10 ms·

Ask HN: What are some ideal applications of blockchains?

24 points by desertraven 5y ago

I have heard of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. How do you envision future applications of blockchain?

tldrthelaw 5y ago
I have co-authored/assisted in research for a series of articles on their potential application for indirect tax collection and remission. Indirect tax fraud (VAT, mostly) is a big problem, and a huge source for funding for terrorism. In a lot of places border states that do a lot of trade super don't trust each other. Having a self-auditing trustless database, of sorts, really would be a game changer.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Wouldn't a standard database with a merkle tree provide the same kind of features without the bad parts of the blockchain?
  - aranchelk 5y ago
    How would you meaningfully integrate a Merkle tree into a “standard” database? I’m familiar with Merkle trees and several popular dbs, but I’m just not seeing it.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      Assuming a popular standard transactional database, PostGreSQL for example, you could have a checksum column and a column containing the reference to the previous row primary key. The checksum value could be computed from the previous row checksum and the new row data. You would have to insert data sequentially though, so you would probably need something in front of the database to do that sequentially, and you would probably need some trigger to fail a transaction if the another row exists with a reference to the previous row so you are sure you don't have branches in your tree. All of this would require some PL/pgSQL.
      - tldrthelaw 5y ago
        This (to my read) handles the self-auditing aspect, but how would you handle the need for the central database to be hosted "somewhere?" Not challenging your conclusion, just asking.
        speedgoose 5y ago
        Some international agency could take care of hosting the database. You would need some kind of trusted international agency anyway for such a project, the way the database works is a technical detail that is not super important IMHO. You don't fix such a problem with a blockchain database and a website.
        tldrthelaw 5y ago
        Yeah I get your point. I'd note though that in policy often times it is less about the realities of a project and more about how that project can be sold. While it is certainly true that this should be handled at an international/community level, it often just isn't. Selling the idea of solving indirect (VAT or sales) tax fraud through invoice matching and handling cross border trades while simultaneously not needing one state to trust another (even if that isn't strictly and in all instances true) can be a powerful pitch.
Raed667 5y ago
The only interesting ones I have seen: - zero-trust escrow - distributed auctions
- ryanlol 5y ago
  How does zero-trust escrow work? Seems like this would have a very limited set of applications without an external source of truth.
  - Raed667 5y ago
    I don't remember the details since it was a few years ago that I came across this, but I think the idea was that both buyer and seller could signal to the smart-contract that they're satisfied and that the withdrawal can happen. Otherwise, there is also the concept of "oracles" [0] which are able to look outside the blockchain for information (think weather API, or a city's ledger) that could be your "external source of truth" [0] https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/oracles/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/oracles/
    - ryanlol 5y ago
      Without any arbitration mechanism this kind of escrow seems fairly useless. The buyer always loses to a malicious seller who is now able to keep the funds locked up forever. Oracles can’t really be trustless.
xupybd 5y ago
Blockchain is great for temperature monitoring equipment. Small portable devices that make sure your food didn't thaw out during transport. Blockchain technology can make it hard to tamper with the logs.
- konha 5y ago
  How do you know the equipment wrote the correct temperature to the blockchain in the first place?
  - ThePhysicist 5y ago
    You don't.
  - aitchnyu 5y ago
    Cryptographic signing of the temperature readings will do right? I have a pet idea of electricity meters that cryptographically sign their value and timestamp. We have state employees who come every month and take readings. We can automate these readings without going full IOT.
    - konha 5y ago
      Right. If you have to trust the device anyway, a blockchain only adds unnecessary complexity and signing the data will do.
      - xupybd 5y ago
        No it makes the data tamper proof. That's a different problem to making the source data reliable. Tampering happens when your delivery service tries to cover up a freezer outage. Yes they could grab the sensors and throw them in another freezer but you can't solve every problem with one tool. At least they can't try to do anything to alter the history so it makes it harder. Much like I can enter a locked home, but the lock makes it harder. The alarm makes it harder again. But nothing is fool proof.
rdrd 5y ago
I don’t believe it has any current benefit when linked to physical real world actions/items, companies who make broad brush statements like “it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing. That being said I think it does have good applicability to digital-only activities which require trust, a good example might be Poker, I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case - where we don’t trust the software created by casinos and bookmakers. So I think generally speaking, right now, gambling is the number 1 use case for Blockchain in my opinion. There’s definitely challenges in this space though, for example building a Poker game on Ethereum would be impossible at the moment, transaction cost for each move would be completely cost prohibitive and there’s still challenges with random number generation, but these problems are solvable. The other thing I think about with blockchain is generally speaking the view is that they should, in theory, outlast tech companies, as the view is that these public ledgers would be maintained collectively by society, it would be nice to be able to keep certain forever record to pass through generations of families to avoid things getting lost in the digital world, but that’s hope, hope that the blockchain you choose is maintained etc, so that’s just as much of risk as now - but it pains me I don’t know much about my great great grandparents, and would hope future generations don’t have that same problem, I wouldn’t want to rely on tech companies to help with that, it would be much nicer to have a record which is decentralized.
- ezekg 5y ago
  > I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case All it takes is one good competitor to highlight that fact. hint hint
- coolestguy 5y ago
  >“it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing. There isn't any method possible where you don't have to rely on a trusted third party - and that's the entire problem blockchain is trying to solve. The main question in the post should be "what information do i want to know without having to trust anyone, because it's verified by a number of 3rd parties before i view it" E.g. every single finance/share/security transaction, tracking info of humanitarian aid, government spending, sales direct to an artist (tickets etc) Before you say "but everyone can see", encryption exists for a reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
stephenr 5y ago
It's really fucking good at building ponzi/pyramid style scams, and padding your resume.
- bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
  So quite a short list so far. For a technology that occupies such a big presence in people's minds, and has billions of peoples' money invested in, and hundreds of companies chasing their tails trying to find practical uses for it - it's a really short list.
  - stephenr 5y ago
    I don't think it does occupy a big presence in most people's minds. For the relatively small group that are either (a) happy to be the 'early' guy in an obvious ponzi/pyramid scheme or (b) convinced that despite all the evidence, it isn't in fact a scam, I'm sure it does occupy a big presence in their minds.
- meiraleal 5y ago
  And bash is also a great way to get upvotes on HN.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    It is so tiresome.
    - Shosty123 5y ago
      It's not really surprising. HN loathes any technology with a ton of hype surrounding it. 14 years in currency trading/quant/FinTech. Regardless of the tech, if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
      - stephenr 5y ago
        I don't think that's justified. I think HN generally loathes over hyped technology. > if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you. Nobody asked you to "tell us" anything. The constant "you just need to get on board" schtick really doesn't help any argument that it's not a scam. That joke about vegans applies equally well to crypto-'currency' fans: How do you know someone is a <vegan/crypto fan>? Don't worry, they'll be sure to fucking tell you.
Dyslex28 5y ago
CDs, known as Certificates of Deposit or Time Deposits. This would be the best use of a blockchain, "trustless interest" rather than paying miners by inflation you pay people who lock there coins/stake.
whitepaint 5y ago
https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/
magma1983 5y ago
Development of digital currencies. There is no need of third parties in a transaction if the blockchain is public and decentralized.
bsldld 5y ago
I am working on a project[0] to enable loan-free education and help increase income of teaching and non-teaching staff of education institutions. The project is based on blockchain(though it is federated) technology. In fact multiple blockchain platforms are used to achieve the overall goal. Blockchain for identity, payments, distributed verifiable but ownerless database etc. Looking for co-developers for the project. My email is in my HN profile. [0] Details of what the project will look like is outlined here: https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org
- duped 5y ago
  What does blockchain do for you to solve the fundamental financial problems you're tackling?
  - bsldld 5y ago
    I am using blockchain as a distributed, decentralised, tamper-proof database that no single entity controls. It is used just as a ledger to maintain monetary and non-moneraty transactions between various stakeholders in education: the government, the education institutions, the students, businesses and policymakers. Once those connections are established then the information of funding of the student's education can be used to perform autodeduction from that student's income and distributed to everyone that was involved in that student's education. Again this transactions is also recorded in the distributed ledger.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Why do you need a blockchain? You even mention in the writeup that this behavior exists in other countries already - which means it already can be achieved without this technology. Heck, in the US there are already educational institutions that charge a portion of future salary rather than a tuition. You spend a huge amount of time describing the merits of this approach and (as far as I can tell) zero time describing what your software actually does, even when digging into the page that contains additional details.
  - 5y ago
smackeyacky 5y ago
Great for vendors of FPGAs. Great for vendors of video cards. Great for coal fired power stations. Extortion. Drug transactions. Money laundering. Greater fool farming. I think the last one is the biggest success.
- nutellaandgo 5y ago
  It's here to stay.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Outside of cryptocurrency there are none. This is because it’s better to use a database: simpler, faster, more efficient. You can do crypto signing in a database or flat files if you really need proof that some actor approved something or other. Each actor can keep such signatures in a local db as evidence if needed.
- matt_s 5y ago
  I was thinking this as well. A ledger is the CS 101 level of what is a database. I read a headline that Japan's stock exchange is moving to use blockchain. That is also a good use but I don't know if its an ideal usage.
kitpierce 5y ago
Real estate deed/title records; will take a while to onboard existing records, but would then eliminate the need for title insurance (commonly required for home/land purchases in the US) as well as many types of real estate lend/lease scams.
mqpasta 5y ago
whenever you need these three things together: decentralization, secure, and auditable data. Could be the cases when we do not want to give the authority of the data to a central resource. Like, what if all educational institutions host blockchain nodes to store educational records of their students. There can be similar use-cases but most of the noise is due to a buzz word and companies want to cash it.
meiraleal 5y ago
Smart contracts are a great platform for freelancing and recurrent payment. Also the most mindblowing application I've seem so far are the stock-derivated tokens, or syntethics. It is possible now to trade stocks 24 hours a day, every day of the week.
nutellaandgo 5y ago
One of the actual useful things it can do is DNS. The current DNS system is about 40 years old and very flaky. Blockchain can do DNS better than the current system. Blockchain based DNS allows people to actually own their domain, instead of the current system where we basically rent domains. It also makes it impossible for domain to be seized.
- hayyyyydos 5y ago
  > The current DNS system is about 40 years old and very flaky. How is DNS flaky?
  - nutellaandgo 5y ago
    Look up DNS poisoning, spoofing, ISP manipulation, etc. There have been quite a few attacks on it. Maybe "flaky" is a bit too strong of a term. It generally works I guess. The main advantage blockchain offers is not really within the realm of getting the right answer to a DNS query, it's more to do with giving the owner of the domain name 100% control of the domain through cryptography and smart contracts. This also makes the process of domain transfer a lot more efficient, cutting out the need for middlemen like Godaddy, etc.
Adrig 5y ago
It could be a good point of a spear to have interconnected services. Let's take game assets for example. I don't see any chance right now to have Steam and Epic build a gaming metaverse since one of them would have to build and own the infrastructure. A decentralized blockchain would make talks about data transfer and collaboration much easier. I'm not sure about the whole NTF thing as of right now, but I'm still curious for the future. What is true for game assets can be true for personal data, copyright claims, or anything else. The blockchain might gain adoption because its principles make it interesting as a standard for value transfer.
nutellaandgo 5y ago
One "killer feature" of blockchain is availability. For example, the bitcoin network has something like 99.99999% uptime since it was invented. I think is was down for something like half a day back in 2009 due to a bug, but since then it's had basically 100% uptime. Blockchain can be used as a rather expensive and crude database, so one possible application is a key-value database which is guaranteed to always be up. I suspect that as blockchain technologies improve and better techniques for sharding are developed, this could become quite a common real-world application. From reading the comments most people here don't have any idea about the research that's currently happening in the blockchain space. They're just making ignorant comments about ponzi schemes and money laundering. Very exciting research happening in blockchain.
- rdrd 5y ago
  This doesn’t quite hold. It’s only as “up” as the node you’re connecting to is, if that node is down then for all intents and purpose the “blockchain” is down as far as your ability to access it is concerned.
  - nutellaandgo 5y ago
    Connect to multiple nodes and this won't be such a problem. Obviously if a single node has a disk failure or OS crashes, and you are connected to that node, the blockchain is down for you and everybody else connected to that node .... but most of the other nodes are still up and the system as a whole is up.
    - rdrd 5y ago
      So you’ll build a load balancer for the nodes you might connect to, is what you’re saying, and where will you host said load balancer? Wherever you host it that’s the availability level you’ll achieve. High availability is not a feature of the blockchain, if you would of said data resilience, I might have agreed, but availability, no, that falls into the same availability standards as any other computing platform.

24 points by desertraven 5y ago

I have heard of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. How do you envision future applications of blockchain?

I have co-authored/assisted in research for a series of articles on their potential application for indirect tax collection and remission. Indirect tax fraud (VAT, mostly) is a big problem, and a huge source for funding for terrorism. In a lot of places border states that do a lot of trade super don't trust each other. Having a self-auditing trustless database, of sorts, really would be a game changer.

speedgoose 5y ago
Wouldn't a standard database with a merkle tree provide the same kind of features without the bad parts of the blockchain?
- aranchelk 5y ago
  How would you meaningfully integrate a Merkle tree into a “standard” database? I’m familiar with Merkle trees and several popular dbs, but I’m just not seeing it.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Assuming a popular standard transactional database, PostGreSQL for example, you could have a checksum column and a column containing the reference to the previous row primary key. The checksum value could be computed from the previous row checksum and the new row data. You would have to insert data sequentially though, so you would probably need something in front of the database to do that sequentially, and you would probably need some trigger to fail a transaction if the another row exists with a reference to the previous row so you are sure you don't have branches in your tree. All of this would require some PL/pgSQL.
    - tldrthelaw 5y ago
      This (to my read) handles the self-auditing aspect, but how would you handle the need for the central database to be hosted "somewhere?" Not challenging your conclusion, just asking.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        Some international agency could take care of hosting the database. You would need some kind of trusted international agency anyway for such a project, the way the database works is a technical detail that is not super important IMHO. You don't fix such a problem with a blockchain database and a website.
        tldrthelaw 5y ago
        Yeah I get your point. I'd note though that in policy often times it is less about the realities of a project and more about how that project can be sold. While it is certainly true that this should be handled at an international/community level, it often just isn't. Selling the idea of solving indirect (VAT or sales) tax fraud through invoice matching and handling cross border trades while simultaneously not needing one state to trust another (even if that isn't strictly and in all instances true) can be a powerful pitch.

Raed667 5y ago

The only interesting ones I have seen: - zero-trust escrow - distributed auctions

ryanlol 5y ago
How does zero-trust escrow work? Seems like this would have a very limited set of applications without an external source of truth.
- Raed667 5y ago
  I don't remember the details since it was a few years ago that I came across this, but I think the idea was that both buyer and seller could signal to the smart-contract that they're satisfied and that the withdrawal can happen. Otherwise, there is also the concept of "oracles" [0] which are able to look outside the blockchain for information (think weather API, or a city's ledger) that could be your "external source of truth" [0] https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/oracles/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/oracles/
  - ryanlol 5y ago
    Without any arbitration mechanism this kind of escrow seems fairly useless. The buyer always loses to a malicious seller who is now able to keep the funds locked up forever. Oracles can’t really be trustless.

xupybd 5y ago

Blockchain is great for temperature monitoring equipment. Small portable devices that make sure your food didn't thaw out during transport. Blockchain technology can make it hard to tamper with the logs.

konha 5y ago
How do you know the equipment wrote the correct temperature to the blockchain in the first place?
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  You don't.
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  Cryptographic signing of the temperature readings will do right? I have a pet idea of electricity meters that cryptographically sign their value and timestamp. We have state employees who come every month and take readings. We can automate these readings without going full IOT.
  - konha 5y ago
    Right. If you have to trust the device anyway, a blockchain only adds unnecessary complexity and signing the data will do.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      No it makes the data tamper proof. That's a different problem to making the source data reliable. Tampering happens when your delivery service tries to cover up a freezer outage. Yes they could grab the sensors and throw them in another freezer but you can't solve every problem with one tool. At least they can't try to do anything to alter the history so it makes it harder. Much like I can enter a locked home, but the lock makes it harder. The alarm makes it harder again. But nothing is fool proof.

rdrd 5y ago

I don’t believe it has any current benefit when linked to physical real world actions/items, companies who make broad brush statements like “it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing. That being said I think it does have good applicability to digital-only activities which require trust, a good example might be Poker, I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case - where we don’t trust the software created by casinos and bookmakers. So I think generally speaking, right now, gambling is the number 1 use case for Blockchain in my opinion. There’s definitely challenges in this space though, for example building a Poker game on Ethereum would be impossible at the moment, transaction cost for each move would be completely cost prohibitive and there’s still challenges with random number generation, but these problems are solvable. The other thing I think about with blockchain is generally speaking the view is that they should, in theory, outlast tech companies, as the view is that these public ledgers would be maintained collectively by society, it would be nice to be able to keep certain forever record to pass through generations of families to avoid things getting lost in the digital world, but that’s hope, hope that the blockchain you choose is maintained etc, so that’s just as much of risk as now - but it pains me I don’t know much about my great great grandparents, and would hope future generations don’t have that same problem, I wouldn’t want to rely on tech companies to help with that, it would be much nicer to have a record which is decentralized.

ezekg 5y ago
> I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case All it takes is one good competitor to highlight that fact. hint hint
coolestguy 5y ago
>“it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing. There isn't any method possible where you don't have to rely on a trusted third party - and that's the entire problem blockchain is trying to solve. The main question in the post should be "what information do i want to know without having to trust anyone, because it's verified by a number of 3rd parties before i view it" E.g. every single finance/share/security transaction, tracking info of humanitarian aid, government spending, sales direct to an artist (tickets etc) Before you say "but everyone can see", encryption exists for a reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

stephenr 5y ago

It's really fucking good at building ponzi/pyramid style scams, and padding your resume.

bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
So quite a short list so far. For a technology that occupies such a big presence in people's minds, and has billions of peoples' money invested in, and hundreds of companies chasing their tails trying to find practical uses for it - it's a really short list.
- stephenr 5y ago
  I don't think it does occupy a big presence in most people's minds. For the relatively small group that are either (a) happy to be the 'early' guy in an obvious ponzi/pyramid scheme or (b) convinced that despite all the evidence, it isn't in fact a scam, I'm sure it does occupy a big presence in their minds.
meiraleal 5y ago
And bash is also a great way to get upvotes on HN.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  It is so tiresome.
  - Shosty123 5y ago
    It's not really surprising. HN loathes any technology with a ton of hype surrounding it. 14 years in currency trading/quant/FinTech. Regardless of the tech, if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
    - stephenr 5y ago
      I don't think that's justified. I think HN generally loathes over hyped technology. > if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you. Nobody asked you to "tell us" anything. The constant "you just need to get on board" schtick really doesn't help any argument that it's not a scam. That joke about vegans applies equally well to crypto-'currency' fans: How do you know someone is a <vegan/crypto fan>? Don't worry, they'll be sure to fucking tell you.

Dyslex28 5y ago

CDs, known as Certificates of Deposit or Time Deposits. This would be the best use of a blockchain, "trustless interest" rather than paying miners by inflation you pay people who lock there coins/stake.

whitepaint 5y ago

https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/

magma1983 5y ago

Development of digital currencies. There is no need of third parties in a transaction if the blockchain is public and decentralized.

bsldld 5y ago

I am working on a project[0] to enable loan-free education and help increase income of teaching and non-teaching staff of education institutions. The project is based on blockchain(though it is federated) technology. In fact multiple blockchain platforms are used to achieve the overall goal. Blockchain for identity, payments, distributed verifiable but ownerless database etc. Looking for co-developers for the project. My email is in my HN profile. [0] Details of what the project will look like is outlined here: https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org

duped 5y ago
What does blockchain do for you to solve the fundamental financial problems you're tackling?
- bsldld 5y ago
  I am using blockchain as a distributed, decentralised, tamper-proof database that no single entity controls. It is used just as a ledger to maintain monetary and non-moneraty transactions between various stakeholders in education: the government, the education institutions, the students, businesses and policymakers. Once those connections are established then the information of funding of the student's education can be used to perform autodeduction from that student's income and distributed to everyone that was involved in that student's education. Again this transactions is also recorded in the distributed ledger.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Why do you need a blockchain? You even mention in the writeup that this behavior exists in other countries already - which means it already can be achieved without this technology. Heck, in the US there are already educational institutions that charge a portion of future salary rather than a tuition. You spend a huge amount of time describing the merits of this approach and (as far as I can tell) zero time describing what your software actually does, even when digging into the page that contains additional details.
- 5y ago

smackeyacky 5y ago

Great for vendors of FPGAs. Great for vendors of video cards. Great for coal fired power stations. Extortion. Drug transactions. Money laundering. Greater fool farming. I think the last one is the biggest success.

nutellaandgo 5y ago
It's here to stay.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Outside of cryptocurrency there are none. This is because it’s better to use a database: simpler, faster, more efficient. You can do crypto signing in a database or flat files if you really need proof that some actor approved something or other. Each actor can keep such signatures in a local db as evidence if needed.

matt_s 5y ago
I was thinking this as well. A ledger is the CS 101 level of what is a database. I read a headline that Japan's stock exchange is moving to use blockchain. That is also a good use but I don't know if its an ideal usage.

kitpierce 5y ago

Real estate deed/title records; will take a while to onboard existing records, but would then eliminate the need for title insurance (commonly required for home/land purchases in the US) as well as many types of real estate lend/lease scams.

mqpasta 5y ago

whenever you need these three things together: decentralization, secure, and auditable data. Could be the cases when we do not want to give the authority of the data to a central resource. Like, what if all educational institutions host blockchain nodes to store educational records of their students. There can be similar use-cases but most of the noise is due to a buzz word and companies want to cash it.

meiraleal 5y ago

Smart contracts are a great platform for freelancing and recurrent payment. Also the most mindblowing application I've seem so far are the stock-derivated tokens, or syntethics. It is possible now to trade stocks 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

nutellaandgo 5y ago

One of the actual useful things it can do is DNS. The current DNS system is about 40 years old and very flaky. Blockchain can do DNS better than the current system. Blockchain based DNS allows people to actually own their domain, instead of the current system where we basically rent domains. It also makes it impossible for domain to be seized.

hayyyyydos 5y ago
> The current DNS system is about 40 years old and very flaky. How is DNS flaky?
- nutellaandgo 5y ago
  Look up DNS poisoning, spoofing, ISP manipulation, etc. There have been quite a few attacks on it. Maybe "flaky" is a bit too strong of a term. It generally works I guess. The main advantage blockchain offers is not really within the realm of getting the right answer to a DNS query, it's more to do with giving the owner of the domain name 100% control of the domain through cryptography and smart contracts. This also makes the process of domain transfer a lot more efficient, cutting out the need for middlemen like Godaddy, etc.

Adrig 5y ago

It could be a good point of a spear to have interconnected services. Let's take game assets for example. I don't see any chance right now to have Steam and Epic build a gaming metaverse since one of them would have to build and own the infrastructure. A decentralized blockchain would make talks about data transfer and collaboration much easier. I'm not sure about the whole NTF thing as of right now, but I'm still curious for the future. What is true for game assets can be true for personal data, copyright claims, or anything else. The blockchain might gain adoption because its principles make it interesting as a standard for value transfer.

nutellaandgo 5y ago

One "killer feature" of blockchain is availability. For example, the bitcoin network has something like 99.99999% uptime since it was invented. I think is was down for something like half a day back in 2009 due to a bug, but since then it's had basically 100% uptime. Blockchain can be used as a rather expensive and crude database, so one possible application is a key-value database which is guaranteed to always be up. I suspect that as blockchain technologies improve and better techniques for sharding are developed, this could become quite a common real-world application. From reading the comments most people here don't have any idea about the research that's currently happening in the blockchain space. They're just making ignorant comments about ponzi schemes and money laundering. Very exciting research happening in blockchain.

rdrd 5y ago
This doesn’t quite hold. It’s only as “up” as the node you’re connecting to is, if that node is down then for all intents and purpose the “blockchain” is down as far as your ability to access it is concerned.
- nutellaandgo 5y ago
  Connect to multiple nodes and this won't be such a problem. Obviously if a single node has a disk failure or OS crashes, and you are connected to that node, the blockchain is down for you and everybody else connected to that node .... but most of the other nodes are still up and the system as a whole is up.
  - rdrd 5y ago
    So you’ll build a load balancer for the nodes you might connect to, is what you’re saying, and where will you host said load balancer? Wherever you host it that’s the availability level you’ll achieve. High availability is not a feature of the blockchain, if you would of said data resilience, I might have agreed, but availability, no, that falls into the same availability standards as any other computing platform.