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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 establishe

by 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.
  - acdha 4y ago
    How would you summarize their impact?
    - axg11 4y ago
      Two novel ways: 1) they're funding previously biotech companies (e.g. traditional venture not interested because insurance companies won't reimburse hair loss treatments) 2) incentivizing scientists (and other workers) from anywhere in the world to work part time towards these scientific goals This is only possible due to the token incentive schemes and DAO governance structure. Crypto was never envisaged as a way to improve science, but it's being adopted anyway.
      - acdha 4y ago
        Neither of those seems novel - privately funded research has a long history - so I guess the argument is that they might have less overhead than other payment mechanisms? Given the skill requirements to assess whether someone is qualified to work on the problem or has made real progress, I’m also curious what value you get from a blockchain versus any other form of organization since the hard part is getting people from the same pool of human reviewers.
garren 4y ago
AVAX/SOL/DOT fix ETH/BC fixing environmental concerns; that's primarily referring to PoS and different variants, right? It's worth noting that while it fixes the environmental aspect, it seems to reduce claims made regarding decentralization, wouldn't you agree? If so, one of the core tenants of crypto (arguably /the/ most significant) gets effectively traded off in favor of fixing environmental concerns. I'd imagine that would make non-BC/ETH crypto an unappealing for some as BC/ETH is currently for the environmentally concerned. I've not heard a convincing argument regarding the ability of PoS, or any of its variations, to prevent centralization in any significant way. Do you have any references you'd recommend?

by swalsh 4y ago

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.
- acdha 4y ago
  How would you summarize their impact?
  - axg11 4y ago
    Two novel ways: 1) they're funding previously biotech companies (e.g. traditional venture not interested because insurance companies won't reimburse hair loss treatments) 2) incentivizing scientists (and other workers) from anywhere in the world to work part time towards these scientific goals This is only possible due to the token incentive schemes and DAO governance structure. Crypto was never envisaged as a way to improve science, but it's being adopted anyway.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Neither of those seems novel - privately funded research has a long history - so I guess the argument is that they might have less overhead than other payment mechanisms? Given the skill requirements to assess whether someone is qualified to work on the problem or has made real progress, I’m also curious what value you get from a blockchain versus any other form of organization since the hard part is getting people from the same pool of human reviewers.

garren 4y ago

AVAX/SOL/DOT fix ETH/BC fixing environmental concerns; that's primarily referring to PoS and different variants, right? It's worth noting that while it fixes the environmental aspect, it seems to reduce claims made regarding decentralization, wouldn't you agree? If so, one of the core tenants of crypto (arguably /the/ most significant) gets effectively traded off in favor of fixing environmental concerns. I'd imagine that would make non-BC/ETH crypto an unappealing for some as BC/ETH is currently for the environmentally concerned. I've not heard a convincing argument regarding the ability of PoS, or any of its variations, to prevent centralization in any significant way. Do you have any references you'd recommend?