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I mean, that's cool and all, except I've been hearing "it's too early, it's not for you, give it 10 more years" for like 10 years now. So I don't really believe

I mean, that's cool and all, except I've been hearing "it's too early, it's not for you, give it 10 more years" for like 10 years now. So I don't really believe you when you say it'll get there eventually. Have you considered... it just won't get there? Or that there are incentives in place to prevent it from getting there?

batesy 4y ago
But like, who are you to say that it won't get there? If such a large group of very smart people want to continue to work on this tech that they all believe has massive potential, maybe you should consider the possibility that you are wrong? It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. Doesn't mean it's not well on its way.
- Jasper_ 4y ago
  And a lot of very smart people worked on Itanium! Or on the Segway. TransMeta. Google Glass must have taken thousands of world-class engineers. 3D TVs! The world is full of plenty of Very Smart People who are all dying to work on cool tech, often blissfully unaware of the economic and social consequences of what they build. Saying very smart people work on it doesn't do much to really convince me. Bitcoin's block size isn't a technical debate that requires Very Smart People to solve. It's a social one, about externalities, core beliefs, power structures, and motivations. And those are ones that Very Smart People tend not to make progress on, because they're unable to step outside of their lens of technicalities.
- acdha 4y ago
  > It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. How many of those technologies had no impact for that long but then went on to be significantly useful? The only examples which come to mind are things like mRNA vaccines which had far more development & approval hurdles, which is a pretty different situation from systems which are globally available but generally just haven't found a niche where they're a good fit and affordable.
swalsh 4y ago
Here have been the phases so far: Gen 1: Bitcoin - general ideas established, mostly a proof of concept Gen 2: ETH - Building on bitcoin's ideas it establishes the idea of the VM + chain, which transforms bitcoin into essentially a new digital economy. Gen 3: AVAX/SOL/DOT - ETH with scaling and fixes environmental concerns AVAX, the chain I develop on, and the one that has the best technology to enable the capabilities required is less than a year old. Solona and Polka Dot are 2 years old. The stuff i'm talking about is what I would call Gen 5. I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space.
- acdha 4y ago
  > I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space. My general metric is when people use something for a purpose other than working on that technology. For example, the web very quickly passed that point very quickly because you had people sharing scientific information, building personal sites, using it for businesses which weren't selling web technologies, etc. where the underlying technology was the vehicle but not the purpose. There haven't been many examples of that in the blockchain space so far — a few places accepting it in addition to credit card transactions, etc. — but almost all of it has been focused on generating business for various blockchains rather than being better than or even competitive with existing options (e.g. how many NFTs were marketed and priced based on their artistic merits versus “you're going to make a fortune if you buy now!”?). Do you have an good examples of things like that which are actually used by non-cryptocurrency people[1] and have some advantage from using this stack unrelated to selling tokens? 1. The equivalent of, say, the people I helped get online in the mid-90s because they wanted to join hobby forums like photo.net, email relatives, get stock quotes, etc. but weren't really interested in the technology in its own right.
  - axg11 4y ago
    You're looking in the wrong places. Look up VitaDAO, Molecule, HairDAO - three projects making real scientific impact enabled by crypto.

batesy 4y ago

But like, who are you to say that it won't get there? If such a large group of very smart people want to continue to work on this tech that they all believe has massive potential, maybe you should consider the possibility that you are wrong? It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. Doesn't mean it's not well on its way.

Jasper_ 4y ago
And a lot of very smart people worked on Itanium! Or on the Segway. TransMeta. Google Glass must have taken thousands of world-class engineers. 3D TVs! The world is full of plenty of Very Smart People who are all dying to work on cool tech, often blissfully unaware of the economic and social consequences of what they build. Saying very smart people work on it doesn't do much to really convince me. Bitcoin's block size isn't a technical debate that requires Very Smart People to solve. It's a social one, about externalities, core beliefs, power structures, and motivations. And those are ones that Very Smart People tend not to make progress on, because they're unable to step outside of their lens of technicalities.
acdha 4y ago
> It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. How many of those technologies had no impact for that long but then went on to be significantly useful? The only examples which come to mind are things like mRNA vaccines which had far more development & approval hurdles, which is a pretty different situation from systems which are globally available but generally just haven't found a niche where they're a good fit and affordable.

swalsh 4y ago

Here have been the phases so far: Gen 1: Bitcoin - general ideas established, mostly a proof of concept Gen 2: ETH - Building on bitcoin's ideas it establishes the idea of the VM + chain, which transforms bitcoin into essentially a new digital economy. Gen 3: AVAX/SOL/DOT - ETH with scaling and fixes environmental concerns AVAX, the chain I develop on, and the one that has the best technology to enable the capabilities required is less than a year old. Solona and Polka Dot are 2 years old. The stuff i'm talking about is what I would call Gen 5. I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space.

acdha 4y ago
> I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space. My general metric is when people use something for a purpose other than working on that technology. For example, the web very quickly passed that point very quickly because you had people sharing scientific information, building personal sites, using it for businesses which weren't selling web technologies, etc. where the underlying technology was the vehicle but not the purpose. There haven't been many examples of that in the blockchain space so far — a few places accepting it in addition to credit card transactions, etc. — but almost all of it has been focused on generating business for various blockchains rather than being better than or even competitive with existing options (e.g. how many NFTs were marketed and priced based on their artistic merits versus “you're going to make a fortune if you buy now!”?). Do you have an good examples of things like that which are actually used by non-cryptocurrency people[1] and have some advantage from using this stack unrelated to selling tokens? 1. The equivalent of, say, the people I helped get online in the mid-90s because they wanted to join hobby forums like photo.net, email relatives, get stock quotes, etc. but weren't really interested in the technology in its own right.
- axg11 4y ago
  You're looking in the wrong places. Look up VitaDAO, Molecule, HairDAO - three projects making real scientific impact enabled by crypto.