6 ms·

Sovereign identity, DAOs, NFTs (not just the art stuff which atm is a little cringe but game items, land registries, deeds), stablecoins (usdc, dai, yes there i

Sovereign identity, DAOs, NFTs (not just the art stuff which atm is a little cringe but game items, land registries, deeds), stablecoins (usdc, dai, yes there is also wilder experimentation here). I think people can quickly get dissuaded by some negatives like lack of scaling or environmental issues. These are real but are being solved. We really need communities like HN to engage because if proponents are right then the change will be vast and we are unprepared. My personal favorite outcome is playing out right now. When a tech company is successful they capture near 100% of the value, despite leeching content off users. Ethereum based projects generally share rewards with the community of users that make the protocol/network successful. Applications are forkable, not just the code but the community, too. The community is in control.

graeme 5y ago
And what are some example use cases you can do with those things, or that people are using them for? Genuinely asking. I see people very excited about things like DAOs, but most descriptions seem to be about inter crypto use cases. With the early internet it was easy enough to see there were use cases like “instantly send a letter to someone across the world” or “order a book not stocked at your local store” or “go directly to Nintendo’s website and read their info”. I remember doing this last one as a kid in the library and was instantly taken with the internet. What are some similar ELI5 use cases of the Ethereum chain and those names you mention? Other than intra crypto loans, derivatives etc
- base698 5y ago
  https://seekingalpha.com/news/3680926-binance-launches-tradable-stock-tokens-kicking-off-with-tesla-token https://seekingalpha.com/news/3680926-binance-launches-trada... Liquidity for things that don't normally have liquidity. Example: like wrapped Bitcoin, you could create wrapped Wine. Say you've got $1 million in a wine cellar. Create a wrapped token which allows you to use it as collateral or provide it to a liquidity pool to generate revenue. Now your wine is earning you interest. Something like this may already exist... Same for Tesla stock above. Now that a TSLA token exists you could provide to a pool for interest since it doesn't pay a dividend.
  - lxgr 5y ago
    Commodities and future contracts on them have been around for a while now.
    - base698 5y ago
      On your wine cellar?
      - selectodude 5y ago
        Goldman Sachs did it years ago. https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-accepted-fine-wine-as-collateral-2013-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-accepted-fine-wine-a...
  - graeme 5y ago
    > Now that a TSLA token exists you could provide to a pool for interest since it doesn't pay a dividend. Explain further. Why would you be able to have the benefits of owning wine or TSLS and also earn interest on it. That’s your cake and eating it too. There must be a risk element to the liquidity pool. What risk exposure are you taking by depositing TSLA stock there that you can’t get through normal finance?
Daishiman 5y ago
> Sovereign identity Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. > DAOs A solution in search of a problem > NFTs Speculative. Game items, land registries and deeds are a solved problem. If your jurisdiction/company hasn't solved them already with Postgres and hardcopy it's because it's not interested in solving it or it's not a real problem, just a minor annoyance.
- ccortes 5y ago
  > Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. Jesus Christ. So the only problems that matter are the ones in "civilized" countries? What does that even mean?
  - Kalium 5y ago
    Perhaps it means that this is a known problem with known working solutions. Countries that haven't solved identity are ones that either don't want to or can't, generally due to a mix of corruption and poverty. Perhaps I am simply suffering a tragic failure of imagination, but I fail to see how adding a blockchain changes things substantially.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      Being able to identify people via blockchain either requires them to remember some esoteric passphrase or an ID card with the identifier on it which...solves absolutely nothing.
    - ccortes 5y ago
      > Countries that haven't solved identity are ones that either don't want to or can't, generally due to a mix of corruption and poverty It's not a known problem because each country has its own context. That's like saying US healthcare problem can be solved just by doing what nordic countries do. I'm not arguing for blockchain.
      - deleted 5y ago
viraptor 5y ago
> land registries, deeds I hope that will never happen. We really don't need anyone to end up in a situation where a key is lost and they can neither prove they own something nor sell it legally. Also, "transfer your home by mistake" scams. And have fun trying to figure out how to deal with dead owners.
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  The other aspect of these is that, unless we're also going to eliminate the possibilities of courts ruling on things, the reversibility features of land registries and deeds is a feature, not a bug. Husband and wife divorce and the courts rule that the husband gets the deed to the house and the wife gets the Ferrari. Husband refuses to transfer the Ferrari's deed. Now what? Unless you mean that the land registry continues to exist but uses a public blockchain as their database? In which case... why? If they did decide they wanted it all public, auditable, and in the open, they could just publish it as a signed text file every day and anyone who cared could mirror it. Don't get me wrong, I think there's some really cool possibilities in the space, but lots of the things that get proposed are fundamentally subject to court orders. Unless we change the law so that judges can't say "I don't give a shit what the 'blockchain' says, A belongs to X and B belongs to Y, and anyone who won't play ball can sit in jail for contempt until they get on board," there won't be much point in keeping track of those assets on a blockchain.
  - intotheabyss 5y ago
    Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      If you want bookkeeping where entries can be rewritten by designated parties, then why would you want ETH / distributed consensus? What does it give you in that case over the existing database with a public mirror? Also laws change. What you signed in an ETH contract today may be completely different than what's legal / possible to enforce tomorrow.

graeme 5y ago

And what are some example use cases you can do with those things, or that people are using them for? Genuinely asking. I see people very excited about things like DAOs, but most descriptions seem to be about inter crypto use cases. With the early internet it was easy enough to see there were use cases like “instantly send a letter to someone across the world” or “order a book not stocked at your local store” or “go directly to Nintendo’s website and read their info”. I remember doing this last one as a kid in the library and was instantly taken with the internet. What are some similar ELI5 use cases of the Ethereum chain and those names you mention? Other than intra crypto loans, derivatives etc

base698 5y ago
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3680926-binance-launches-tradable-stock-tokens-kicking-off-with-tesla-token https://seekingalpha.com/news/3680926-binance-launches-trada... Liquidity for things that don't normally have liquidity. Example: like wrapped Bitcoin, you could create wrapped Wine. Say you've got $1 million in a wine cellar. Create a wrapped token which allows you to use it as collateral or provide it to a liquidity pool to generate revenue. Now your wine is earning you interest. Something like this may already exist... Same for Tesla stock above. Now that a TSLA token exists you could provide to a pool for interest since it doesn't pay a dividend.
- lxgr 5y ago
  Commodities and future contracts on them have been around for a while now.
  - base698 5y ago
    On your wine cellar?
    - selectodude 5y ago
      Goldman Sachs did it years ago. https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-accepted-fine-wine-as-collateral-2013-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-accepted-fine-wine-a...
- graeme 5y ago
  > Now that a TSLA token exists you could provide to a pool for interest since it doesn't pay a dividend. Explain further. Why would you be able to have the benefits of owning wine or TSLS and also earn interest on it. That’s your cake and eating it too. There must be a risk element to the liquidity pool. What risk exposure are you taking by depositing TSLA stock there that you can’t get through normal finance?

Daishiman 5y ago

> Sovereign identity Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. > DAOs A solution in search of a problem > NFTs Speculative. Game items, land registries and deeds are a solved problem. If your jurisdiction/company hasn't solved them already with Postgres and hardcopy it's because it's not interested in solving it or it's not a real problem, just a minor annoyance.

ccortes 5y ago
> Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. Jesus Christ. So the only problems that matter are the ones in "civilized" countries? What does that even mean?
- Kalium 5y ago
  Perhaps it means that this is a known problem with known working solutions. Countries that haven't solved identity are ones that either don't want to or can't, generally due to a mix of corruption and poverty. Perhaps I am simply suffering a tragic failure of imagination, but I fail to see how adding a blockchain changes things substantially.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    Being able to identify people via blockchain either requires them to remember some esoteric passphrase or an ID card with the identifier on it which...solves absolutely nothing.
  - ccortes 5y ago
    > Countries that haven't solved identity are ones that either don't want to or can't, generally due to a mix of corruption and poverty It's not a known problem because each country has its own context. That's like saying US healthcare problem can be solved just by doing what nordic countries do. I'm not arguing for blockchain.
    - deleted 5y ago

viraptor 5y ago

> land registries, deeds I hope that will never happen. We really don't need anyone to end up in a situation where a key is lost and they can neither prove they own something nor sell it legally. Also, "transfer your home by mistake" scams. And have fun trying to figure out how to deal with dead owners.

tonyarkles 5y ago
The other aspect of these is that, unless we're also going to eliminate the possibilities of courts ruling on things, the reversibility features of land registries and deeds is a feature, not a bug. Husband and wife divorce and the courts rule that the husband gets the deed to the house and the wife gets the Ferrari. Husband refuses to transfer the Ferrari's deed. Now what? Unless you mean that the land registry continues to exist but uses a public blockchain as their database? In which case... why? If they did decide they wanted it all public, auditable, and in the open, they could just publish it as a signed text file every day and anyone who cared could mirror it. Don't get me wrong, I think there's some really cool possibilities in the space, but lots of the things that get proposed are fundamentally subject to court orders. Unless we change the law so that judges can't say "I don't give a shit what the 'blockchain' says, A belongs to X and B belongs to Y, and anyone who won't play ball can sit in jail for contempt until they get on board," there won't be much point in keeping track of those assets on a blockchain.
- intotheabyss 5y ago
  Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    If you want bookkeeping where entries can be rewritten by designated parties, then why would you want ETH / distributed consensus? What does it give you in that case over the existing database with a public mirror? Also laws change. What you signed in an ETH contract today may be completely different than what's legal / possible to enforce tomorrow.