of crypto exchanges.

nstj 6y ago

Are you familiar with the “DeFi revolution?”

TeeWEE 6y ago
DeFI is yet another set of inflated expectations and bullish sentiment to attract even more investors. In real terms its not doing a lot yet.
- nstj 6y ago
  For sure, I never said it was actually implemented/feasible. Just that it’s the current vector by which Ethereum is being marketed

microtherion 6y ago

I'm not a huge fan of lawyers and bankers, but I'd take my chances with them any day over this kind of platform: https://medium.com/@danrobinson/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest-ecc5f0505dff https://medium.com/@danrobinson/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest-ec...