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Ask HN: Has anyone come up with a use for blockchain yet?
Came about this 5 years old article and thinking myself has anything really changed since?
https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100
- thagerty 5y agoDon't kid yourself. Anything the feds think is important enough to start regulating should be taken seriously.
- tonetheman 5y agotranslation: NOPE
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 5y agoIt’s a great way to separate gullible people from their money and that is always in demand.
- Bilal_io 5y agoOP asked about Blockchain, not Cryptocurrencies specifically. It's important to know the difference before shitting on Cryptocurrencies, which as a matter of fact provide a lot of value to many people around the world.
- hocuspocus 5y agoBlockchain technology itself is a great way to extract money from gullible people. I have friends who raised 8 digits from clueless VCs, to build solutions to problems that wouldn't exist without blockchains.
- knorker 5y agoAre there blockchain solutions that are not apparent scams? NFTs are not cryptocurrencies, but I assume the parent comment was also calling them a scam? (well, they didn't use the word scam, but it looks implied) There are also other "solutions" on top of blockchains, but I keep reading about them only from people who have a vested interest in getting more people to take part, in order to increase their own net worth. Which sounds like a pyramid scheme to me. But to kinda contradict myself: Yes, there are blockchain things that are not pyramid schemes or other scams. But they also don't provide any other value. Whether they are scams or not depends on if you think the people pushing it actually believe in what they're saying.
- Naijoko 5y agoNFT´s are more or less the same as cryptocurrency. Same stuff under the hood but different name and application ... but more or less exactly the same... otherwise of the name..and how they are sold NFTs are storing links to pictures Coins are storing the state of the ledger. Exatly same technology
- knorker 5y agoYeah. A lot of them are cryptocurrencies if you squint. NFTs are… well they added the concept of nonfungibility. It's interesting, albeit currently without useful applications. But take "blockchain land registry". The blockchain will be a pointer to a physical house, or piece of land. In that way it's pretty much exactly NFTs, but I would not say they are exactly cryptocurrency. So if cryptocurrency, NFT, and land registry are A B and C, then I would say that B and C "are the same", but A and C "are not", but A&B as you say sure are very similar. Note that I'm not saying blockchain land registry makes any sense what so ever. Because it doesn't. A block chain will never decide who owns land, because courts and government does, backed by the power of the police.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- recvonline 5y agoWhy do people still think Blockchain has to be a consumer product? “Nobody has come up with a use case”. How about DeFi? I think that’s a pretty big use case! Besides, who cares? Either use it (DeFi, donations, salary etc) or don’t.
- rvz 5y agoSo something like ENS [0] is not a use-case? Here's a product that is using it: [1][2] [0] https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/ [1] https://www.skiff.org/ https://www.skiff.org/ [2] https://www.skiff.org/updates/skiff-ens https://www.skiff.org/updates/skiff-ens
- gumby 5y agoI have never seen a defi example that didn’t ignore Coase.
- biztos 5y agoOff-topic a bit, but I actually registered a name on ENS recently and now I can’t stop thinking how weird it is that the registrations are time limited, considering “blockchain” and all that.
- DennisP 5y agoENS was purposely designed that way. A smart contract can implement whatever rules you like. It doesn't seem like a great idea to me for name registrations to be perpetual, but a name service on Ethereum could certainly work that way.
- biztos 5y agoYes, I assumed it was not done by mistake. The funny thing (to me anyway) is that a big part of the culture seems to be how absolute "ownership" is -- at least around NFTs -- and how this is decentralized, but with ENS it's a rental just like a .COM (but with something like 1000% processing fees) and it's more centralized than DNS. I wanted to try out the .ETH name and I'm fine with them doing whatever they want with the contract, I just find it amusing. Unstoppable seems a lot closer to the overall ethos: https://unstoppabledomains.com https://unstoppabledomains.com
- ashwagary 5y agoDecentralized exchanges with no counterparty risk that require no user info. Most people coming from the traditional finance world understand the value of this.
- jqpabc123 5y agoDecentralized exchanges with no oversight or accountability and the ability to "mint" an endless supply of their own crypto and influence it's price. Most people coming from the traditional finance world understand the de-value in this.
- iszomer 5y agoEspecially for those whom don't understand borders and their implications.
- phyalow 5y agoUh, no. If you are sophisticated (or even just have a functioning brain instead of a void between your ears) you can easily: 1) Avoid assets that are inflationary, by conducting your own due diligance, or even better inspect the code of the smart contract to determine if minting is even possible. 2) No oversight is a feature not a bug. Nobody forces you to trade, but knowing the rules of the game are unalterable is ultimately the best arbiter of active capital allocation decisions. Did you follow the story of the LME and Nickel futures over the last fortnight? That market is now bust and the LME's reputation is (rightly) in tatters. 3) Having worked as a trader at a blue chip investment bank and then at a hedge fund for many years I am almost positive despite the present clunkiness and inefficency of some AMM based DeFi exchanges, this model is the future of exchange. CLOB's are manipulated just as much (if not more) than DeFi/CEX OB's.
- jqpabc123 5y agoIf you are sophisticated (or even just have a functioning brain instead of a void between your ears) you can easily see that the largest exchange is minting it's own crypto. And amazingly, it remains pegged regardless of how much they mint. This is being used in more than half of all crypto trades and can easily be used to influence crypto prices across the board. There is really nothing "free" about a market where the market makers are also active players with an unlimited supply of funds. And without a "free market", most everything else is irrelevant.
- phyalow 5y ago- Synthetic Stocks (that trade 24 hours a day) - Decentralised Money Markets (including forward rate curves), biggest analogue to this is the emergence of a nascent eurodollar market in the 50's - Trustless Borrowing and Lending - Evasion of sanctions and capital controls (N.B. this is not necessarily negative) - Allow decentralised autonomous organisations (D.A.O's) to manage treasury assets (e.g. are a key part of coordination) - Allow me to self custody my wealth outside a traditional institution and outside of inflationary govt. backed currencies
- RC_ITR 5y agoSynthetic stocks have arbitrage discounts/premiums that shouldn’t exist. Decentralized markets often cause the liquidity provider to lost value from “impermanent loss” The capital controls thing is a fairy tale. When was the last time someone accepted a ruble in exchange for any major crypto currency? If someone can but BTC with a dollar, why don’t they just evade the control with their dollars? Major cryptos are all down 20%+ from their peak. That’s wild inflation.
- inter_netuser 5y ago>Synthetic stocks have arbitrage discounts/premiums that shouldn’t exist. So somebody is making mad money from arbitraging them? >Decentralized markets often cause the liquidity provider to lost value from “impermanent loss” Someone's loss is someone's gain. >The capital controls thing is a fairy tale. When was the last time someone accepted a ruble in exchange for any major crypto currency? If someone can but BTC with a dollar, why don’t they just evade the control with their dollars? Please try sending money from China to the outside and report back. >Major cryptos are all down 20%+ from their peak. That’s wild inflation. You can do other things with assets than "buy and pray".
- Naijoko 5y ago>Please try sending money from China to the outside and report back. Bank transfere works... or alipay .. or western union... I dont get the problem. But I get the money from chinese customer.
- doopy1 5y agoLot's of people shit on NFTs, but they are certainly a use case.
- SteveNuts 5y agoBut how?
- Naijoko 5y agoyou are aware that a NFT is only a stored link to a picture on a server? Why would that have any use ever?
- doopy1 5y agoThey are except when they're not. Plenty of NFTs are on-chain. Also, if nothing else, they've provided a lot of creatives an opportunity to get compensated for their work. The "art" NFT eco-system is very much akin to a patreon of sorts. I don't see how that's a bad thing.
- Naijoko 5y agook didnt know that. But honstly I blindly asume that the capacity/cost ratio is still way higher compared to a non Blockchain system with same conditions. Thats generaly the problem. There are many solutions for a problem but there isnt a problem where blockchain and crypto are the best solution. They are mostly on the worse side of solutions....
- theknocker 5y ago
- mirceal 5y ago- accepting payments when visa/mastercard/your bank decide your business is not allowed to exist anymore - sending money anywhere in the world in minutes for minimal fees - keeping your privacy when you’re paying online
- multjoy 5y agoBlockchain isn't private. It is anonymous, but the whole point is that it isn't private.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoIt's not even anonymous, it's pseudonymous.
- mirceal 5y agocan someone prevent you from transacting on the blockchain if they don't like your face? how exactly do they know who you are? (i get it's not private as in untraceable but it's way better than the centralized system we have now)
- AlchemistCamp 5y agoA century ago when people were fleeing war zones or religious hatred, the difficulty of the rest of their life often depended upon whether or not they had any gold (which was often confiscated) or a Swiss bank account. In a similar situation today, a mnemonic phrase for a crypto account serves a similar purpose.
- pimlottc 5y agoThat sounds good, is there evidence this is actually happening?
- inter_netuser 5y agoukraine?
- pimlottc 5y agoAre they using bitcoin substantially?
- xeromal 5y agoI saw an article in passing that Ukraine was offering 500,000USD in crypto for every soldier that surrendered with a jet or tank, but my memory fails me.
- inter_netuser 5y agoidk, it recieved 100 mil in relief funds, raised in like two weeks from regular avg people, from around the world? is that substantial? Seems rather unprecedented.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
- timeon 5y agoI wonder if most people fleeing Ukraine now do actually use crypto.
- newaccount74 5y agoBitcoin is the critical pillar that enabled the commoditization of the ransomware industry. It's a whole field that likely wouldn't exist if it wasn't for pseudonymous digital currencies.
- hash872 5y agoAs a longtime crypto & blockchain skeptic- I have to be fair and note that, according to this FT article, HSBC and Wells Fargo are using (non-crypto) blockchain specifically to settle currency trades. And this is apparently past the testing or experimentation stage, this is live implementation. I don't really understand how it works (if you have a fat finger error, is it reversible?) or why it's better than a simple relational database, but apparently this is a use case https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f24b3 https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f2... https://archive.is/qs8Cg https://archive.is/qs8Cg (archive.is link to bypass the paywall)
- mescaline 5y agoAuthentication and payment for online content (micro-payments), or services which process information (such as AI based summarization of content). Put an NGINX proxy in front of content or an API and then wire it up to Lightning. Requests can be done without site authentication and the site still gets paid for the content or service. This would finally implement 402s: https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.3 https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec1... 418 I'm a teapot
- darkteflon 5y agoUkraine has received between USD50-100m in crypto donations since the start of the war and there isn’t a damn thing Putin can do about it.
- hocuspocus 5y agoWhat can Putin do about donations in USD, EUR, UAH, ... ?
- darkteflon 5y agoDepends what happens next, doesn’t it.
- hocuspocus 5y agoI mean yes, Putin can nuke the Fed and the ECB, but I'm not sure how Bitcoin would help in this case. Or Putin could try to seize the Ukrainian national bank, but unless Russia can annex the entire country, that's a bit futile. There are many ways to send money to Ukraine and Ukrainians and Bitcoin seems like the least practical one, on both ends.
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y agoOrbis is a decentralized alternative to Twitter: https://orbis.club/ https://orbis.club/ All data is stored on blockchains, so in contrast to the old social networks, your post history, likes and comments can not be taken away from you.
- indigochill 5y agoMastodon proved years ago that you don't need a blockchain to decentralize Twitter (which I don't mean as a dis on Orbis, but merely a rebuttal to the suggestion that a blockchain is necessary for this use case).
- azeirah 5y agoMastodon provides immutability? Huh
- indigochill 5y agoTwitter isn't immutable.
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y agoIs Mastodon really decentralized? If you use YourName@SomeMastodonSite and SomeMastodonSite deplatforms you - how do you keep your posts, likes, comments and contacts?
- indigochill 5y ago> Is Mastodon really decentralized? Yes. There is no central Mastodon server. Anyone can run a host and federate with other hosts at will. > If you use YourName@SomeMastodonSite and SomeMastodonSite deplatforms you - how do you keep your posts, likes, comments and contacts? The Mastodon interface makes it easy to export/import your information so that you can copy it over to a new host - if you worry you might get deplatformed and get cut off without warning, you can do a periodic local backup to be safe: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ The export includes your posts, but that document does say "Mastodon currently does not support importing toots or media due to technical limitations, but your archive can be viewed by any software that understands how to parse ActivityPub documents." I'd be curious what those technical limitations are. Presumably you could write a script to re-post the archived posts since it's just stored in ActivityPub JSON. Edit to add: The most sure-fire way to avoid deplatforming is to run or pay for your own host. Other hosts may decide not to federate with you, but you'll at least be guaranteed a platform for those who do decide to engage with it.
- perardi 5y agoFrankly, it’s kind of hard to pitch blockchain if you’re at all honest with your stakeholders. “So, we want to recreate databases, except vastly slower, far less energy-efficient, and way harder to use.”
- indigochill 5y agoNow, I am a blockchain skeptic, but this is only half the story. Some unique traits of blockchains: 1. They're immutable (this is as I understand even unique as compared to git, which also uses Merkle trees) 2. They use distributed replicas (as opposed to distributed partitions). 3. Maybe some other stuff that's slipping my mind at the moment. The multi-billion dollar question is in which use cases those traits are actually useful. So far we're progressively ruling things out as we watch distributed blockchain products simply gravitate back towards centralization.
- Naijoko 5y ago>1. They're immutable (this is as I understand even unique as compared to git, which also uses Merkle trees) Blockchain is not Bitcoin or crypto somehow. Crypto is blockchain + proof of work and some p2p. Blockchain is more or less the fancy word for immutable merkle tree. The idea to have a tree or chain of hashes based ond the previus one existed before bitcoin. And proof of work existed also before. It was used to prevent spam in emails. But didnt have sucess. The glorius idea of nakamoto was to put it all together.. it was a good idea and worth a try but now we know its mostly worthless unsless you are a criminal or some fringe use case that shouldnt exist in Democratic and humanistic conditions
- kikowi 5y agoI have been working with a few Russian and Belarusian software engineers on Upwork and I now pay them in cryptocurrencies, because Upwork (and other websites) banned their profiles and they can't receive my payments.
- jacknews 5y agoYou're using it to evade sanctions?
- Brian_K_White 5y agoIt is an answer to the question, and for every sanction you consider valid, there is one you don't, and so the tool to get around them, and the act of getting around them, is not damning.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 5y agoI'm not questioning the tool, but this use of it.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoAnd I'm saying there is nothing automatically damning about either the tool or it's use or it's use for that purpose. I guess I have to spell it out: It obviously depends on the sanction, who is declaring it against who, and why, and even on a variety of individual details case by case. If you would question helping Russia, instead of generally "getting around sanctions", that would be more valid, but really even that is too simplistic. You don't have to actually have a family member in Russia yourself to imagine that there are probably countless circumstances where you would not criticize someone for getting around any policy. Or maybe your particular ethics says that you still couldn't even help a family member because ultimately it would come at the cost of some Ukraninian family that you can't justify helping to kill. That would be a defensible stance and I wouldn't call you a bad person for it, but it's not the only valid ethical stance, and you likewise don't have much right to criticise anyone else for deciding that they have their reaons for getting around a sanction. The short answer to your question was really just "Yes." with no apology or defense needed.
- conorcleary 5y agoOh, get your head out of the sand. It doesn't take much searching online to find many valid use cases for the basics of blockchain verification.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 5y agoLots of people are using it, so yes it has a use, and while people keep using it (even if it's not the best way to achieve their goal), it will continue to have a use, and the skeptics (I number myself as one) should just get used to it. One definite potential use-case is FX settlement, which currently goes through an obscure (and expensive) bank-owned coop-type institution (CLS bank). I think other inter-bank and central bank uses might also make sense.
- newacc9 5y agoFind a true Scotsman, they'll give you a valid answer
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
- biztos 5y agoI haven’t actually shipped anything but I’m working on a couple blockchain related artworks, and I occasionally talk to other artists who are active in the art part of the NFT world, as opposed to the “financial instrument dressed as a monkey” part. Two things seem to be an emerging, er, consensus: 1. Having the blockchain part (the NFT for instance) actually have some real relationship to the art is much more interesting than just having pointers to artworks that are fine without it. 2. The exciting thing is that people can go and do what they like with the NFTs (etc) without your permission. This applies to non-art too I think: nothing is stopping you from making Mutant Ape Yacht Mashup. So, I contend that “decentralized user interaction with artworks via a system the artist doesn’t control” is a use for blockchain, though I admit it’s a pretty fringe one.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pcthrowaway 5y agoPeople here seem to like IPFS
- tim333 5y agoIPFS doesn't really use a blockchain. It's more like bittorrent which predates the bitcoin blockchain.
- Naijoko 5y agoBuying drugs online is one of the first use cases and one with the longest use.
- slibhb 5y agoSending money overseas (remittances). Companies that offer this service take a cut, most of which can be avoided with a blockchain currency (buy blockchain currency, send it to someone else, they sell it for fiat).
- Naijoko 5y agohere I quote from wikipedia >>A hash chain is similar to a blockchain, as they both utilize a cryptographic hash function for creating a link between two nodes. However, a blockchain (as used by Bitcoin and related systems) is generally intended to support distributed consensus around a public ledger (data), and incorporates a set of rules for encapsulation of data and associated data permissions. So a Blockchain is only a configuration of a hashchain. So we have to make clear that blockchain is only a fancy name and nothing realy special. There are a shitload of different setups of hashchains and they mostly have no fancy name, as far as I know. Everyone with the skill can make whatever with hashchains and call it whatever.. Trianglechain.... NextgenQuantumsuperchain...ChainChain... whatever... So if the basic question is, do hashchains have real use cases? Most certainly. But I am to lazy to google. Or does the configuration of a hashchain called blockhcain does have a real use. Atm Crypto but as far as I know some banks and supply chains and IBM tried to find problems for blockchains, but failed. Even if highly controverse, the german goverment wants to put things like the passport, diplomas and drivers licence on the blockchain. I think somehow IBM is involved. But is more or less that they want to try to sell that shit. But its not p2p whatever, only a Databank that is a blockchain.. at the end it will be a better database. Maybe a hashchain. Btw it did allready fail for the vaccines passport. They wanted to but that into 5 blockchains. At the end it was a central database, maybe a merkle tree or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_chain
- EverywhereTrip 5y agoPodPing is a podcasting notification system that replaces constantly polling individual RSS feeds. It is based on the Hive blockchain. You can see podcasts updated in real time at https://podping.watch/ https://podping.watch/
- netfortius 5y agoSomehow relevant: https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/ https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/