9 ms·

Nobody has found a use case for blockchain

67 points by sprague 5y ago

HappySweeney 5y ago
I work for a large organization which is exploring blockchain to link several disparate databases (all with different software, intranets, etc). This is the only reasonable use of the tech I have seen.
- clintonb 5y ago
  Isn't this achievable with an API/RPC?
  - HappySweeney 5y ago
    While I don't see anything stopping them from implementing an API solution, I'm guessing they don't want everyone to have to do n queries every time they need some joined info, but I can't say as I'm not involved in the project, and only overheard managers talking to each other about it.
mpfundstein 5y ago
i worked 2 years ago on an energy trading system on local nets for a local port. I was pretty awesome and connected the energy usage to Ethereum tokens. Producers could sell energy to the grid and Consumers could buy. It worked and was actually deployed for a few months with few participants. Then it got shut down. But BChain was a major and important part to it.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Why did it get shut down?
  - mpfundstein 5y ago
    because of market forces. It was a semi-public financed project. After the initial deployment, the semi-public port didn't dare to go full in. And private energy companies refused to participate.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  What do you see as the benefit of having used blockchain? (I can imagine an answer, but you are the one who implemented it and have direct experience with it.)
mimixco 5y ago
We are using blockchain in our product for verification of text edits. No one has tracked text editing in this way, making it fully traceable, unwind-able, and outside-verifiable. [0] https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash [1] https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Wikipedia does the same thing
  - mimixco 5y ago
    Well then that's certainly a use case! :-)
    - xadhominemx 5y ago
      No one is saying blockchain can’t do the same thing worse than other tools
      - mimixco 5y ago
        Just replying to the OP that nobody has a found a use case. In our case, we are fundamentally changing the way text is marked up within a document to correlate it to individual changes in that text over time. This is different from Git or Wikipedia which make document-level snapshots.
        lovegoblin 5y ago
        > we are fundamentally changing the way text is marked up within a document to correlate it to individual changes in that text over time. What does this even mean? Are you Disrupting™ the Text Editing Industry? In what substantial way is it different - and better - than existing version control?
kovacs_x 5y ago
blockchain = database distributed blockchain = database in cloud did databases in cloud "change the world"? 100% did they change EVERYTHING? depends who you ask! :D
- worik 5y ago
  > distributed blockchain = database in cloud A very expensive database in the cloud
okaythere 5y ago
“The Baseline Protocol is an open source initiative that combines advances in cryptography, messaging, and blockchain to deliver secure and private business processes at low cost using the public Mainnet for event ordering, data consistency and workflow integrity. The protocol will enable confidential and complex collaboration between enterprises without moving any sensitive data from traditional systems of record.“ Note: It is a protocol - not a company or commercial software. You can watch a number of videos of the protocol in action - maintaining state across enterprises of say an SAP installation and Google Sheets.
randomhodler84 5y ago
“I am too ignorant to understand the nature of hard money, power, governments, fiat currencies, inflation, etc etc thus it has no point”. Hn folks need to stop rejoicing in ignorance. It is unbecoming.
a-dub 5y ago
a global and decentralized authentication authority that respects user privacy by design.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Not your keys, not your life is the worst idea to come out of crypto. And that's really saying something IMO.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    you can still have counterparties hold portions of keys for recovery purposes and those counterparties would have less visibility into your online activities than current "sso for the web" offerings from large internet companies.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Those companies offer a means of account recovery through them, and also, everywhere I've SSO'd also offers a separate un-linked account recovery mechanism.
      - a-dub 5y ago
        sure. but the point is, current "sso for the web" offerings have three problems: 1) the sso provider has full visibility into where you use their service. 2) sso provider operations are opaque. 3) other internet services don't trust them. (i can't sign into my bank with Google yet) maybe we need an iana for authentication, but a decentralized database may be an easier sell. or maybe with more time more adoption will take place of the big sso providers. it still seems to be a problem to me and i favor an open solution over more reliance on large internet companies.
- nomel 5y ago
  I'll assume my perspective is naive here, so feel free to correct me, but, at least with the case of bitcoin, having an immutable transaction history doesn't seem to be a way to promote privacy, as evidence by the Dread Pirate Roberts transaction history, and where that got him. A "privacy by design" would have tumbling/anonymity built in, which isn't a requisite for a blockchain, and not part of the most famous one, bitcoin.
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
I'd summarize blockchain like this: computation that is outside any individual's control. It's surprising that it's even possible! It makes the virtual world actually a lot more like the physical world: no one person can alter the laws of physics, just as no one person can alter the laws of Bitcoin (or similar). This property makes me think that describing blockchain as a metaverse is actually pretty accurate. It's intriguing to think that with fully homomorphic encryption, we can have distributed computation that's not only outside anyone's control, but outside anyone's understanding! You can literally imagine an A.I. agent that no one controls - and no one understands.
- taywrobel 5y ago
  In April a power outage in China caused Bitcoin hash rate to drop by 45% - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-xinjiang-blackouts-blamed-btc-price-slides/ https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-xinjiang-bla... In the idealized little crypto world no one person has control, sure, but we have one country with the majority of the raw compute power on the earth and a government that has no problem seizing control over that compute power when it suits them. One of the many reasons I am bearish on crypto and have been since 2014.
  - etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
    It's definitely not perfect and potentially more fragile than it looks -- but when was the last time a 51% attack happened on Bitcoin? Clearly this shows there is real potential for networks outside anyone's control...
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    And bitcoin powered through it all the same. The price dropped briefly, but recovered. That’s pretty resilient if you ask me.
    - taywrobel 5y ago
      The risk isn't the price drop, it's China deciding that it wants to own the bitcoin market one day, seizing control of the hashers, and then doing whatever they want with the network. For instance, refusing to process transactions from American IPs. Would love to see how BTC's price holds up to a state sponsored hijacking of the network using raw compute power.
rlpb 5y ago
Part of the problem is that nobody has a definition for what "blockchain" even means. We all know what Bitcoin means because it has a whitepaper and an implementation. The same goes for all other operational systems that use the same ideas. "Blockchain", on the other hand, just means whatever anybody who wants to ride on hype wants it to mean. For example, some simply take it to mean a series of blocks where each block references its parent block by its hash. To others, that definition makes no sense because that concept existed long before Bitcoin (eg. git).
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Nobody has found a use case for a decentralized, trustless, permissionless ledger which is free from the horror of attack by byzantine generals. Git is only one of those three, well two if you count the byzantines.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- amelius 5y ago
  In case of git it is more like a blocktree, I suppose.
- fredgrott 5y ago
  incorrect, the original sum zero inventor had a use case and in fact he went broke to attempt to prove it Most of you were too young or not born yet Google cipher punks and you may get a glimse
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
what about the aliens who were looking for ways to get us to speed up heating the planet so it was more to their liking?
alkonaut 5y ago
I think there may be some good uses for public immutable records that can be verified as a chain. But none of that requires distributing the block chain.
- smcameron 5y ago
  Isn't distributing it the means by which it's made immutable? i.e. you can't mutate it unless you control at least half the network?
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    A centralized blockchain can be a publicly readable ledger that is still only writable by trusted parties. A git repo works in a similar way. For example: a bank uses a public ledger to store all transactions. If a mistake is made, they can correct it, but not by removing/changing the past transaction, only by adding another transaction to the chain which corrects it. Everything is transparent to observers, but obviously I can’t mutate my own account balance without transfering money to my account. The major drawback of these write-only ledgers is the same as in git: if you accidentally write a secret to the chain, it’s there forever.
- mimixco 5y ago
  This, exactly! Our product offers and outside blockchain for verification but that's not necessary for the product's function. It's just a "block chain of records" that is useful to keep separately from the documents itself, often in a third party location. In our case, the use is for tracking editing and collaboration in text documents on a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence basis.
- worik 5y ago
  It does not require a block chain, period
standardUser 5y ago
I think Gods Unchained, a collectible card computer game, is a pretty cool use for blockchain technology. I'd be much more inclined to "pay to play" if I actually owned the thing I'm paying for and could sell it later. Though I didn't personally get into the game enough to bother spending money on it. Here is a quick MIT Tech Review article on it from 2019: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockchain-based-card-game-shows-us-the-future-of-ownership/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockch...
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  You could do that without a blockchain.
  - Sparkyte 5y ago
    The problem with unchained too is that it is literally attached to the market not as a protocol of it's own to divise exchange and authenticity of held digital goods. For example it is completely tied to etherium. Bet $10 that their backend just maintains the rarities but doesn't assign a real blockchain value to ensure security and ownership.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
kerng 5y ago
Bitcoin seems like an obvious success story. So, I didn't bother clicking the click-bait link to read the article.
- arberx 5y ago
  Funny how HN completely discount the best performing asset of the past decade.
Sparkyte 5y ago
Fluff piece. Block chain could be used to maintaining and secure digital licensing. We use it for a lot of dumb arbitrary things and so it seems there is no genuine use case. You can use as a ledger to track transactions and make your transaction trackable. Do we though, do we apply this to digital exchange of actual currencies... nope.
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
cope
karaterobot 5y ago
No true Scotsmen have found a use for blockchain. This is another of those articles that defines successful use case so as to exclude blockchain. What about all those bitcoin millionaires? They don't count! What about NFTs? I think it's dumb, so I won't count it! What about inventory and logistics tracking? Not used widely enough to count! What about all those decentralized finance businesses? They aren't real businesses by my definition of businesses! Okay, you win.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  People making money is not useful in the sense of creating value. That’s zero sum.
- danaris 5y ago
  I think there's a meaningful distinction between "has found ways to make money off blockchain", "has found a thing blockchain could theoretically be used for (but doesn't provide a huge benefit over doing it without blockchain", and "has found a genuine, unique, use case for blockchain".
- acoard 5y ago
  >And yet, after years of tireless effort and billions of dollars invested, nobody has actually come up with a use for the blockchain—besides currency speculation and illegal transactions. I quoted the opening line of the article. I think the author clearly includes Bitcoin millionaires, and NFTs, as "currency speculation." Inventory and logistics tracking is, as you say, not widely used enough to count. It certainly doesn't seem like it's been seriously adopted outside of pilot programs, or financial transaction/speculation. Blockchain is older than Kubernetes. Tonnes of large corporations successfully use kubernetes in production; basically no-one uses blockchain outside of smaller programs. I have seen it used successfully in some cases (indigenous elections), but you have to admit it still seems like a nascent industry trying to get it's footing outside of the fields the author specified.
jimsmart 5y ago
Article is from 2017 - would be good if this was in the title.
wyck 5y ago
Crypto is a tradable asset, and like any other tradable asset you can make money with it. In other words you can make money with money, just like a bank, only decentralized. It's not about the technology of the banks or crypto per se, but the primary function of what banks actually do, which is save or lend money (really both). If you think crypto currency was created to buy hamburgers, or make your energy bill more efficient to pay, as the saying goes " you can't see the forest for the trees". When was the last time you used bond certificate to pay for dinner? The fact that people are making money and lots of it in crypto using traditional financial instruments is all the proof you need to know that it has a use case.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > The fact that people are making money and lots of it in crypto using traditional financial instruments is all the proof you need to know that it has a use case. It's happening therefore it must work? That's a dangerous attitude, especially in financial markets. People have done that with tulips and lots of other things; those really weren't use cases in a meaningful sense.
  - gaspard234 5y ago
    I agree with OP. I started off my career at a derivatives trading firm in NYC. There were thousands of other firms making billions of dollars doing the same thing for even more esoteric financial instruments. And I'm a realest, they were just shuffling numbers around to get rich. Payments and transactions are not the value, fintech automation with Defi is where the money is.
  - wyck 5y ago
    >It's happening therefore it must work? Yes exactly, use cases are not important. This is how wall street works, giving the same features to citizens instead of large financial firms is an important distinction, and the reason why, unlike tulips, it will not fade away.
    - danaris 5y ago
breitling 5y ago
We are using blockchain for identity verification in Canada (verified.me) 7 banks and 4 telecom companies are nodes on the network. They provide the identity details of a person. Very interesting use case. Take a look
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ofrzeta 5y ago
  After some research I found that they are using Hyperledger Fabric, a project hosted by the Linux Foundation. https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Yikes: So you are posting people's identifying information on an immutable, distributed database?
  - AlleghenyCrypto 5y ago
    Maybe I don't fully understand the technology here. Couldn't it work like the following? You have an identity entity off-chain (say a government body) that you get some kind of cryptographically signed piece of information that doesn't relay any of your personal information on-chain but allows entities on-chain to know that you are in good standing with the off-chain identity service? Couldn't it even be a one-time use type of thing?
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > You have an identity entity off-chain (say a government body) that you get some kind of cryptographically signed piece of information that doesn't relay any of your personal information on-chain but allows entities on-chain to know that you are in good standing with the off-chain identity service? Why use blockchain? Why not just have the entity provide a database? Note that the standing may change over time. > Couldn't it even be a one-time use type of thing? I'm not sure what this means. Why use an immutable database for one use?
russellbeattie 5y ago
Why is this 5 year old click-bait article on the front page?
- lamp987 5y ago
  bitcoin bad
AlleghenyCrypto 5y ago
I've just started digging into the space, so maybe my question is way off base. I'm hoping someone will at least give me some insight though. Would it be possible to source the same level of credit data in a decentralized manner and use (e.g. send a loan to collections) all in a decentralized manner? If so, what is legitimately preventing the migration of all functions of a modern bank to a decentralized model?
- clintonb 5y ago
  There is no benefit to doing this. Credit scores/checks only work by centralizing loan data with various credit bureaus. Whether that data is in a database or on a block chain doesn’t matter.
t0mbstone 5y ago
I still think an awesome use case would be a public blockchain for tracking inventions and patents. You could have a searchable index of inventions that anyone could add onto, and every article would be hashed and the signature recorded on the blockchain to serve as independent historical proof. The inventor would then be the only person with the cryptographic key to prove they are the owner of the patent. There could also be a whole other sidechain for tracking licensing agreements, for example. Who wants to help me build it?
Janker 5y ago
The constant conflation of block chain and bitcoin makes the article tiresome. Furthermore the author seems only to propose "everyone uses it" use cases. Imo the most useful use cases are distributed ledgers used between companies who know each other...
pxue 5y ago
the blockchain is a huge social experiment. it's a study of anthropology masked as a hard-science experiment.
bigphishy 5y ago
Article is from 2017
kemonocode 5y ago
I feel I'm taking crazy pills with all the people screeching the blockchain has no uses. They're as wrong as the people who say it has ALL the uses. Also, a (2017) wouldn't go amiss. This article is about three and a half years old, and for a concept that's supposedly so bereft of use cases, it's managed to be pretty enduring.
- paddlepop 5y ago
  ...and they are? I think the subtext that is implied with the no use case statement is really: "that couldn't be done with an existing technology (such as a database)".
  - kemonocode 5y ago
    Seriously, decentralized, pseudonymous money that is censorship resistant and doesn't rely on any single government or organization is the killer app. That's how I'm using it, it works perfectly for my use case and even though it's a sample size of one, there's at least one person who relies on it and can sleep at night a bit more soundly knowing that their money won't suddenly be gone the next morning because PayPal or their bank looked at them funny because they were born in a spicy patch of land. Anything else comes as a plus. Do please spare me the whole "it's boiling the oceans" and "only hackers and druggies are using it" spiel though as they're both [0] untrue [1]. [0] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
- ryandvm 5y ago
  The fact that it was written in 2017 and yet today the only use cases for blockchain are still just buying small amounts of illegal stuff and warming the planet lends the author a bit of credit as prescient technologist.
  - majewsky 5y ago
    You forgot "making money off people who just want to get in on the hype".
sillyargu 5y ago
The truth is that with blockchain came Bitcoin. Bitcoin's rapid price rise has allowed many people to make money. This has created a number of evangelists with almost feverish pitch of excitement with claims that Bitcoin and Blockchain will change the world. With this, it has also created a backlash of people who are against Bitcoin and Blockchain and refuse to believe there is any value whatsoever. I've seen people on HN embrace all sorts of technology - a lots with very little utility or use cases or actual real-world users. Yet with Bitcoin/Blockchain they argue there is no value whatsoever. The truth is that if Blockchain didn't come with Bitcoin or the potential to make money (or if Bitcoin was more stable around $1) there wouldn't be this backlash. People in tech can become cynical easily and a bit mistrustful of new technology claims. This can be a good thing. But this knee jerk reaction to Blockchain and Bitcoin is highly disappointing to see on HN.
Irongirl1 5y ago
I am so very tired of these articles and the "opinions" that always leap to the forefront when they receive any attention at all. The funny thing about most them is that they are always, always written by someone "talking their book." In other words, the old guard defending their turf from a new way of doing things. This 2017 article is written by a person who runs a financial services company for elders. A FinServices company, by the way, which is aimed at a market which will never uses crypto or the blockchain. So his opinion is worthless and pointless. The rest of us, those of us whom the banking and finance industries have left behind and ignored, now have the ability to create currency, terms and trade amongst ourselves or anyone who agrees to our terms without being summarily denied, lied to or cheated. Native Americans now have the opportunity to build on their own land by setting up a separate SOR from the one the Government forces them to use and they can document ownership to the farthest point and have it all be maintained digitally. Instead of the old oil and gas software they modified to use to split royalty payments, they can now do it all digitally and those records can be held wherever they want them to be. I could cite new possibilities all day long....but if Bank Of America has enough sense to commission a report about the changes crypto is making in emerging markets, I should not have to... Crypto is NOT for everyone, but neither are credit cards. For some of us the ability to be our own bank and insurance etc is far better than constantly being ignored/denied/fleeced or whatever else wall street and the tech world comes up with next. The simple fact is this: if you don't see the potential, then don't participate. Leave it for those of us who do. Your "but what about" systems whatever they are didn't work for us....but these might if they can be left alone long enough for us to build what we need from the parts we were given. My main worry is that all of you "but-in skis" will cause the powers that be to pay attention to your ridiculous whining and regulate far too heavily and ruin our first real chance to be apart of the global financial system on terms that don't penalize us heavily. As all the others do.

67 points by sprague 5y ago

I work for a large organization which is exploring blockchain to link several disparate databases (all with different software, intranets, etc). This is the only reasonable use of the tech I have seen.

clintonb 5y ago
Isn't this achievable with an API/RPC?
- HappySweeney 5y ago
  While I don't see anything stopping them from implementing an API solution, I'm guessing they don't want everyone to have to do n queries every time they need some joined info, but I can't say as I'm not involved in the project, and only overheard managers talking to each other about it.

mpfundstein 5y ago

i worked 2 years ago on an energy trading system on local nets for a local port. I was pretty awesome and connected the energy usage to Ethereum tokens. Producers could sell energy to the grid and Consumers could buy. It worked and was actually deployed for a few months with few participants. Then it got shut down. But BChain was a major and important part to it.

yunohn 5y ago
Why did it get shut down?
- mpfundstein 5y ago
  because of market forces. It was a semi-public financed project. After the initial deployment, the semi-public port didn't dare to go full in. And private energy companies refused to participate.
wolverine876 5y ago
What do you see as the benefit of having used blockchain? (I can imagine an answer, but you are the one who implemented it and have direct experience with it.)

mimixco 5y ago

We are using blockchain in our product for verification of text edits. No one has tracked text editing in this way, making it fully traceable, unwind-able, and outside-verifiable. [0] https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash [1] https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing

xadhominemx 5y ago
Wikipedia does the same thing
- mimixco 5y ago
  Well then that's certainly a use case! :-)
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    No one is saying blockchain can’t do the same thing worse than other tools
    - mimixco 5y ago
      Just replying to the OP that nobody has a found a use case. In our case, we are fundamentally changing the way text is marked up within a document to correlate it to individual changes in that text over time. This is different from Git or Wikipedia which make document-level snapshots.
      - lovegoblin 5y ago
        > we are fundamentally changing the way text is marked up within a document to correlate it to individual changes in that text over time. What does this even mean? Are you Disrupting™ the Text Editing Industry? In what substantial way is it different - and better - than existing version control?

kovacs_x 5y ago

blockchain = database distributed blockchain = database in cloud did databases in cloud "change the world"? 100% did they change EVERYTHING? depends who you ask! :D

worik 5y ago
> distributed blockchain = database in cloud A very expensive database in the cloud

okaythere 5y ago

“The Baseline Protocol is an open source initiative that combines advances in cryptography, messaging, and blockchain to deliver secure and private business processes at low cost using the public Mainnet for event ordering, data consistency and workflow integrity. The protocol will enable confidential and complex collaboration between enterprises without moving any sensitive data from traditional systems of record.“ Note: It is a protocol - not a company or commercial software. You can watch a number of videos of the protocol in action - maintaining state across enterprises of say an SAP installation and Google Sheets.

randomhodler84 5y ago

“I am too ignorant to understand the nature of hard money, power, governments, fiat currencies, inflation, etc etc thus it has no point”. Hn folks need to stop rejoicing in ignorance. It is unbecoming.

a-dub 5y ago

a global and decentralized authentication authority that respects user privacy by design.

arcticbull 5y ago
Not your keys, not your life is the worst idea to come out of crypto. And that's really saying something IMO.
- a-dub 5y ago
  you can still have counterparties hold portions of keys for recovery purposes and those counterparties would have less visibility into your online activities than current "sso for the web" offerings from large internet companies.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Those companies offer a means of account recovery through them, and also, everywhere I've SSO'd also offers a separate un-linked account recovery mechanism.
    - a-dub 5y ago
      sure. but the point is, current "sso for the web" offerings have three problems: 1) the sso provider has full visibility into where you use their service. 2) sso provider operations are opaque. 3) other internet services don't trust them. (i can't sign into my bank with Google yet) maybe we need an iana for authentication, but a decentralized database may be an easier sell. or maybe with more time more adoption will take place of the big sso providers. it still seems to be a problem to me and i favor an open solution over more reliance on large internet companies.
nomel 5y ago
I'll assume my perspective is naive here, so feel free to correct me, but, at least with the case of bitcoin, having an immutable transaction history doesn't seem to be a way to promote privacy, as evidence by the Dread Pirate Roberts transaction history, and where that got him. A "privacy by design" would have tumbling/anonymity built in, which isn't a requisite for a blockchain, and not part of the most famous one, bitcoin.

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

I'd summarize blockchain like this: computation that is outside any individual's control. It's surprising that it's even possible! It makes the virtual world actually a lot more like the physical world: no one person can alter the laws of physics, just as no one person can alter the laws of Bitcoin (or similar). This property makes me think that describing blockchain as a metaverse is actually pretty accurate. It's intriguing to think that with fully homomorphic encryption, we can have distributed computation that's not only outside anyone's control, but outside anyone's understanding! You can literally imagine an A.I. agent that no one controls - and no one understands.

taywrobel 5y ago
In April a power outage in China caused Bitcoin hash rate to drop by 45% - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-xinjiang-blackouts-blamed-btc-price-slides/ https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-xinjiang-bla... In the idealized little crypto world no one person has control, sure, but we have one country with the majority of the raw compute power on the earth and a government that has no problem seizing control over that compute power when it suits them. One of the many reasons I am bearish on crypto and have been since 2014.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  It's definitely not perfect and potentially more fragile than it looks -- but when was the last time a 51% attack happened on Bitcoin? Clearly this shows there is real potential for networks outside anyone's control...
- cyberge99 5y ago
  And bitcoin powered through it all the same. The price dropped briefly, but recovered. That’s pretty resilient if you ask me.
  - taywrobel 5y ago
    The risk isn't the price drop, it's China deciding that it wants to own the bitcoin market one day, seizing control of the hashers, and then doing whatever they want with the network. For instance, refusing to process transactions from American IPs. Would love to see how BTC's price holds up to a state sponsored hijacking of the network using raw compute power.

rlpb 5y ago

Part of the problem is that nobody has a definition for what "blockchain" even means. We all know what Bitcoin means because it has a whitepaper and an implementation. The same goes for all other operational systems that use the same ideas. "Blockchain", on the other hand, just means whatever anybody who wants to ride on hype wants it to mean. For example, some simply take it to mean a series of blocks where each block references its parent block by its hash. To others, that definition makes no sense because that concept existed long before Bitcoin (eg. git).

arcticbull 5y ago
Nobody has found a use case for a decentralized, trustless, permissionless ledger which is free from the horror of attack by byzantine generals. Git is only one of those three, well two if you count the byzantines.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
amelius 5y ago
In case of git it is more like a blocktree, I suppose.
fredgrott 5y ago
incorrect, the original sum zero inventor had a use case and in fact he went broke to attempt to prove it Most of you were too young or not born yet Google cipher punks and you may get a glimse

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

what about the aliens who were looking for ways to get us to speed up heating the planet so it was more to their liking?

alkonaut 5y ago

I think there may be some good uses for public immutable records that can be verified as a chain. But none of that requires distributing the block chain.

smcameron 5y ago
Isn't distributing it the means by which it's made immutable? i.e. you can't mutate it unless you control at least half the network?
- alkonaut 5y ago
  A centralized blockchain can be a publicly readable ledger that is still only writable by trusted parties. A git repo works in a similar way. For example: a bank uses a public ledger to store all transactions. If a mistake is made, they can correct it, but not by removing/changing the past transaction, only by adding another transaction to the chain which corrects it. Everything is transparent to observers, but obviously I can’t mutate my own account balance without transfering money to my account. The major drawback of these write-only ledgers is the same as in git: if you accidentally write a secret to the chain, it’s there forever.
mimixco 5y ago
This, exactly! Our product offers and outside blockchain for verification but that's not necessary for the product's function. It's just a "block chain of records" that is useful to keep separately from the documents itself, often in a third party location. In our case, the use is for tracking editing and collaboration in text documents on a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence basis.
worik 5y ago
It does not require a block chain, period

standardUser 5y ago

I think Gods Unchained, a collectible card computer game, is a pretty cool use for blockchain technology. I'd be much more inclined to "pay to play" if I actually owned the thing I'm paying for and could sell it later. Though I didn't personally get into the game enough to bother spending money on it. Here is a quick MIT Tech Review article on it from 2019: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockchain-based-card-game-shows-us-the-future-of-ownership/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockch...

sleepybrett 5y ago
You could do that without a blockchain.
- Sparkyte 5y ago
  The problem with unchained too is that it is literally attached to the market not as a protocol of it's own to divise exchange and authenticity of held digital goods. For example it is completely tied to etherium. Bet $10 that their backend just maintains the rarities but doesn't assign a real blockchain value to ensure security and ownership.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

kerng 5y ago

Bitcoin seems like an obvious success story. So, I didn't bother clicking the click-bait link to read the article.

arberx 5y ago
Funny how HN completely discount the best performing asset of the past decade.

Sparkyte 5y ago

Fluff piece. Block chain could be used to maintaining and secure digital licensing. We use it for a lot of dumb arbitrary things and so it seems there is no genuine use case. You can use as a ledger to track transactions and make your transaction trackable. Do we though, do we apply this to digital exchange of actual currencies... nope.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

cope

karaterobot 5y ago

No true Scotsmen have found a use for blockchain. This is another of those articles that defines successful use case so as to exclude blockchain. What about all those bitcoin millionaires? They don't count! What about NFTs? I think it's dumb, so I won't count it! What about inventory and logistics tracking? Not used widely enough to count! What about all those decentralized finance businesses? They aren't real businesses by my definition of businesses! Okay, you win.

alkonaut 5y ago
People making money is not useful in the sense of creating value. That’s zero sum.
danaris 5y ago
I think there's a meaningful distinction between "has found ways to make money off blockchain", "has found a thing blockchain could theoretically be used for (but doesn't provide a huge benefit over doing it without blockchain", and "has found a genuine, unique, use case for blockchain".
acoard 5y ago
>And yet, after years of tireless effort and billions of dollars invested, nobody has actually come up with a use for the blockchain—besides currency speculation and illegal transactions. I quoted the opening line of the article. I think the author clearly includes Bitcoin millionaires, and NFTs, as "currency speculation." Inventory and logistics tracking is, as you say, not widely used enough to count. It certainly doesn't seem like it's been seriously adopted outside of pilot programs, or financial transaction/speculation. Blockchain is older than Kubernetes. Tonnes of large corporations successfully use kubernetes in production; basically no-one uses blockchain outside of smaller programs. I have seen it used successfully in some cases (indigenous elections), but you have to admit it still seems like a nascent industry trying to get it's footing outside of the fields the author specified.

jimsmart 5y ago

Article is from 2017 - would be good if this was in the title.

wyck 5y ago

Crypto is a tradable asset, and like any other tradable asset you can make money with it. In other words you can make money with money, just like a bank, only decentralized. It's not about the technology of the banks or crypto per se, but the primary function of what banks actually do, which is save or lend money (really both). If you think crypto currency was created to buy hamburgers, or make your energy bill more efficient to pay, as the saying goes " you can't see the forest for the trees". When was the last time you used bond certificate to pay for dinner? The fact that people are making money and lots of it in crypto using traditional financial instruments is all the proof you need to know that it has a use case.

wolverine876 5y ago
> The fact that people are making money and lots of it in crypto using traditional financial instruments is all the proof you need to know that it has a use case. It's happening therefore it must work? That's a dangerous attitude, especially in financial markets. People have done that with tulips and lots of other things; those really weren't use cases in a meaningful sense.
- gaspard234 5y ago
  I agree with OP. I started off my career at a derivatives trading firm in NYC. There were thousands of other firms making billions of dollars doing the same thing for even more esoteric financial instruments. And I'm a realest, they were just shuffling numbers around to get rich. Payments and transactions are not the value, fintech automation with Defi is where the money is.
- wyck 5y ago
  >It's happening therefore it must work? Yes exactly, use cases are not important. This is how wall street works, giving the same features to citizens instead of large financial firms is an important distinction, and the reason why, unlike tulips, it will not fade away.
  - danaris 5y ago

breitling 5y ago

We are using blockchain for identity verification in Canada (verified.me) 7 banks and 4 telecom companies are nodes on the network. They provide the identity details of a person. Very interesting use case. Take a look

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ofrzeta 5y ago
After some research I found that they are using Hyperledger Fabric, a project hosted by the Linux Foundation. https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric
wolverine876 5y ago
Yikes: So you are posting people's identifying information on an immutable, distributed database?
- AlleghenyCrypto 5y ago
  Maybe I don't fully understand the technology here. Couldn't it work like the following? You have an identity entity off-chain (say a government body) that you get some kind of cryptographically signed piece of information that doesn't relay any of your personal information on-chain but allows entities on-chain to know that you are in good standing with the off-chain identity service? Couldn't it even be a one-time use type of thing?
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > You have an identity entity off-chain (say a government body) that you get some kind of cryptographically signed piece of information that doesn't relay any of your personal information on-chain but allows entities on-chain to know that you are in good standing with the off-chain identity service? Why use blockchain? Why not just have the entity provide a database? Note that the standing may change over time. > Couldn't it even be a one-time use type of thing? I'm not sure what this means. Why use an immutable database for one use?

russellbeattie 5y ago

Why is this 5 year old click-bait article on the front page?

lamp987 5y ago
bitcoin bad

AlleghenyCrypto 5y ago

I've just started digging into the space, so maybe my question is way off base. I'm hoping someone will at least give me some insight though. Would it be possible to source the same level of credit data in a decentralized manner and use (e.g. send a loan to collections) all in a decentralized manner? If so, what is legitimately preventing the migration of all functions of a modern bank to a decentralized model?

clintonb 5y ago
There is no benefit to doing this. Credit scores/checks only work by centralizing loan data with various credit bureaus. Whether that data is in a database or on a block chain doesn’t matter.

t0mbstone 5y ago

I still think an awesome use case would be a public blockchain for tracking inventions and patents. You could have a searchable index of inventions that anyone could add onto, and every article would be hashed and the signature recorded on the blockchain to serve as independent historical proof. The inventor would then be the only person with the cryptographic key to prove they are the owner of the patent. There could also be a whole other sidechain for tracking licensing agreements, for example. Who wants to help me build it?

Janker 5y ago

The constant conflation of block chain and bitcoin makes the article tiresome. Furthermore the author seems only to propose "everyone uses it" use cases. Imo the most useful use cases are distributed ledgers used between companies who know each other...

pxue 5y ago

the blockchain is a huge social experiment. it's a study of anthropology masked as a hard-science experiment.

bigphishy 5y ago

Article is from 2017

kemonocode 5y ago

I feel I'm taking crazy pills with all the people screeching the blockchain has no uses. They're as wrong as the people who say it has ALL the uses. Also, a (2017) wouldn't go amiss. This article is about three and a half years old, and for a concept that's supposedly so bereft of use cases, it's managed to be pretty enduring.

paddlepop 5y ago
...and they are? I think the subtext that is implied with the no use case statement is really: "that couldn't be done with an existing technology (such as a database)".
- kemonocode 5y ago
  Seriously, decentralized, pseudonymous money that is censorship resistant and doesn't rely on any single government or organization is the killer app. That's how I'm using it, it works perfectly for my use case and even though it's a sample size of one, there's at least one person who relies on it and can sleep at night a bit more soundly knowing that their money won't suddenly be gone the next morning because PayPal or their bank looked at them funny because they were born in a spicy patch of land. Anything else comes as a plus. Do please spare me the whole "it's boiling the oceans" and "only hackers and druggies are using it" spiel though as they're both [0] untrue [1]. [0] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
ryandvm 5y ago
The fact that it was written in 2017 and yet today the only use cases for blockchain are still just buying small amounts of illegal stuff and warming the planet lends the author a bit of credit as prescient technologist.
- majewsky 5y ago
  You forgot "making money off people who just want to get in on the hype".

sillyargu 5y ago

The truth is that with blockchain came Bitcoin. Bitcoin's rapid price rise has allowed many people to make money. This has created a number of evangelists with almost feverish pitch of excitement with claims that Bitcoin and Blockchain will change the world. With this, it has also created a backlash of people who are against Bitcoin and Blockchain and refuse to believe there is any value whatsoever. I've seen people on HN embrace all sorts of technology - a lots with very little utility or use cases or actual real-world users. Yet with Bitcoin/Blockchain they argue there is no value whatsoever. The truth is that if Blockchain didn't come with Bitcoin or the potential to make money (or if Bitcoin was more stable around $1) there wouldn't be this backlash. People in tech can become cynical easily and a bit mistrustful of new technology claims. This can be a good thing. But this knee jerk reaction to Blockchain and Bitcoin is highly disappointing to see on HN.

Irongirl1 5y ago

I am so very tired of these articles and the "opinions" that always leap to the forefront when they receive any attention at all. The funny thing about most them is that they are always, always written by someone "talking their book." In other words, the old guard defending their turf from a new way of doing things. This 2017 article is written by a person who runs a financial services company for elders. A FinServices company, by the way, which is aimed at a market which will never uses crypto or the blockchain. So his opinion is worthless and pointless. The rest of us, those of us whom the banking and finance industries have left behind and ignored, now have the ability to create currency, terms and trade amongst ourselves or anyone who agrees to our terms without being summarily denied, lied to or cheated. Native Americans now have the opportunity to build on their own land by setting up a separate SOR from the one the Government forces them to use and they can document ownership to the farthest point and have it all be maintained digitally. Instead of the old oil and gas software they modified to use to split royalty payments, they can now do it all digitally and those records can be held wherever they want them to be. I could cite new possibilities all day long....but if Bank Of America has enough sense to commission a report about the changes crypto is making in emerging markets, I should not have to... Crypto is NOT for everyone, but neither are credit cards. For some of us the ability to be our own bank and insurance etc is far better than constantly being ignored/denied/fleeced or whatever else wall street and the tech world comes up with next. The simple fact is this: if you don't see the potential, then don't participate. Leave it for those of us who do. Your "but what about" systems whatever they are didn't work for us....but these might if they can be left alone long enough for us to build what we need from the parts we were given. My main worry is that all of you "but-in skis" will cause the powers that be to pay attention to your ridiculous whining and regulate far too heavily and ruin our first real chance to be apart of the global financial system on terms that don't penalize us heavily. As all the others do.